Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD4870 512MB Graphics Card

Testing:

A system with the following components was used to test the Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD4870 512MB graphics card:

» ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution X48 ATX motherboard
» Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 dual core processor (at 3.2GHz)
» G.Skill 4GB DDR3-1600 Pi Series dual channel memory kit (at 1600MHz and 7-7-7-18)
» OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU cooler
» Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» TSST Super WriteMaster optical drive
» Nesteq EECS 700 Watt ultra quiet power supply

All tests were conducted in the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium SP1, and in lieu of the driver's provided with the card, version 8.7 of the ATI Catalyst Control Center software was used.

For comparison purposes the following four cards were tested head to head with the Sapphire 512MB Radeon HD4870:

» Sapphire Toxic 512MB Radeon HD4850
» Sapphire 512MB Radeon HD4870
» Sapphire Radeon HD3870 X2 1GB
» ASUS EAH3870 TOP Overclocked Radeon HD3870

The following table summarizes the key technical data of all the cards to be compared.


What we have is a cross section of the top cards from the last two generations of ATI Radeon GPUs. Anyone considering an upgrade from a card that they bought in the past year will get an idea of whether it is worth it or not.

The screenshot below shows the "Overdrive" tab from the ATI Catalyst Control Center, as well as the "Graphics Card" tab from Techpowerup.com's GPU-Z. All of the specifications and information listed in the table above are confirmed, so it is time to see what this card can do!