discussion Sapphire HD3870 512MB TOXIC Edition Review

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Half Life II: Episode 2

Half Life II: Episode 2

Half Life 2: Episode 2 is the newest installment in Valve’s long running Half Life series and this is without a doubt the best looking game in the series. For this benchmark a typical 10 minute exterior gameplay sequence was prerecorded and then played back using the in-game timedemo feature. The results were recorded with FRAPS.


1280 x 1024

1600 x 1200

2048 x 1536

In this popular game, the Sapphire Toxic does very well even at the higher resolutions but it seems like the minor overclock does next to nothing to improve overall framerates. That being said, even a stock HD3870 is able to play this game with all the bangs and whistles turned on.

 

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Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake wars is the latest iteration of the wildly popular Quake franchise from ID Software. While it was met with luke-warm reviews by both the media and the gaming community, it remains an extremely popular online game.

In this test we set up a 15 minute timedemo on the Canyon level while the framerates were recorded with FRAPS.

Please note that due to a known driver issue, the 8800GTS 512MB has its scores suffer when playing at high resolutions.

We were actually pleasantly surprised with the way Sapphire’s overclocked card performed in this game with the ability to play all the way up to maximum resolution with AND without AA turned on. Since this is an OpenGL title, it seems like ATI’s HD3870 enjoys this arena much more than the DirectX playground it usually plays in.

 

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Prey / Unreal Tournament III

Prey

Even though Prey may be a bit older game compared against many of the other ones we are testing, it still provides a workout of even the best graphics cards on the market. This time we have enabled its Graphics Boost feature (Gboost in the charts) and run through a custom timedemo.

I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record but I have to say it again: the overclock of a mere 23Mhz on the core nets the Toxic next to no performance increase in actual gaming scenarios. That being said, it is good to see the HD3870-series hanging tough in this old but still demanding game.


Unreal Tournament III

With absolutely stunning graphics, this popular online FPS provides great visuals to go hand-in-hand with palm-sweating gameplay.

For these tests we set up a 15 minute Bot Match on the Serenity level and let it play though. All of the results were recorded with FRAPS.

While this may be one of the more demanding levels in this game, the Sapphire Toxic handles it quite well. However, it should be mentioned that we find that anything above 40FPS will deliver the optimal gaming experience in this game and at 2560 X 1600 resolution the HD3870 fails to provide this. That being said, if you can afford a 30” LCD you are probably not looking at a $200 graphics card to drive your favorite games.

 

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World in Conflict DX9

World in Conflict DX9

This is one stunning game. World in Conflict has provided us with some of my most memorable gaming experiences since the first Homeworld game was released and it has not stopped wowing me. In its DX9 form it provides eye-popping visuals and pushes most modern GPUs to their limits. However, in DX10 mode this game will cause nearly every graphics card to beg for mercy.

For this test we used the in-game benchmarking tool.

1280 x 1024

1600 x 1200

2560 x 1600

This is a heck of a tough game on graphics cards and nothing shows this better than how the scores of the Sapphire card take a nosedive the second resolution increases above 1280 x 1024. That being said, at lower detail settings things should look a lot better…but we are all about showing you the “worst case” scenario so you will know how far you can push your new purchase.

 

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World in Conflict DX10

World in Conflict DX10

1280 x 1024

1600 x 1200

2560 x 1600

The HD3870 cards hate DX10 with this game. Period. With what looks more like a driver issue than a real performance bottleneck, if you want the minor effects increase DX10 gives you in this game we recommend you stay away from ATI cards. It is good to see the Sapphire card eking out a few extra frames per second here and there but when push comes to shove, there is no helping performance here.

 

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Temperature Testing / Acoustical Characteristics

Temperature Testing

Without a doubt, it looks like Sapphire’s vapor chamber technology is working like a charm to tame the heat of the overclocked RV670XT core. However, it should be noted that for the stock HD3870 we used the reference heatsink and the default fan speed profile which is absolutely horrible at cooling the core. We find that this kind of performance by a single slot cooler is absolutely incredible if you want a compact heatsink but it does come with some tradeoffs.

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Here we have placed a temperature probe about 4” from the back of the heatsink exhaust to demonstrate a very clear point: this card dumps copious amounts of heat back into your case. Considering the ambient temperature of the room was hovering around 22 degrees, a delta of 21 degrees between the ambient temperature and the exhaust temperature is quite a bit. It is also important to remember that the way this heatsink is oriented means that the airflow it creates will work directly against the natural airflow characteristics of most enclosures on the market.

