Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB: explosive single-card performance

Review: Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB: explosive single-card performance

Final thoughts and rating

Sapphire set out to create the fastest single graphics card in the world, and looks set to succeed with the upcoming launch of its Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB edition.

Readers in the market for a single card that's able to put most others to shame need look no further, as Sapphire's solution offers explosive performance across our range of benchmarks.

Arriving as a step up from the six-month-old reference HD 5970, Sapphire's custom monstrosity offers a generous leap in performance - as much as 25 per cent in certain scenarios - but does so at a significant premium.

Unfortunately for Sapphire, the card's lofty price tag puts it in an awkward position. It is the fastest single card available - and can therefore arguably get away with a thousand-dollar asking price - but there are cheaper multi-card configurations that offer better value for money.

A pair of HD 5870s, HD 5850s or GTX 470s are all available for less, and will offer similar levels of performance.

At this end of the market, though, it arguably isn't about value for money. Sapphire's card is on track to become the quickest you can buy, offering a ridiculous amount of power from a single 12in board. That alone should be enough to win over the hardened enthusiast.

The Good

Fastest single graphics card we've ever tested
Impressive cooler offers low temperatures and little noise

The Bad

Extreme price tag
Dual Radeon HD 5870 cards offer similar results for less

HEXUS Rating

Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB

HEXUS Awards

Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB graphics card can be ordered from the following retailers:

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First bench I've seen of the card, but the lack of any tests outside Crysis Warhead that rely on more than 1GB of video memory render this one a little lacking.

sammorris
First bench I've seen of the card, but the lack of any tests outside Crysis Warhead that rely on more than 1GB of video memory render this one a little lacking.

Which other games would you recommend as representative of general performance then? Most games run fine on 512mb so looking for >1gb examples seems a little perverse :p

Heuxs, this is a good review IMHO - haven't seen 480SLI benches before either.. but they got taken off you before you could do the BFBC2 10minute scene render?

Considering the silicon going into one of these ‘dual’ cards is not far off a single GTX 480 I think ATI can be extremely proud of this generation.

The GTX480 SLI comparison is welcome, and in my opinion vital. The whole raison d'etre for this card though really, is performance in scenarios where 1GB cards can't cope. You wouldn't buy one for the extra performance it offers over two 5870s.
Most games do not run fine on 512MB at high resolutions, and if you can afford a £750 GPU, you can afford a decent monitor. I would have a 5970 already if 1GB per GPU was enough for 2560x1600. It isn't.

I'd really like to see this in eyefinity.

Eyefinity is indeed a good way of testing memory stress in more games. For instance, when testing the HD5870 Eyefinity6 they ran benchmarks not at 1680x1050,1920x1200 and 2560x1600 but at 5040x1050 and 5760x1200. Don't think I saw any 7680x1600 benches :P