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Sapphire Toxic HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card



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Performance tests

Testbed:

  • Intel Core i7-975 (3340 MHz) CPU
  • ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard with the Intel X58 chipset
  • 6GB of 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM from Corsair
  • WD Caviar SE WD1600JD 160GB SATA HDD
  • Tagan TG900-BZ 900W PSU
  • Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit, DirectX 11
  • Dell 3007WFP 30-inch monitor
  • ATI CATALYST 10.4; NVIDIA Drivers 197.41/197.45.
  • VSync disabled

Benchmarks:

  • Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft) -- DirectX 10.0, shaders 4.0 (HDR), built-in benchmarking utility (the Middle level), maximum settings.
  • CRYSIS 1.2 (Crytek/EA) -- Rescue, DirectX 10.0, shaders 4.0, Very High settings, batch file, timedemo available by e-mail request.
  • CRYSIS Warhead (Crytek/EA) -- Cargo, DirectX 10.0, shaders 4.0, Very High settings, batch file, timedemo available by e-mail request.
  • Colin McRae: DiRT 2 (Codemasters) -- DirectX 10.0/11.0, Ultra High settings, run the benchmark as follows: "dirt2.exe -benchmark example_benchmark.xml".
  • Warhammer 40.000: Dawn Of War II (Relic Entertainment/THQ) -- DirectX 10.0, Super High settings, run the benchmark from the in-game menu.
  • Just Cause 2 (Avalanche Studios/Eidos Interactive) -- DirectX 11.0, Super High settings, run the benchmark from the in-game menu.

  • Tropics Benchmark 1.3 (Unigine) -- DirectX 10.0, High settings.
  • Heaven Benchmark 2.0 (Unigine) -- DirectX 10.0, High settings.
  • Heaven Benchmark 2.0 (Unigine) -- DirectX 11.0, High settings.
  • 3DMark Vantage 1.02 (FutureMark) -- DirectX 10.0, shaders 4.0, multitexturing, Extreme settings.

We'd like to thank Unigine for helping us set up their benchmarks.

Far Cry 2



Crysis, Rescue



Crysis Warhead, Cargo



Colin McRae: DiRT 2



Warhammer 40.000: Dawn Of War II



Just Cause 2



Unigine Tropics Benchmark



Unigine Heaven Benchmark DirectX 10.0



Unigine Heaven Benchmark DirectX 11.0



3DMark Vantage Graphics Marks



Conclusions

Sapphire Toxic HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 is an excellent solution for overclockers. It bears a very efficient cooler which allows increasing clock rates up to those typical of Radeon HD 5870.

It was interesting to examine the effect of fewer stream processors, etc. Since Sapphire Toxic HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 worked at the core clock rate of Radeon HD 5870, and it also had the same bandwidth, the only difference was that it had fewer stream processors and TMUs. As you can see this didn't reduce card's performance much compared to Radeon HD 5870. Probably that's why Radeon HD 5850 has lower frequencies in the first place -- so the difference between the two solutions is more pronounced. Well, that and to increase the yield of ready products.

The example of Sapphire Toxic HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 proves that Radeon HD 5850 overclocks very well, given there's a decent cooler. In general, Sapphire made a very interesting product with a nice price/performance ratio. Of course, GeForce GTX 470 is faster at times, but it's also more expensive.

We express gratitude to Sapphire for the provided graphics card. The PSU is provided by TAGAN, the monitor is provided by NVIDIA.


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Page 1: Introduction, design

Page 2: Cooling, bundle, box

Page 3: Performance tests



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