Sapphire really protects their card, dual layers
of egg crate foam sandwich the card. The card is protected
from static in a thick anti-static bag.
Under the second piece of foam, you'll find all of
the goodies to connect to your monitor.
There are plenty of DVD's that come with the card;
a driver disk, Cyberlink PowerDVD, Cyberlink DVD Suite and a full
copy of 3Dmark06. You also receive an owners manual and a
registration card for your free copy of the Black Box. The
Black Box includes, Half-Life 2 episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress
2. I really like it when a video card company loads the box up
with goodies and Sapphire has really done it with the Toxic.
Sapphire really goes all out on the connectors and cables as
well. Included are a VGA to DVI adapter, DVI to HDMI
adapter, S-video to RCA and S-video to component. Also
included is a Crossfire bridge and an HDMI cable that is over
6ft long. I don't know if you've priced HDMI cables or
not, but let me tell you, they aren't cheap. I'm very
impressed with everything that Sapphire has included with the
card.
Layout
As you can see the Toxic
card uses a single slot cooler that Sapphire calls the Vapor-X.
This is Sapphires implementation of the Vapour Chamber Technology
(VCT). It works much the same way that heatpipes work, but is
a little more advanced.
A vapor chamber is composed of three
distinct layers: the transportation wick, the vaporization wick and
the condensation wick. A wick is a material that can draw in a
liquid by capillary action. The names of the other layers are
pretty self-explanatory. Pure water is heated while in the
transportation wick, and as it turns to gas, it moves into the
condensation wick. Away from the heat source, the water condenses
back into a liquid and travels back to the transportation wick by
way of capillary action, and starts all over again. This is
very similar to heatpipe technology, but heatpipes limit the ways
the heat can be dispersed (it must travel in the pipe). The
vapor chamber technology let's the heat disperse in all directions
and is much more efficient. Also the chamber itself helps, by
having a low air pressure in the chamber the boiling point of the
water is decreased, increasing the efficiency of the heat transfer.
The result is a much lower GPU temperature without the need for a
dual slot cooler. The Vapor-X is also very quiet.
The Toxic card's layout is pretty standard and
it's nice to see the HDCP sticker on the back.
The Toxic has an
additional heatsink to help cool all of the electronics on the back
of the card and also requires a single 6-pin power connector.
