SAPPHIRE Toxic 100225TXSR Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - Retail

Still checking out dual 3870's in Crossfire

Reviewed By: Cyrano on 3/18/2008

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: I bought two cards for Crossfire. They were packaged well and complete with extra adapters. They seem to run cool in my box without add-on cooling equipment, even in running 3DMark06 and the Vista PCMark Advantage64 testing software. Getting a 13,646 3dMark06 score with zero adjusting and a 4,690 PCMark Vantage 64 score. Not sure if that's good or not, but Team Fortress 2 looks great!

Cons: Download the latest Catalyst Control Panel application and video drivers. I had a hard time getting the second card recognized and had to re-install drivers, do a driver clean-up in Safe Mode and install a clean Catalyst set and cards individually. The directions to Crossfire the cards weren't helpful but I found good directions in techpowerup forum.

Other Thoughts: Intel 6600 quad CPU, Gigabyte GA-38T-Dq6 motherboard, 4 GB RAM Kingston 2x1GB DDR3 1333, two Radeon Sapphire Toxic 3870 512MB DDR4 Ram video cards in Crossfire, Western Digital 500GB SATA 3.0 HD in Raid 0, Samsung SH-203N SATA DVD burner, Edimax EW-7128G wireless LAN, Logitech X-530 70-watt sound system, Logitech G-11 gaming keyboard, Samsung 226BW 22" LCD monitor, running on MS Vista 64-bit OS.

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Update to D15AV0W3D's review

Reviewed By: D15AV0W3D on 6/4/2008

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: See 1st review (D15AV0W3D's)

Cons: See 1st review (D15AV0W3D's)

Other Thoughts: Update on free Black Box game included: after doing some searching, and emails back and forth w/ Sapphire (tech@althonmicro.com), I discovered that the link they had was wrong (www.steamgames.com/activateati). The correct address, in case anyone else gets a box missing the voucher, is: http://www.steampowered.com/activateATI/

This gets you a free copy of Half Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Day of Defeat: Source, all from Valve. If yours comes missing the voucher like mine did, email Sapphire for a product key, and use the link above, then voila-- 4 games you can play on your Steam acct. for free!

If you're reading this and find it informative, please mark "helpful" so others having this issue will find it. Thanks!

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Reviewed By: NoxNitrous on 10/30/2008

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Very happy, bought this card to play warhammer online, I am playing with no lag in RVR all settings maxed. Was going to get the 4870, glad I decided to save the money.

Cons: Haven't been able to pull the temps off the GPU. Tried 3 programs none worked with vista 64, might have to go with a probe. But I am confident it is running cool.
CPU is runing 44 degrees max load, 29 idle.

Other Thoughts: My mother board only supports pcie 1.0 so technicaly the card may not be running as fast as it could. I intend to run 2 Sli soon. Then upgrade the MB.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Brisbane 2.7GHz
4GB (2x2GB) DDR 800
windows vista 64 HM Premium
MSI K9N SLI-F V.2 AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570LT
Seagate ST3640323AS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

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Outmoded, but a great video card

Reviewed By: on 10/16/2008

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: It's a single-slot performance video card and doesn't get hot; I usually see mid-50's without turning up the fan. They should come out with a 4850 Toxic edition, vapor chamber cooling seems to work quite well. Runs everything I play without a hitch: World of Warcraft, Company of Heroes, and Unreal Tournament mostly. Haven't run into any driver problems or compatibility issues. The fan is basically inaudible in non-gaming use. Oh, and it comes with PowerDVD and a few other goodies, hard to complain about that.

Cons: The fan can be a little noisy at speed, but it's really not that bad. Dumps the heat right into the case, but that's unavoidable without going to dual-slot. May not cool as well if you do put a full-height PCI card right next to it (haven't tried it). ATi introduced the 4800 series about a month after I bought it, but that would have been a bigger load on my smallish power supply and probably wouldn't have given me that much given that I'm already CPU-bound to some degree.

Other Thoughts: I upgraded from a Nvidia 6800 GS AGP to this after I found a good deal on a PCI-E Socket 754 motherboard. System is ASRock GeForce 4 motherboard, Athlon 3200+, 2GB DDR, Thermaltake 430W PS. Everyone says it doesn't make sense to run that old a CPU with a newer video card, but it handles the stuff I run pretty well. I don't have Crysis, but I suspect even that would be playable with the CPU-intensive stuff turned down. Bottom line, if you're looking for the most bang for the buck and have some decent horsepower at the CPU, spend a little more for the 4850; if, on the other hand, you have an older motherboard and/or some fancy parts you don't want to see go to waste, this is a great choice to hold you until you're ready to break the bank on a new build.

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Awesome Awesome Awesome

Reviewed By: masterasia on 10/10/2008

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: DirectX 10, works with Vista 64, DDR4, 5.9 Vista Rating (Vista Ratings are B.S.). Comes with DVD-HDMI adapter and a HDMI cable...how cool is that.

Cons: The fan looks kinda weak for such a big card. I don't think it's gonna last.

Other Thoughts: The cross fire technology has come a long ways since 4 years ago. I'll have to try it out later when I have more money.

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