Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic 1GB Video Card Review

[Apoptosis]

Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic 1GB Video Card Review

Last month Sapphire released the Radeon HD 5850 Toxic, which is a custom designed ATI Radeon HD 5850 that looks nothing like the reference designed board that it is derived from. The Sapphire 'Toxic' Radeon HD 5850 1GB card that we have here today is clocked at 765MHz on the core and 1125MHz on the memory. Read on to see how it performs and to see how far we can overclock it!




Article Title: Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic 1GB Video Card Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1238/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $379.99 plus $8 shipping

[FeRaL]

Nice card, but that's one hell of a price premium. I got my 5870 for less (with bing cash back) than what they are asking for this card. But like you said the card is pretty swanky looking...

[Halo_003]

It's a nice card yeah, it looks sick. I want one.

But... Will it run Crysis?

[dhoshaw]

Well written article.

Bought one partly based on reviews. Found a deal at SuperBiiz.com for $309 with free shipping a couple of weeks ago. It lives up to expectations. It's now folding alongside a 9800GX2 (no comparison in PPD of course).

[Apoptosis]

If you got this card for $309 then you got a great deal on it! For that price it can't be beat.

[al2suarez]

I own Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic 1GB Video Card as of Friday(3/27/2010). Since then I have been experiencing flickering on my screen constantly. I have already requested an RMA from NewEgg. It seems to get worse when I am scrolling or when I open a game. I am currently running ATI's Driver 10.3. Today I noticed that when I opened CCC's ATI Overdrive that the 'Enable ATI Overdrive' checkbox was CHECKED. That caught my attention because I had not manually checked this checkbox. In the Group Box titled 'Current Values' it states GPU Clock: 240MHz and Memory Clock: 300MHz. Mind you that the flickering is constant. The moment I uncheck the checkbox the flickering instantly STOPS and the Group Box titled 'Current Values' changes to GPU Clock: 400MHz and Memory Clock: 1125MHz. So it appears that the idle settings for the card being that of voltage and other stuff might be TOO LOW. Should I continue with the RMA or could this be a Driver fix??? But wasn't this supposed to have already been fixed on Driver 10.1/10.2?

[Gomeler]

The issue you are experiencing I believe was due to the GDDR5 clockspeeds and the card switching from 2D to low 3D and back again. I remember reading about this, screen flicker with GDDR5 cards, I think the solution, as you discovered, was keeping the GDDR5 at one speed with had the penalty of higher power consumption. Sadly I haven't got an HD5870 to check myself but I'd say that is the issue and perhaps something inherently wrong with the BIOS on these cards?

[countcristo]

...Mind you that the flickering is constant. The moment I uncheck the checkbox the flickering instantly STOPS and the Group Box titled 'Current Values' changes to GPU Clock: 400MHz and Memory Clock: 1125MHz. So it appears that the idle settings for the card being that of voltage and other stuff might be TOO LOW. Should I continue with the RMA or could this be a Driver fix??? But wasn't this supposed to have already been fixed on Driver 10.1/10.2?

Since I'm new here, I'm not sure exactly if we're allowed to post direct links or any links on this forum, so go ahead and take it off it's not allowed. However, if you go to this website for AMD underground's preview drivers http://sites.amd.com/us/underground/tip ... eview.aspx It shows in the one bullet that heavy flickering is noticeable in some setups especially with bad company 2. If it's your screen that's flickering during the desktop then it might just be a RMA.

On another note, if I had the money, I'd go for the 5870 because you could get one as low as 395 (newegg), but they're sold out atm.

[al2suarez]

It seems to be my video card. At idle the GPU Clock should be at 157MHz and Memory Clock at 300MHz stable. At this link you can clearly see this [http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1238/10/]. But my video flickers like crazy. So it seems my Video Card cannot handle the idle settings. That is just freaky! You would expect problems to occur at LOAD but never in IDLE. The link shows a temp of 36C while mine is at 45C. I'm continuing with the RMA. I truly believe I have a defective video card.

[Lt Ohio]

Im sorry to hear that your video card is bad, sometimes luck just isn't on your side. Even so im still considering getting 2 of these in the future, they seem like very good cards and are highly recommended. This review kinda put icing on the cake for me. i would get 5870's but my case isnt big enough to support them and the next case im planing to get is 229 dollars on its own so im going with the cheaper option, on a side note does anyone know why the 5830 is longer than this card? i would have gone with that but again the size issue.

[Apoptosis]

Im sorry to hear that your video card is bad, sometimes luck just isn't on your side. Even so im still considering getting 2 of these in the future, they seem like very good cards and are highly recommended. This review kinda put icing on the cake for me. i would get 5870's but my case isnt big enough to support them and the next case im planing to get is 229 dollars on its own so im going with the cheaper option, on a side note does anyone know why the 5830 is longer than this card? i would have gone with that but again the size issue.

A Radeon HD 5830 and a Radeon HD 5870 are the same length - 11.125"
A Radeon HD 5850 is 9.5"
The Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic is a custom designed card and is 10.125" long