14 DAY TRIAL // If you are planning to upgrade your desktop computer systems with one of the latest graphics cards on the market, and you haven't made a decision yet about which one to go for, then maybe you should consider waiting just a bit longer. That is because Sapphire, one of ATI's largest board partners, is about to release a new graphics card based on the high-performance HD 4870 graphics card. Coming to meet the requirements of today's gaming users, the new release builds on the performance achieved by one of ATI's most successful graphics cards to date.
By now, almost every gaming enthusiast out there must know that ATI is currently the leading manufacturer of high-end GPUs, which is why the upcoming card from Sapphire should definitely get the undivided attention of all those gaming users that won't settle for the standard offerings, where the performance of their computer system is concerned. The new card comes to complete the company's Toxic lineup, which virtually translates into a factory overclocked GPU and a custom cooling solution, which, combined, are meant to improve the performance of the reference Radeon HD 4870 GPU.
If you can't afford the new dual-chip HD Radeon 4870 X2, you can always settle for the single-chip RV770-based HD 4870. The Toxic version of the new Sapphire card has been designed to deliver a core speed of 780MHz, up from 750MHz for the reference model, and 4GHz for 512MB of GDDR5 memory, up from 3600MHz. In addition, the new card is equipped with a dual-slot Vapor-X cooling system that makes use of the Vapor Chamber technology, and sports a thermally-controlled fan with three copper heatpipes. This cooling solution should be enough to ease temperatures for this high-end graphics card.
The card will also provide 800 stream processors and support for Microsoft's DirectX 10.1 and ATI's CrossFireX, as well as PCI-Express 2.0 interface and dual-DVI connectivity. Unfortunately, it hasn't been officially introduced, which is why no pricing details are available at this point.