Acoustical Characteristics

When at idle, everything quiet in the realm of the Sapphire HD3870 Toxic but when under load, the second the core hits 66°C, all hell breaks loose. Fan speed immediately increases to an ear-splittingly loud 50% which quickly downs out any case and CPU fans you might be using. Luckily for our sanity, the temperatures hovered at that magical 65-66°C mark since anything more and I couldn’t guarantee you that my sanity would have been left in check. It simply beggars comprehension that this fan spinning at a “mere” 50% of its maximum rotational speed could cause such an uproar.

Basically, using this card for HTCP use is a no-go at its default speed since its fan will spin up to 50% and thus insane decibel levels after about 15 minutes of HD decoding. It is true that you can use a program like Rivatuner to modify the fan speed profiles but let’s be honest; not many customers will go through this process. Let us end this section by making one thing clear to you: if you are considering buying this card, as you will see in the next section, Rivatuner is your best friend.

 

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Does Vapor-X Really Work?

Does Vapor-X Really Work?

Throughout our testing we kept wondering one thing: with Vapor-X technology behind it, does the Sapphire HD3870 Toxic really need to be as loud as it is? This is supposed to be an efficient cooling solution and in theory the fan only has to push enough air for a constant flow over the aluminum fins since the heat is supposed to be dispersed so well. So, we had to put it to the test.

What we did here is took a stock HD3870 with the reference heatsink along with the Toxic and remounted both heatsinks with Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal compound. We then used Rivatuner to manually adjust the speed of the fans on both coolers so their fans would operate at a constant 25%, 35% and 50%. The 3DMark Batch Render Test was then run for 30 minutes while temperatures were logged with Rivatuner. The stock card was overclocked to the same speeds as the Toxic.

What can we really say? We were so gob smacked by these results that we didn’t run the tests once or twice; we ran it four times with four separate mounts all with nearly identical results. Bear with me while I try to explain what I THINK is happening here.

First of all it must be said that while the Vapor Chamber is obviously a very good cooling solution, the stock HD3870 heatsink is an absolute dog. The issue comes with the fact that all the stock heatsink contains is about two dozen small copper fins that don’t take up the whole height or width of the internal air duct. Thus, as the fan spins, air is allowed to pass beside or over the fin assembly with very little of it working its way between the fins where it is really needed to help disperse the heat they hold. Add to that the fact that the fan is so far away from the copper fins and we have a perfect recipe for disgustingly high core temperatures. However, as fan speed increases, the large fan is able to push more air with greater pressure so more and more moving air makes its way THROUGH the fins above the core. We can see this illustrated quite clearly in the 50% fan speed test where the stock cooler suddenly increases its cooling capability by leaps and bounds due to a mere 15% increase in speed from the pervious test.

Now, when we have a look at the cooling the Vapor-X cooler provides; its performance is leaps and bounds above that of the stock heatsink because of a number of factors. First of all, if you remember our diagrams of the vapor chamber’s inner workings we showed that it disperses the core’s heat over a much broader area than the stock heatsink does. To make use of this, Sapphire has covered the entire top of the vapor chamber in aluminum fins to take advantage of the even heat distribution on the upper cover. This much larger fin surface area in conjunction with its close proximity to the fan means that the fan can work at a lower RPM while maintaining a proper core temperature. Simple, no?

Here we have shown that with the right utility we are not only able to curtail the noise output of the Vapor-X cooler but also keep more than optimal core temperatures. With these lower settings combined with its limited height this card becomes the perfect companion for a HTPC environment.

This all really boils down to one question you all must have on your minds right now: if this heatsink is so good at moving heat away from the core, why in the world did Sapphire figure they needed the Toxic’s fan to spin so fast to keep the core at an optimal temperature? Unfortunately, we have no idea.

Please check the http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/video-cards/7250-sapphire-hd3870-toxic-comment-thread.html where we have attached the temperature log files for these tests.

 

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Power Consumption

Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the idle power consumption.

Given the fact that all HD3870 cards default to 2D clocks when not being used for a 3D application, they are able to exhibit some extremely good efficiency when you are doing non-GPU intensive tasks. We can see this quite well above where the Sapphire Toxic is within 1W of the stock HD3870 card even though it is overclocked.

Then, while under load the gap between stock and overclocked cards increases quite a bit with the Toxic consuming a maximum of 11W more then the reference HD3870. Even with this increase in power consumption, the 55nm core is able to exhibit some impressive numbers even when under high load. In past reviews we have said that the RV670 core is very impressive when it comes to efficiency and we see this again here.

 

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Overclocking...will it break the mold?

Overclocking...will it break the mold?

Please note that overclocking the Sapphire HD3870 Toxic will void your warranty. Hardware Canucks takes no responsibility for any damage you may do to your graphics card through overclocking.

