Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB Toxic Review

With Hardware Canucks cluttered with reviews of ATI cards, it is obvious that competition isn’t something the graphics card market is seeing a lot of lately. A situation such as this wasn’t expected by anyone about a year ago but we have to live with it for the time being. In the meanwhile, ATI hasn’t been pulling their punches or resting on their laurels and neither has their board partners. While competition against NVIDIA cards is virtually nonexistent at this point, there are some healthy battles going on between the heavyweights within ATI’s stable of partners. These manufacturers are striving to differentiate themselves from their rivals by releasing cards sporting increased clock speeds and some downright interesting cooling solutions and this review will be focusing on one such card. While any sort of competing product from NVIDIA would be welcome by the market, we’re more than happy to make do with Sapphire, ASUS, Gigabyte, PowerColor, and others releasing ATI-based cards of ever-increasing potential. Sapphire usually leads the pack when it comes to custom versions of ATI cards and even before the official release of the HD 5000-series, they were already leaking information about what would become the first custom HD 5870 available on the market: the HD 5870 Vapor-X. They have followed up that impressive card with a successive number of non-reference DX11 products but have so far stuck to the mostly reference-clocked Vapor-X products. Missing in action were the Toxic and Atomic editions which made a serious name for themselves when they were released as HD 4890 cards not that long ago but it was only a matter of time before comparable HD 5000-series cards saw the light of day. Well, the wait is over because Sapphire has now introduced their HD 5850 1GB Toxic into the market. The HD 5850 Toxic represents a significant step forward for Sapphire and HD 5850 cards in general since it throws out the reference design, adds a custom cooler and pushes clock speeds above and beyond what we are used to seeing. In order to keep the heat from an overclocked core under control, Sapphire has decided to use their Vapor-X cooling technology as well as a truly impressive heatsink design. There are other features as well such as specially designed chokes but we will get into those a bit more later on in this review. To make matters even better, all of these additions don’t come at an exorbitant price increase as we have seen this card retailing for under $340 which represents a mere $30 premium over a reference HD 5850. In our opinion, there is a lot about the Sapphire HD 5850 Toxic to get excited about and by the end of this review; we hope you will feel the same way.

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Sub-80$ Graphics Card Battle

Today we are looking at what the best option in the sub-$80 graphics card market is for gamers, which led us to a direct comparison between the new GeForce GT 220 and the old Radeon HD 4670. The cards will be compared in a number of games while we will also look at their power consumption levels and overall value...

Recently Nvidia released the GeForce GT 220 codename “GT216”, which was to be their first ultra affordable GeForce 200 series graphics card. With an average price tag of $70 US, the GeForce GT 220 got the affordable part right, but how does it deliver in terms of performance?

With a core configuration that is around 4x less complex than the GeForce GTX 260, we are not expecting much, and the 128-bit memory bus means that the GeForce GT 220 is limited to a maximum bandwidth of just 25.3GB/s for cards sporting the more modern DDR3 memory, while some will feature cheaper DDR2 memory limiting them to just 16GB/s.

In comparison, a graphics card such as the GeForce GTX 260 has a memory bandwidth of 111.9GB/s, though you can expect to pay around $100 US more for this product. On the other side of the fence we have the Radeon HD 4650 and 4670 graphics cards, priced at $50 and $65 for the 512MB versions, while the 1GB cards cost around $10 more on average.

So then in terms of pricing it is far to say that the newly released GeForce GT 220 is going head to head with the old Radeon HD 4670 which was released a little over a year ago now. Given the age difference, one could be mistaken for thinking that the GeForce GT 220 would wipe the floor with the much older Radeon HD 4670 graphics card. Today we are going to find out if this is true.

Representing the new GeForce GT 220 we have a version from Inno3D and an overclocked card from Galaxy. Then for our Radeon graphics cards we have a HIS Radeon HD 4670 with 512MB of memory and a Gigabyte Radeon HD 4650 with a 1GB memory buffer, neither card featured factory overclocking.

Although we do not consider sub-$80 US graphics cards to be ideal gaming solutions, they will provide those on a tight budget with a means to play their favorite games. That said, even when spending such a small amount of money on a graphics card, you want to make sure you are getting the best value for your money, and we are hopefully going to help you do that.

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Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Edition Video Review

Cooler Master is back, not with anything new, but debuting a special edition of their award winning case, the HAF 932. AMD and Cooler Master have teamed up to launch an AMD Limited Edition variation of the chassis that incorporates ATI red along with a a few other promotional tidbits to give the case a unique appeal. As with the original, the case offers absolutely exceptional cooling potential and as its name (H.igh A.ir F.low) suggests, the case lets you focus on performance without having to worry about heat. We see the use of Cooler Master's great tool-less system that makes installation a breeze, and the interior design allows for not only hassle free cable management, but a wiring job that looks super clean; with the addition of a full sized side window, this feature can be appreciated even more. With its AMD-inspired design, the HAF 932 AMD Edition sports a red plastic front panel that may leave a bit to be desired considering past high quality Cooler Master designs. The new side panel gets rid of the slightly cheesey security window and side mounted 230mm fan of the original 932, instead replacing it with a clear acrylic panel that boast an AMD Dragon logo. While the larger than average size may cause concern for the room real estate crowd, with E-ATX support and space for 13-inch video cards there isn't a piece of consumer level hardware this beast can't hold. Unfortunately, a point of contention is what defines this case. Given that Cooler Master and AMD have launched this version as a "special" or "limited edition" it would lead one to believe that it offers something superbly unique. The case itself definitely looks different with a window and red front, but it just feels devoid of any real quality and the changes only serve to showcase other flaws. It suffers from a drab grey interior that you couldn't see with the mesh side-panel, and the front panel isn't nearly as aesthetically pleasing as many PR photo's make it out to be with its toy-like plastic. As the saying goes however, beauty is all in the eyes of the beholder. For a performance oriented chassis, the HAF 932 AMD Edition offers an unbeatable blend of style, functionality, simplicity and cooling... if, you like its colour.

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