Great card, but is it worth the price premium? I would simply buy a PowerColor or another brand which offers good value, strip off the stock cooler and install a Zalman or something myself. The test results seem a bit erratic though, with the Toxic getting a lower minimum fps at times than the stock card??
One big problem I also have with this review: people with 24"-30" monitors could most likely afford to simply buy an HD4870. I was pretty turned off when I saw that the only resolutions used were 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 and would have been happy if they included a lower res, like 1440x900. Especially considering the relatively poor results Crysis gave.
I am a little surprised though, at the mediocre overclocking results they achieved. OverDrive's fault, perhaps? If Sapphire had it clocked to 690MHz to begin with, I would have been impressed. And then it should have been able to clock to 700MHz or more after that. Maybe the difference between the two cards would have been more apparent if that was the case.
I have to add though, that the cooler's performance is wonderful, compared to the stock HSF.