14 DAY TRIAL // Sunnyvale, California-based AMD is expected to update its graphics card offering with the introduction of the new RV790-based Radeon HD4890 graphics accelerator. According to current rumors, the new card should be officially announced on April 2, which will enable a number of the company's partners to come out with their own designs. Such is the case of Sapphire, which will try to further increase the performance of AMD's upcoming flagship card, by introducing a “Toxic” version of the aforementioned model. This basically means that this card will boast factory-overclocked core speeds and a new custom cooling solution, further boosting performance.
According to a recent article on fudzilla, the new Sapphire Toxic card will be featured with a Vapor-X cooling solution, which will enable Sapphire to further boost the factory frequencies of the new release. While standard models will deliver clock speeds of 850MHz and 3900MHz for the GPU and memory, respectively, Sapphire's card could easily reach a GPU core speed of 900MHz. This will likely enable the HD 4890 to better compete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 275, also slated for release sometime in early April.
The aforementioned website also claims that AMD's next-generation graphics card will be capable of delivering clock speeds of over 1000MHz, when combined with higher-performance water cooling solutions. While such reports are yet to be confirmed, it will be interesting to see if the higher clock rate will enable AMD to reclaim the performance crown in the single-GPU market segment.
The guys over at fudzilla also managed to score a picture of the package of the Vapor-X-equipped HD4890 graphics card, which basically confirms that Sapphire should roll it out in the near future, probably two weeks before AMD's official release of the new RV790-based Radeon HD 4890.