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The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.
Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.
The Vapor X cooler on the Sapphire Toxic card is exceptional. Other overclocked HD6870 cards we have tested have operated at 85c under Furmark load. When gaming, this card peaked at 67c. Fantastic.
Return to ambient is a feature we have recently added to our reviews … we measure the time it takes for a solution to return to idle temperatures, immediately after full load. The faster the time, the better the cooler – for example a Noctua NH D14 cooler will return an Intel processor to idle temperatures much faster than a reference cooler. This is a good indication of how quickly a heatsink can dissipate heat.
At full Furmark load, the fan spins at 67% (around 2,600rpm) to maintain a temperature of 74c. When load is negated, the temperatures quickly drop to around 60c and then the hardware profile automatically drops the fan speed to around 1,800 rpm. After this the cooling process is slower, taking a total of 23 seconds to return to idle. The cooler is exceptional, but Sapphire have deliberately fine tuned the revolutions per minute to slow down quickly once the temperature reaches around 60c.
That is one seriously awesome mid range board. Sapphire do it again !
Great work man, covered all the bases. amazing temps, my 5770 runs hotter.
This is a damn good indication of why sapphire are still the leaders for AMD products.
My friend just read this review and wants the card. waiting patiently in the UK for it now 😉
excellent, the price is very good, although the 6950 isn’t much more really…..
That fan is a very unusual design, is it tapered at the edges? most fans at this size have 9 blades. very clever.
Very nice indeed and im not sure what the guy earlier was smoking, the HD6950 is £240 in the UK, thats £30-35 more. quite significant in this sector.
Nice one, any ideas when the USA gets this baby?
Where can you get the trixx tool? I dont see it online anywhere. does it work with any card?
Im impressed and thats hard to do now with the over saturation of cards on the market from so many companies. This stands out enough to get major sales for sapphire.
I dont like AMD hardware, but the temperatures on this card are incredible, very impressive engineering from Sapphire.
fucking hell, thats a crazy core clock speed.
great review again. do you ever sleep?
Excellent, would like to see this head to head with 560.
I bought sapphire 6870 last year because I couldn’t wait for the toxic edition. The temp for furmark was 89C in just 1minute not to mention how loud the fan was. So I bought the AC TTP, now peak at 63C for 15mins, I’m very happy.
@Ethan: Running cards around 90 is not always a problem, as we’ve seen from the GTX480. But it is always a pain when the cooling solution is screaming at you 🙁 Glad you found a better solution! Just out of interest, when you bought it, how much was the AC TTP ?
I checked ur original HD6870 review, and it seems that despite being 70Mhz higher clocked, this TOXIC edition card consumes only 3W higher than reference card. This is nothing short of amazing.
Considering you are getting higher than HD5870 performance by a 250$ card whereas only last year HD5870 was selling for 400$