Overall and Final Verdict
It’s interesting, I had already taken a look at one overclocked R9 280X and I have tested the Sapphire R9 270X Toxic as well. But somehow combining the two still managed to impress me in a lot of ways. Obviously Sapphire used the same cooler as the other Toxic card that we reviewed. Once again I am a huge fan of the design, both its performance and styling. The bright orange highlights and backlit Sapphire logo are worlds above what Sapphire has done in the past and is on par with the best coolers on the market not. My only complaint was with the noise it makes at 100% fan speed, but frankly that is expected with a triple fan design and it won’t be an issue much because it runs cool.
The huge overclock that the R9 280X Toxic came with dominated in our performance testing but did leave very little room when it came to overclocking the card more. The best part of the card though has to be the slick looking backplate that Sapphire includes on the Toxic cards. Not only does it protect the back of the card and make it more rigid, but it also looks great with the Sapphire logo flipped to be readable when installed in your PC. You are paying a nice premium for the Toxic over other 280X’s but you can’t argue that Sapphire packed as much performance and style into the Toxic as they could for your money.
