Introduction

Just the other day, I went to a friend’s house to fix one of his computers since he was having a problem with his video card crashing for no specific reason. The first thing I noticed as I walked into his computer room was how much warmer it was than the rest of the house.  After commenting on that and shutting off his media player, I heard a high pitched whining sound coming from his case. I asked him what it was and he told me he had to keep his ZeroTherm VGA cooler at 100% or his video card would freeze. Right there, I knew that heat was his issue and immediately went to check his heatsink for dust build up and to make sure that he had some decent heatsink paste on the GPU. Both were fine but he did have an older ATI card and was overclocking it.

We live in Florida and heat is an issue, if we cool our houses too much our electric bills are extremely high, if we choose to find a logical median where it may be comfortable, our electronics suffer. Cooling then becomes one of the most important issues when we want to protect our computer components.

The Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic is a preoverclcked ATI 4890, which comes with Sapphire's Vapor-X heatsink and fan. The Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic is built around the ATI RV790 graphics processor,  which is a 55nm chip that has 800 streaming processors. The Toxic is one of three overclocked versions of the HD 4890 that utilize the Sapphire Vapor-X heatsink and fan cooling solution and it is priced in the middle of those two other cards. (Atomic and Vapor-X)

The Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic

The Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic comes packaged in a bright black box, which caught my eye immediately, due to the image of the mascot at the center of the box.  The back of the box lists some of the new features offered with the video card.

Inside the exterior packaging, there are two other boxes that house the HD 4890 Toxic and its bundle of accessories and software. When opened, the components are further protected by foam insulation.

The card itself is placed in an antistatic bag, and when removed from it, you will get your first look at the heatsink which is a two slot cooling solution. The heatsink on the Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic shows the Sapphire, Radeon and Toxic logos as well as  Vapor-X’s which is Sapphire's premier cooling solution. The board itself is made of sapphire blue PCB.

Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic (Continued)

The HD 4890 is PCI-e 2.0 and will require a compatible motherboard. There are two DVI outputs and one S-Video output on the face of the card. To power the card you will need one 6-pin and one 8-pin power adapter.

Bundled with the video card are a DVI to VGA dongle, a DVI to HDMI dongle, S-Video Cable, Crossfire Bridge interconnect, and a Component HDTV adapter.

There is also a 'getting started' package that contains a quick start guide, Driver Software, Warranty Information, 3DMark Vantage and Cyberlink DVD software.

 Installation

To install the Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic, you will need to open your case, find and unscrew the existing video card, remove it from the PCI-e slot, then insert the new card in its place. You will need one 6 pin and one 8 pin PCI-e cable on your PSU to power the card.

Software (Driver Installation)

The installation of the HD 4890 drivers is easy and, if you have installed any programs before, you will find it pretty routine. If not, you can simply follow the on screen prompts and you will have your drivers installed in no time.

Graphics Drivers

Specifications

Features

1. Award winning Vapor-X Cooler with heatpipe, silent and powerful
2. 1 x 8 pin + 1 x 6 pin power connectors for support of up to 300 watts.
3. Factory overclocked at 960 MHz e/1050 MHz m.
4. Microsoft DX10.1 support
5. PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
6. Dynamic geometry acceleration
7. Game physics processing capability
8. 1GB/256-bit GDDR5 memory interface
9. Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
10. HDMI output support via DVI – HDMI adapter
11. Supports all display resolutions up to 1920x1080
12. On chip HDCP Support
13. ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance. (Use up to four discrete
cards with an AMD 790FX based motherboard)

14. ATI Avivo HD Support

• ATI Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD) for Blu-ray™ and HD Video.
• Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)
• DVD Upscaling
• Dynamic Contrast
• Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support

15. Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay™ technology
16. ATI Stream technology

System Requirements

• PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
• 500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual
  mode)
• Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of certified products
• 1GB of system memory
• Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
• DVD playback requires DVD drive
• Blu-ray™ playback requires Blu-ray drive
• For a complete ATI CrossFireX™ system, a second ATI Radeon™ HD 4890 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per board (included) are required

Operating System

Windows XP(32Bit/64Bit); Windows Vista(32Bit/64Bit)

Testing

To benchmark the video card, we will use our suite of popular games and also a synthetic benchmark created by FutureMark. For testing purposes all scores will be posted on a graphical chart which will progress from lowest to highest resolutions. All benchmarks will be on their own individual pages to eliminate confusion. Graphs will measure Frames per Second (FPS) in each resolution except for 3DMark Vantage which will reflect an overall score.

Test System(s):

Benchmarks:

• 3D Mark Vantage
• Brothers in Arms (Hells Highway)
• Crysis
• World in Conflict
• Left 4 Dead

Resolutions:

• 1024x768
• 1280x1024
• 1680x1050

Temperatures:

All Temperatures taken with IR Thermometer and will be read in Celsius.

