The Basics:
We finally get a look at the
Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD4870 512MB graphics card provided for review in the next several images. You actually don't see much of the card at all, thanks to the cooler's black shroud which covers just about everything from end to end. With a centrally located fan, and heatsink fins that run from front to back, this design allows air to be drawn in through the fan's opening and guided toward either end. The idea may be for the air to exit the rear of the case, but a portion of it is dumped back into the case on the other end.
The above right image takes a look at the back of the card, where we can see that the PCB is actually blue. A steel brace anchors the cooler around the GPU, while a handful of other screws distribute the weight around the card.
While other Sapphire Toxic cards have made use of "Vapor-X" heatpipes to tame the heat generated by the overclocked GPU and memory, this is the first one I have seen where the heatpipes extend beyond the edge of the cooler/card. Three thick copper pipes lay across the GPU and then split up with one pipe heading closer to the monitor connections and two pipes heading closer to the power connections. Of interest is that one of the CrossFireX tabs is in line with one the heatpipes, so you have to hope there is enough slack in the CrossFire bridge to go up and over this minor obstacle.
Other than a handful of logos and graphics that make it look a bit like the fender of a race car, the cooler is lacking any of the visual appeal that you might expect to find. A video card without an ample bosomed warrior princess wielding a sword?
The below left image shows that the shroud wraps all the way around the lower edge of the cooler, just about sealing it to the card on this edge. The below right image shows that the top edge is similar, except for cut outs to allow the heatpipes to poke through. What we also see in this image is that there are two 6-pin PCI Express power connections located next to each other in one corner. If you don't have a power supply with the correct connections I would suggest you get one before buying a card like this, but as we will see later in the review, Sapphire provides adapters to make any power supply work (as long as it meets their minimum requirements).
