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In the world of video cards two names should come to mind: Nvidia, which many people would consider the video card giant; and ATI, which people used to say just wasn't as good. This of course all changed with ATI's release of the 4XXX series cards. Gamers saw the HD 4870 X2 and flipped. Even some of Nvidia's most dedicated fanboys switched over to the red team. Not only did ATI have the most powerful GPU for a while, they also were considered to have the best price for performance. One of the main cards that showed this was the HD 4870. For a couple hundred bucks you could get an affordable card that simply kicked butt.

It's been a while since the 4XXX series was released, and at this time we've seen a huge amount of variations on the cards. There are so many different versions of the HD 4870 that it's getting hard to remember them all. If you're looking for a HD 4870, you'll be able to find overclocked cards, cards with custom coolers, cards with special cooling, cards with extra memory, and cards with other special features.

Today I'll be looking at Sapphire's Toxic HD4870. No, using this card won't poison you or your computer, but if you want to tell people that it did, with that name, now's your chance. The Toxic HD 4870 is one of the 4870's that has been modified from the reference design. It hasn't had any extra memory added to it, but it has been overclocked. The core clock is clocked at 780MHz, while the memory clock has been pushed to an even 1GHz. On top of the overclock, the Toxic 4870 is equipped with "Vapor-X" cooling technology. This custom cooling technology should help keep the card both cool and quiet. The Toxic 4870 will come priced at about $225, which is a bit more expensive then other models of the HD 4870. Will the overclocked Toxic card live up to its price tag?

Let's take a look.