Item: Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC: better than reference
Author: Tarinder Sandhu

Review: Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC: better than reference

Final thoughts and awards

Through its preferred range of etailers, Sapphire is charging around £150 for a Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC EDITION 512MiB graphics card. The question is, we suppose, why would you pay a significant premium for it when a reference card can be purchased for around £120?

The TOXIC's attributes are more than just a flashy name, however. Pre-clocked to 675MHz core and 2,200MHz memory, a healthy increase over stock clocks of 625MHz/1,986MHz, the TOXIC benchmarks nearly 10 per cent higher than the el-cheapo '50s. That increase is facilitated by the bolting-on of an aftermarket ZALMAN heatsink that provides welcome relief from the whiny reference heatsink and its hunk of heatpipe-driven copper cooler keeps the underlying GPU some 16°C cooler.

HEXUS is always partial to manufacturers doing their bit to improve on the reference design, and Sapphire clearly has, but the only major fly in the ointment lies with the pricing. At £150, the common etail outlay, it begins to impinge upon the very cheapest Radeon HD 4870s, which are intrinsically faster SKUs.

Our advice would be to put it for on your short-list if you want a capable graphics card that goes about its business in a quiet, efficient manner. Performance is suitably solid, provided by the underlying architecture, and the inclusion of the ZALMAN heatsink is a sensible method of differentiating it from the crowd.

HEXUS.certification

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC EDITION 512MiB receives the HEXUS.labs certification for successfully completing our benchmark suite without issue.

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC EDITION 512MiB

HEXUS Awards

Additionally, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC EDITION 512MiB gains the HEXUS Gaming Recommended award for offering a viable alternative to the slew of reference-clocked cards currently plying the etail market.

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC EDITION 512MiB

HEXUS Where2Buy

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC EDITION 512MiB is available from ebuyer for £150.43. Please note that this is the full-retail version (-40R).

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If Sapphire's representatives choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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Probably 25 quid more will get you a 4870.. not very good value if you ask me…

Zero-day pricing is always a little high. Expect it to drop to £135-£140 in a week.

However, it does offer something that both the reference HD 4850 and HD 4870 don't.

“The TOXIC brand was first showcased with the Radeon X1900-series of GPUs.”

The truth is that SAPPHIRE released its first TOXIC model with X800 series, called X800 PRO TOXIC.

The question is why did you use CATALYST 8.6 instead of 8.7?

8.7 has only been out a day - the actual testing in the review was probably carried out a few days, maybe even a week ago.

Tarinder you've got an error on the Quake Wars benchmark page where you have the 1680x1050 graph twice instead of a graph for results at 1920x1200.

EDIT: Actually the results appear to be reasonable for 1920x1200, it's just mislabeled.

m4dn355
The truth is that SAPPHIRE released its first TOXIC model with X800 series, called X800 PRO TOXIC.

Yep :). They pretty much all unlocked to X800XT PE's as well, got one sitting in my old PC (though it needs a new CPU/mobo as one or the other has died!)