The video card war is still alive and well, but it appears that AMD/ATI have conceded the high-end market to nVidia and instead have focused their efforts on the mid-range market.  While some may see this as an omission of defeat, others will see it as a smart business move.  More consumers buy the mid-range cards versus the high-end ones.  Let’s face it, not all of us can afford a top of the line video card.  When it comes to the mid-range card, AMD/ATI has one of the best GPU’s, the 3870.  Sapphire has taken the 3870 up a notch by incorporating their custom Vapor-X cooler along with a very nice bundle.  Let’s see how well Sapphire’s 3870 Toxic card stacks up against a couple of mid-range cards from nVidia.

Specifications and Features

The memory silkscreen is very difficult to read.  Here is the number in case you are really interested, K4U52324QE-BC08.  This is a GDDR4 part that is spec'd from Samsung to run at 1200MHz.  Sapphire has the Toxic card's memory clocked at 1152MHz, so that should leave us with a little headroom for overclocking.