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@ 2008/08/20On the face of things the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 TOXIC looks like a pretty poor choice for those looking to grab a budget graphics card. It finds itself in the no-man's land of being a good £30 more expensive than the cheapest HD 4850 cards on the market, and only £35 less than the cheapest HD 4870, which it trails by a good few FPS in most tests.
However, the cooling advantage brought by the Zalman VF900, which sells for £15 separately, (and that's before you void your warranty by fitting it), is certainly worth the price of admission, as are the performance improvements brought by Sapphire's decent pre-overclock, and the perfectly stable 700 MHz/1,200 MHz core and memory overclocks available in the ATI overdrive settings that are all made possible by the improved cooling setup. It's certainly been nice to be able to remove a Radeon HD 4850 from our test setup post-benchmark and not need oven gloves
However, the cooling advantage brought by the Zalman VF900, which sells for £15 separately, (and that's before you void your warranty by fitting it), is certainly worth the price of admission, as are the performance improvements brought by Sapphire's decent pre-overclock, and the perfectly stable 700 MHz/1,200 MHz core and memory overclocks available in the ATI overdrive settings that are all made possible by the improved cooling setup. It's certainly been nice to be able to remove a Radeon HD 4850 from our test setup post-benchmark and not need oven gloves