Overclocking

Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic

• Core Clock - 1000 MHz
• Memory Clock - 1100 MHz

Diamond HD 4890 XOC

• Core Clock - 945 MHz
• Memory Clock - 1080 MHz

3D Mark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is a benchmark suite that was designed to test performance of video cards. The overall score obtained when running the benchmark will measure your system's gaming performance.

3DMark consists of four tests two for graphics and two to test your CPU, one for AI and one for Physics. Hi Tech Legion will test a video card using any of the four settings offered by 3DMark which are:

• Entry 1024x768
• Performance 1280x1024
• High 1680x1050
• Extreme 1920x1200

Comparison

 Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

Hell's Highway is the newest edition to the Brothers in Arms Saga, it is a WW2 first person shooter which utilizes the newest Unreal Engine. This edition is based on Operation Market Garden which took place in September of 1944; you will play one of the men in the 101st Airborne.

Settings

• All Levels set to High

Comparison

Crysis

One of the most demanding games a video card has ever had to contend with, this first person shooter can wreak havoc on an entry level video card, even at low resolutions.

Settings 

• AA 2x
• Levels: High

Comparison

 World in Conflict

Do you have what it takes to conquer your opponent? World in Conflict is a DX10 game where if you don't defeat your opponent, you don't gain. This is an all out, winner take all, modern war scenario.

Settings 

• AA x4
• Graphics: Very High

Comparison

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead is an FPS where four uninfected people are left in a city where everyone else has turned into zombies. The action in this game is intense - zombies come at you from all angles. You can play Left 4 Dead via Stream and can choose whether to play your own campaign or play with others.

Settings:

• AA: Maximum
• Ansi: Maximum

Comparison

 Putting it all Together

 It’s been a long time since I have personally reviewed a Sapphire Video Card. The last one I reviewed was the HD 3870 Atomic, which had the first Vapor-X cooler. I was also the first to write and have a review published on the card and heatsink.

The Vapor-X heatsink and fan is Sapphire's signature cooler and from my experiences with it, they are the most quiet and efficient air cooling solutions on the market.

Temperatures

Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic

Diamond HD 4890 XOC

Fan speeds are important to me - the faster the fan, the louder the system. The Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic was able to obtain a cooler temperature at lower fan speeds and the difference in the noise level was noticeable. By design, the Vapor-X fan is made to have a lower decibel level than a stock AMD cooler.

Benchmarks 

• 3DMark Vantage: The Sapphire card out performed the Diamond in all resolutions.
• Brothers in Arms: The benchmarks were close and within a few FPS from each other but the Diamond did squeak out on top.
• Crysis: Pretty much a tie with only 1 FPS separation in most resolutions.
• World in Conflict: Again pretty much a tie.
• Left 4 Dead: In the lower resolutions the Toxic didn't fare that well but at 1680 x 1050 there was a 5 to 9 FPS difference.

Overclocking

The Sapphire HD4890 Toxic comes preoverclocked with a core of 960 MHz and memory of 1060 MHz, while the Diamond HD 4890 XOC comes with speeds of 925 MHz and 1050 MHz. Although the Toxic comes preoverclocked with higher memory speeds, I was able to increase its clock speeds more than the Diamond.

Toxic

• Core - 40 MHz
• Memory - 40 MHz

XOC

• Core - 20 MHz
• Memory - 30 MHz

Conclusion

 Price Point

Price: $259.00 USD

Class: Mainstream (Gamer)

A price point of $259.00 USD places the Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic Video card in the Mainstream Gaming category.  The price of the card places it in the middle of preoverclocked cards as compared to Sapphire's competitors. Those prices range from $244.00 USD to $300.00 USD.

Performance

If considering an upgrade from your old ATI graphics card, you won't be upset with the performance of the Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic. Priced in the middle of the spectrum (for oced cards) the price is right and you are also getting the superior cooling of the Vapor-X Heatsink and Fan.

Reviewer's Opinion

If you are looking to upgrade your system, or just your video card, and desire the coolest quiet  preoverclocked performance a video card can give straight out of the box, do not overlook the Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic. With the Vapor-X cooling system, this is one of the most quiet and efficient air cooling systems on the market.

I was a little shocked that I took a performance hit (in some resolutions) when I overclocked the card, I first thought it was a heat issue but that wasn't the case. The dip in performance wasn't much but when you overclock, you do expect some type of a increase. We do also need to remember one thing, if you purchase a preoverclocked card, it is usually overclocked to the maximum that specific GPU can handle and pushing it further can result in a performance loss. So why do we try to overclock an overclocked card anyway?

Overall my suggestion would be if you choose a Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic, choose it for the superior cooling you'll get with the Vapor-X heatsink and fan,  for clock speeds and a price that trumps most preoverclocked versions straight out of the box. 

Pros

• Quiet
• Pre-Overclocked 
• Easily Overclockable using ATI Overdrive
• Optimized for the New AMD Dragon Platform
• Efficient Heatsink and Fan (Vapor-X)

Cons

• Can lose some FPS in certain games when Overclocked