Sapphire Toxic 4850

sNNooPY · Post by **sNNooPY** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:22 am

OK, I've been eying this card for a while now:

I like it because it has the famous Zalman up there so it's supposed to be colder & quieter than the reference cooler, however I'm puzzled by this review:

http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/index. ... mitstart=9

Check out the noise measurements.
What's the deal with that? :/
Does anyone have the card so it can confirm/disprove the review above?

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:40 am

Toxic model has fixed fan speed or has been when it was first released. Its bit surprising to say that EB found that it has adjustable fan speed. When toxic was first published I was so going to jump on it but it hardly had any supply and i did read about all the first reviews form hardware canucs, guru3D etc about its noise. So I jumped on reference model + Accelero S1 and saved 30 to 40â‚¬'s.

But with foxed speed of Toxic, its hardly a quiet card. Luckily it takes a Accelero S1 as its reference board...

Toxic is very good card with excellent bundle. Problem is that fan is not adjustable but runs fixed and zalman has no good sound quality. Buzzing and irritating. Hardly a quiet... Not at least SPCR quiet.

sNNooPY · Post by **sNNooPY** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:43 am

thejamppa wrote:Toxic model has fixed fan speed. So the fan noise elite bastards seen to have shown is another than Zalman. But with foxed speed of Toxic, its hardly a quiet card. Luckily it takes a Accelero S1 as its reference board...

Toxic is very good card with excellent bundle. Problem is that fan is not adjustable but runs fixed and zalman has no good sound quality. Buzzing and irritating. Hardly a quiet... Not at least SPCR quiet.

do you think it's better to buy a reference model card and go for Accelero + 120mm? In terms of both heat and noise?

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:44 am

sNNooPY wrote:
thejamppa wrote:Toxic model has fixed fan speed. So the fan noise elite bastards seen to have shown is another than Zalman. But with foxed speed of Toxic, its hardly a quiet card. Luckily it takes a Accelero S1 as its reference board...

Toxic is very good card with excellent bundle. Problem is that fan is not adjustable but runs fixed and zalman has no good sound quality. Buzzing and irritating. Hardly a quiet... Not at least SPCR quiet.
do you think it's better to buy a reference model card and go for Accelero + 120mm? In terms of both heat and noise?

It has worked for me. My idles with reference + Accelero s1 + 800 rpm scythe are low 30's and in stress i haven't yet broken a 60 degree's C.

The question is what is price difference there between Toxic and Reference?

Installing accelero wasn't hard but I almost lost couple of times my coolness with RAM sinks. If there isn't much difference, the ultimate combo probably be Toxic with AC S1 + 120mm fan. Less hassle as toxic has memory and vrma heatsinks by default.

sNNooPY · Post by **sNNooPY** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 9:15 am

thejamppa wrote:It has worked for me. My idles with reference + Accelero s1 + 800 rpm scythe are low 30's and in stress i haven't yet broken a 60 degree's C.

what's your card? what brand/model?

thejamppa wrote:The question is what is price difference there between Toxic and Reference?

Here in Croatia around $215 for reference and around $290 for Toxic. Price is a big factor since I'm also buying Corsair VX550 which alone costs around $150.

thejamppa wrote:Installing accelero wasn't hard but I almost lost couple of times my coolness with RAM sinks. If there isn't much difference, the ultimate combo probably be Toxic with AC S1 + 120mm fan. Less hassle as toxic has memory and vrma heatsinks by default.

what went wrong with RAM heatsink? I'm looking at the manual, installation seems pretty straightforward.
And I don't think buying Toxic to be replaced by Accelero is worth the money.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Sun Nov 30, 2008 2:14 pm

My card is made Club 3D. Full model is: CGAX-4852DD. That was with reference cooler.

The problem in ram sinks were that its really troubelsome to make them stay. You need to clean well the ram and then press each ram module hard about one minute. Then it might stay... or not. But you need to press them hard 30 seconds to one minute.

Sylph-DS · Post by **Sylph-DS** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 6:56 am

thejamppa wrote:My card is made Club 3D. Full model is: CGAX-4852DD. That was with reference cooler.

The problem in ram sinks were that its really troubelsome to make them stay. You need to clean well the ram and then press each ram module hard about one minute. Then it might stay... or not. But you need to press them hard 30 seconds to one minute.

Weird, I had an Accelero S2 on my old ATI Radeon X1600XT and the ramsinks stuck fine. Guess the ram chips on the 4850 have some left-over thermal paste or something on it that stops the adhesive from doing what it's supposed to do

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Tue Dec 02, 2008 10:25 am

Sylph-DS wrote:
thejamppa wrote:My card is made Club 3D. Full model is: CGAX-4852DD. That was with reference cooler.

The problem in ram sinks were that its really troubelsome to make them stay. You need to clean well the ram and then press each ram module hard about one minute. Then it might stay... or not. But you need to press them hard 30 seconds to one minute.
Weird, I had an Accelero S2 on my old ATI Radeon X1600XT and the ramsinks stuck fine. Guess the ram chips on the 4850 have some left-over thermal paste or something on it that stops the adhesive from doing what it's supposed to do

I cleaned them twice: once with isoproyl alcohold then arctic clean kit. That also happened when I installed 2nd S1...