It would seem that Sapphire is planning to detach itself from all the other AMD partners developing Radeon graphics cards. As we mentioned earlier today, the company is to introduce a new card designed to take advantage of AMD's 55nm RV7770-based HD 4870 graphics processor.
The “
Toxic” HD Radeon HD 4870 will be equipped with a factory overclocked GPU and a custom cooling solution, which, combined, should boost the graphics performance of today's desktop gaming rigs. In addition to the Toxic model, Sapphire is also planning to release an overclocked, watercooled version of AMD's Radeon HD 4870 GPU.
As expected, this new card will also be meant to satisfy the requirements of gaming enthusiasts, as it is has been designed to deliver a considerable performance boost over the reference model. Set to deliver a core speed of 900MHz, it makes for a more than impressive upgrade, compared with the reference card, which packs a core speed of 750MHz. In addition, the memory clock frequency has also been improved, from 800MHz to 1100MHz. The card will still pack the same 512MB of GDDR5 memory as the standard model, but it will also be equipped with a custom cooling solution.
Unfortunately, we don't have many details on the custom cooling solution that Sapphire chose for its Radeon HD 4870, but we do know it will come with a single slot design, in order to enable users to better accommodate a multi-graphics configuration. In addition, the water cooling solution appears to be the most reliable choice for achieving the impressive overclocked settings, as these GPUs tend to get fairly hot when they reach such frequencies.
Unfortunately, as with the Toxic model, we can't offer you any details on the pricing and availability of the card, but given the fact that it has already surfaced on the Internet, we should probably hear from Sapphire something more official soon.
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