AMD/ATI's graphics partner Sapphire has released today Radeon HD 4870 TOXIC, an overclocked Radeon HD 4870 card with a custom cooling on it. What makes this card so special is the patented Vapor-X cooling system and its clock speeds higher than the reference boards. The cooling itself takes up two slots, makes use of a Vapour Chamber technology and features a thermally-controlled fan supported by three copper heatpipes. The new TOXIC model is also factory-overclocked to 780MHz GPU from 750MHz stock speed and 4000MHz memory from 3600MHz stock respectively. The card is equipped with 512MB GDDR5 memory. It offers 800 Stream Processors, has DirectX 10.1 and CrossFireX support, a PCI-Express 2.0 interface and two DVI connectors. Except that and maybe the fancy retail box it ships with, there's nothing else about this card that could interest you more. Pricing and availability are still unknown.

ASUS has released a non-reference version of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card. The model is called EAH 4870 D5 and it's main difference is the enhanced power circuitry. The card uses a 4 phase vGPU power circuit along with a 2 phase vMem circuit, making it similar to that of the PowerColor HD 4870 PCS+, while the reference design uses 3 + 2 phases. The PCB uses a 100% conductive polymer capacitor design. The same Qimonda memory chips as those used on reference design boards rounds up the card.

The card runs at reference speeds of 750 MHz Core / 900 MHz Memory. ASUS used its signature Glaciator Fansink cooler for the GPU, which can already be found on many of their other cards but decided to leave the memory chips without active or passive cooling. Expreview notes that the heatsink on the MOSFETs looks small and could be a cause for concern since temperatures of that zone of video cards in general could reach as high as 110 degrees Celsius. The card uses single slot expansion bracket though the card itself requires two slots worth space due to the heatsink. This release follows several other designs from the likes of Palit, PowerColor, etc., that have similar power circuitry, presumably to facilitate better overclocks though poor cooling designs implemented by these AIBs mar the effort put in to design these superior PCBs.

It was earlier reported that the non-reference high performance Radeon HD 4870 graphics card, the PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 PCS+, faced a BIOS glitch (covered here) that affected its stability. Barely days after Chinese website Expreview reported this, PowerColor posted a revised BIOS on their website. Expreview notes that the BIOS didn't quite fix the fan speed (as in up the maximum speed limit), but makes the fan operate at erratic speeds or "zipzip" as Expreview notes. The fan-speed sensor graph should give you a better idea:

Gainward, a subsidiary of Palit Microsystems presented a set of pictures of its non-reference HD 4870. It will share this design with the Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic. Gainward sought aggressive cooling and overclocking for this card. The card will continue to feature 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. This card features dual-BIOS, a BIOS maintains 750 MHz / 950 MHz core and memory parameters, while a second high-performance BIOS ups these frequencies to 775 MHz / 1000MHz. Presumably this mechanism brings about redundancy with the BIOS, a boon for overclockers as accidental damage to the card due to tweaking the BIOS could be easily resolved.

MSI, a leading manufacturer of computer products, proudly unveils its latest R4870-T2D1G graphics cards for the game enthusiasts. It comes with the 1G DDR5 memory which enables users to enjoy the DirectX 10 high-capacity 3D games easily and smoothly.

This high-end level graphics card is based on the latest 2nd generation of 55nm GPU. Integrated with the ATI PowerPlay power-saving technology, MSI R4870-T2D1G provides twice the performance enhancement with the same wattage. It conforms to the environmental energy conservation worldwide initiative with MSI (ECOlution) environmental protection theory of evolution objective. In addition, MSI R4870-T2D1G graphics card also has the advanced UVD 2.0 video decoder core, a built-in HDCP key encryption which supports Blu-Ray and HD DVD movie disc playback and make 100% complete hardware acceleration to the MPEG-2/VC-1/H.264 video format. MSI R4870-T2D512 supports the DirectX 10.1 framework of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and offers 800 stream processors, which achieve the unprecedented levels teraflop (1000Gflops) computing capability. MSI R4870-T2D1G graphics card supports CrossFireX technology. Combined with CrossFire ready mainboard to enable 2~4 graphics cards to work at the same time; substantially enhancing gaming performance.