Core: 877Mhz
Memory: 2718Mhz (DDR)

The first thing you will probably recognize from the overclocks we achieved is the fact that we FINALLY have a HD3870 card that can pass the 865Mhz core speed barrier we have seen in the past. This is probably due to the fact that Sapphire uses a newer BIOS revision on this card versus the older versions we have seen with both the HIS and the ASUS cards we reviewed a while back. While this overclock isn’t much to write home about, it does represent a 100Mhz overclock over stock speed and 77Mhz over the speed Sapphire dictated their card runs at.

Meanwhile we got some very impressive clocks out of the memory which topped out 2718Mhz DDR. This is a stunning 466Mhz increase over stock clocks which while a few Mhz under our record of 2748Mhz we received with the original HIS card, it is nonetheless impressive.

As you can see, we FINALLY broke the 13,000 mark in 3DMark06.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

With the graphics card industry changing at a breakneck pace, the mantra of “innovate or get out while you still can” has never been so close to the actual truth as it is now. With their HD3870 Toxic, Sapphire has shown that they are much more than an OEM card manufacturer by releasing a card that is innovative, feature-rich and packed to the hilt with more goodies than you can shake a ram module at. It performs well in nearly every game even though the RV670 architecture is quite clearly behind that of Nvidia’s G92 in terms of raw performance potential and this card’s high-def video and audio processing capabilities keep it from being an also-ran. Basically, if you are playing at or below 1600x1200 resolution in DX9, the Sapphire HD3870 Toxic will be more enough for you.

Something else that caught our eye was the fact that Sapphire loaded this card’s package to the hilt with extras. While this isn’t something that we are accustomed to seeing from this usually frugal company, the addition of the Black Box (now call the Orange Box) along with full versions of PowerDVD software was a welcome surprise. The DVD software will definitely give you a leg up if you want high definition H.264 playback and basically make the most out of the HD3870’s video processing capabilities. Finally, there is the inclusion of a HDMI cable which goes above and beyond anything we have seen before and definitely saves you quite a bit of money if you are just getting started building a HTPC.

Unfortunately no matter how good this card is in the HD3870 arena, Sapphire has no way to stop the inherent performance issues present in the current ATI lineup. While the drivers are much improved with the 8.4 iteration, they still don’t address the unexplained frame rate drops we see in the World in Conflict DX10 testing nor do they fix the random Vista boot freezes we have with nearly every other ATI x64 driver to date. However, where Sapphire has no control over the lackluster drivers, they did have control over our major issue with this card: it is damn loud. After only a few minutes of playing a game, the assault on the senses began with the fan speed bumping up to 50% making its whine audible over the sound our 5.1 speakers produced. We find this overly aggressive fan-speed profile is pointless since we saw that a constant rotational speed of 25% was more than enough to keep the Toxic around 72°C under load. If you really want this card for its single slot cooler, do yourself a favor and buy a pair of noise canceling headphones.

What is a real shame is that this horribly loud fan completely overshadows the technological innovation Sapphire has with the Vapor-X heatsink. Does Vapor-X work? It definitely does and now we want to see it on a dual slot cooler that doesn’t sound like a turbine. Vapor-X is a great technology that actually works as described but its performance is completely overlooked by Sapphire with their insistence on using completely unnecessary fan speed settings.

While the overclock is so minor that it should be considered nothing more than window dressing, it does add a bit more desperately-needed value for the gamers out there. It is an unfortunate reality that the ATI cards have not kept pace with the Nvidia offerings when it comes to price slashing since from a purely gaming performance standpoint, the similarly-priced stock 8800GT 512MB walks all over this card. Many will argue that value lies in the non-gaming features the HD3870 possesses but cheaper alternatives such as the HD3850 and HD3650 offer the same features as well.

All in all, the Sapphire HD3870 Toxic is a good card with plenty of features, a great bundle, decent gaming performance and an innovative heatsink which is hamstrung by a loud cooler and somewhat unattractive pricing versus the competition. Sapphire did the best with what they received from ATI and we commend them for it.

Finally, with such low temperatures which are achievable at low fan speed RPMs, we find that Vapor-X is a hell of a technology if implemented properly so this heatsink gets our Dam Innovative Award.


Pros:

- Acceptable performance
- Great bundle
- Included HDMI cable
- Amazing cooling technology


Cons:

- Loud
- Price vs competition
- Loud (yes, we need to say it again)
- Heatsink exhausts hot air directly into the case

Thanks to Sapphire for sending us this graphics card

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/video-cards/7250-sapphire-hd3870-toxic-comment-thread.html​