Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 TOXIC 1GB video card review

We last took a look at Sapphire's Radeon HD 4870 TOXIC part back in October, thanks to its 512MB variant, and overall we were really rather impressed with it - Between its clock speed boosts which added a little sheen to the board's performance levels and an excellent, quiet vapour chamber technology powered cooler, it proved itself to be one of our favourite Radeon HD 4870 solutions of 2008 here at Elite Bastards.

Now the Radeon HD 4870 TOXIC makes its return to kick off 2009, this time offering the same cooling solution and factory overclocks, but throwing a 1GB frame buffer onto the board to give some extra impetus to the card when it comes to high resolution gaming.  Can Sapphire repeat the success of their 512MB TOXIC part again, or have the intervening months seen the rest of the pack catch up in terms of their own offerings?  Let's check it out.