A Closer Look at the Sapphire HD3870 TOXIC

Here we finally have our first look at the Sapphire Toxic and without a doubt it is definitely unique with its loud “Sapphire Blue” PCB which is offset quite well by its black single-slot cooler. You would be completely forgiven if you assumed this card was a lower-end HD3850 due to its single slot heatsink but let me assure you; this is 100% HD3870. Even though Sapphire has designed a custom PCB especially for this card, the length stays the same as the reference design at a slim 9 inches so it shouldn’t have a problem fitting into any ATX compatible enclosure. Yet, while this design looks sleek, sophisticated and downright cool, there is one problem…


Yes, the problem is with this low-slung, Toxic-labeled heatsink. Even though the Vapor-X heatsink perfectly covers the core and the memory modules, it is orientated in the exact opposite direction we were hoping it would be. This means that instead of blowing hot air towards the back of your case (where an open expansion slot cover would exhaust it quite well) it pushes all the heat towards the front of your case where it will eventually be circulated towards your CPU area.

Other than that, we really have to appreciate the compactness of this heatsink and at least from the outside it seems exceptionally well designed.


Since Sapphire designed their own custom PCB, they also decided to go with bit different component choices versus the reference card, namely in the power distribution / voltage regulation area. They have moved away from the quartet of large vGPU inductors we saw on the reference card and are now using a trio of open-top inductors. There also seems to be silkscreening in a number of areas for extra capacitors which were not installed. Even though this design differs from the reference card, we can’t find anything here that would suggest this card is of a lower quality. In addition, Sapphire wisely positioned the only two standard electrolytic capacitors to the side of the heatsink’s exhaust to shield them from the higher temperatures it generates.


While the cooler dominates the top of the card, Sapphire uses the space provided by its vast expanses of black plastic to adorn it with a few logos. While we already saw the Toxic logo, both the main heatsink assembly and the fan hub have additional logos mentioning the Vapor-X technology and Sapphire’s brand logo respectively.


Since the Sapphire HD3870 Toxic features video playback, there is a jumper to switch between both NTSC and PAL video signals. Interestingly, our card was set to the PAL region so make sure you pay attention to this if you are planning on viewing video signals on a TV in the NTSC region. For more information about PAL and NTSC, please go here: PAL - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and here: NTSC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This jumper is located right next to the Crossfire connector which is used to link two, three or even four ATI graphics cards together.


The backplate of the card is different from the standard HD3870 in the fact that since this it has a single-slot cooling solution, the Toxic can make due without an exhaust grille. Aside from that, there are the usual two DVI connectors and one “HDTV” out connector.

Meanwhile there isn’t much interesting going on with the back of the card itself even though this is the area which interests modders the most. Other than the fact that this is a custom PCB you can also see that there are not that many screws holding down the Vapor-X heatsink; there are only the four around the core plus another three spaced around other parts of the card. This is a far cry from the dozen or more an Nvidia 8800GT has.