With the 5750, 5770 and 5870 all offered as factory overclocked Vapor-X models, the HD 5850 was likely feeling a bit left out, so Sapphire has given it, its own update.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic is built on a classy blue PCB, featuring an aftermarket cooling solution that does away with the typical ATI Red. It also gives a welcome boost to card speeds with 765MHz core (vs. 725MHz ref.) and 1125MHZ/4500MHz effective (vs. 1000MHZ/4000 eff. ref.) memory.  Aside from that, the card is the same with 1440 stream processors and 1GB of GDDR5 memory with 256 bit interface.

The card uses the same Vapor-X contained liquid cooling solution as Sapphire’s other models, but they strangely decided to drop the Vapor-X moniker for the model.

Otherwise there isn’t much more to report. It is a wicked looking deviation from the norm that is sure to provide some exceptional performance from an already top notch bang/buck card, making it all that much more appealing.

The card has been listed for pre order on  Overclockers UK before the official launch with a price of £229.78 excluding VAT, translating into an estimate street price of  $359USD. Provided Sapphire sticks to this pricing model for North America, the Toxic HD 5850 would be the best value factory overclocked model available.

Launch date is set for February 15th, 2010.