Sapphire HD4870 Toxic Video Card Review

Installing the HD 4870 Toxic wasn’t a difficult operation at all.  The card is rather large, but is about the same size as others in its performance range… and the card is not nearly as long as the Sapphire 4850 X2 (reviewed here).  After clearing two option brackets from the back of our test PC, we slipped the card into a free 16x PCI-e slot.  Our current power supply (the ThermalTake Toughpower 850W reviewed here) has two 6-pin PCI-e power adapters, so we just plugged the cables right in.  The cables extend outside the length of the card, which can make things a little tight if you have a smaller case.

We plugged our 28″ LCD monitor into one of the free DVI ports and booted up.  After installing the included drivers (Catalyst version 4.1), the system came right up.  Our test computer consists of:

• Lian Li PC-V1200 Black Aluminum Case
• Intel Core2Duo E6600
• Zalman CNPS 9700 NT CPU Cooler
• Zalman ZM-MFC2 Multi Fan Controller
• Asus P5WDH Deluxe motherboard
• OCZ 8GB DDR2-800 Platinum Edition
• Asus Xonar D2X PCIe Sound Card
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB Hard Drive
• Logitech Wave Keyboard
• SteelSeries Ikari Laser Mouse
• ThermalTake Toughpower 850W PSU
• Sapphire HD 4870 Toxic video card
• Sapphire HD 4850 X2 video card
• eVGA GeForce GTX 280 Video Card

Power Consumption

The power consumption of all of our video cards were measured using Zalman’s ZM-MFC2 Multi Fan Controller (reviewed here).  We tested the cards at full idle and then under load (by letting 3dMark Vantage run).  It took several seconds before each card hit its peak, which we then recorded as a final measurement.  We discounted any measurement that didn’t last for more than a second, but most of the time the wattage went up and down like a bell curve as the graphics load increased and decreased accordingly.

It is interesting to note that the GeForce GTX card is more power efficient when idle, but not by much.  At full load, the GTX uses up as much power as the 4850 X2, and far more than the 4870 Toxic.  It can be easily said that the 4870 Toxic uses far less power overall, especially when running at full load.

3dmark Vantage

3dMark Vantage goes beyond your normal video benchmark.  It focuses on the two areas that really matter in a gaming PC seperately, namely the CPU and GPU.  In previous benchmarks you got an overall score that could leave some questions up in the air as to how powerful your system really is.  For example, our current test machine uses a relatively old Intel E6600 processor, and thus the overall score could make the video card appear not as powerful as it truly is.  Now there are seperate scores for both the graphics processor and main processor.

3dMark Vantage has two GPU tests, each having a different emphasis on rendering.  CPU tests are covered by performing a physics simulation and AI simulation

Our previous benchmark had the Toxic running behind the GTX 280, but then we noticed the CPU score was much lower (and the CPU hadn’t changed).  We ran the test again and found that the 4870 was running neck-and-neck with the GTX 280 (at a much cheaper cost).

Far Cry 2 Benchmarks

Crytek’s previous game, Crysis, is one of the most demanding graphics engines for a video game.  Fortunately, the developers have toned down the requirements, but at the cost of some of the more dynamic features of the game (like real-time motion blur).  The game is still gorgeous, and the engine supports a new dynamic gameplay element featuring fire.

It appears that Crytek still hasn’t quite gotten the memo about Crossfire and SLI.  Their games are some of the most demanding, and currently the highest FPS number come from non-SLI setups.  All of the cards in our lineup can play Far Cry 2 very well, but just don’t deliver the number we expect from a multi-GPU card.

Certain games just don’t like Crossfire, and in these situations a single-card solutoin will give you the best results.  The 4870 Toxic easily cleans up in Far Cry 2 as the fastest solution, even amongst dual-GPU cards.