Sapphire Toxic HD4850 Review

Testing:

At OverclockersClub.com, we use a series of benchmarks to stress the graphics card. We will use a series of newer gaming benchmarks, as well as some that are more seasoned, to show how well the Sapphire Toxic HD4850 compares to some of the other enthusiast video cards on the market. We'll be using both single and dual GPU models to demonstrate the performance that can be gained from a dual card solution, if any at all.  All driver settings and clock speeds will be left at factory defaults for both the CPU and GPU, in an effort to minimize or eliminate any variables that could impact the results. The test system used in this review is listed below. After testing the card at stock speeds, I'll overclock it to see what kind of performance can be gained. All testing is done with the default settings in the respective Control Panels, as well as default settings in the BIOS of the motherboard used in this test.

• Processor: Intel Q9450 Core 2 Quad 333x8
• Motherboard: Gigabyte X48-DQ6
• Memory: Mushkin XP2 Redline 8000 2 x 2GB 5-5-5-12
• Video Card(s): Sapphire Toxic HD4850
• Power Supply: Mushkin 800 watt Modular power supply
• Hard Drive: Seagate 320GB SATA
• Optical Drive: NEC DV5700
• OS: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Video Cards:

• Visiontek HD4870
• PowerColor HD4850
• Asus EN9800 GTX
• XFX 9600GT
• Sapphire HD3870
• Asus 8800 GT
• XFX GTX 280
• EVGA GTX 260 FTW

Overclocking:

Overclocked Settings:

• Sapphire Toxic HD4850 731/1206MHz

With a card that is overclocked well above the standard version, there is usually very little overhead to push the video card even further without voltage or BIOS mods that, of course, void your warranty. With the additional cooling capabilities of the Toxic HD4850 I was able to max out the Catalyst Control Panel clock speeds on just the first go-round. 700MHz on the core and 1200 on the memory - not too shabby! Then I started to push further. But, to do so, I needed to download and use the AMD GPU clock tool. This utility allowed me to set clock and memory speeds above those from the CCC. The highest GPU core speed that was at least 3DMark06 stable was 740/1212; unfortunately, this was stable only for just the Futuremark benchmark. So, I started backpedal.ing until I finally stopped at 731MHz on the GPU core and 1206MHz on the memory. This setup was good for all of our benchmark suite, as well as an extended COD4 session just to verify that the settings were indeed "good". The additional cooling that is offered by the Zalman cooler kept the temperatures in check, with a maximum temperature of 64 Celsius in my 27 Celsius room.

Benchmarks:

• Video:

1. Crysis
2. Knights of the Sea
3. BioShock
4. Call of Duty 4
5. World in Conflict
6. Call of Juarez
7. Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
8. 3DMark 06 Professional