As with the HIS X800 Pro IceQII I reviewed last week, the Sapphire Toxic X800 Pro uses Samsung GDDR3 memory rated for 600MHz. Overclocking the card from the stock memory speed of 450MHz to 600MHz went smoothly, which is very impressive in its own right, but anything higher than 600MHz and I would notice minor artifacts in some games. Futuremark's 3DMark03 Mother Nature test in particular showed some fairly bad artifacts rendering the pixel shaded water at the beginning of the test.

After the impressive graphics core overclocking results I achieved with HIS X800 Pro IceQII, I was really expecting more of the same from Sapphire's Toxic. However, anything above 510MHz on the core and it would start exhibiting some artifacts then crash to the desktop. While a 475MHz to 510MHz overclock is decent, I was honestly a little disappointed that the core couldn't seem to reach ATI's X800XT Platinum core speeds.

Below is a chart containing the performance improvements running the card at 510MHz core and 600MHz (1200MHz DDR) memory.

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance No Anti-Aliasing / No Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   182.4  183.3  178.3   0 105 210 Game Test 1 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance No Anti-Aliasing / No Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   85.1  77.9  74.1   0 50 100 Game Test 2 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance No Anti-Aliasing / No Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   68.2  62.9  60.2   0 38 75 Game Test 3 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance No Anti-Aliasing / No Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   71.4  66.2  64.6   0 40 80 Game Test 4 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance No Anti-Aliasing / No Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   34.4  32.2  32.1   0 20 40 Vertex Shader - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance No Anti-Aliasing / No Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   115.4  102.9  93.0   0 65 130 Pixel Shader 2.0 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance No Anti-Aliasing / No Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   10453  9744  9376   0 6000 12000 Overall Score - 3DMarks Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance 4x Anti-Aliasing / 8x Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   168.0  166.1  162.7   0 105 210 Game Test 1 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance 4x Anti-Aliasing / 8x Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   42.2  38.1  36.1   0 50 100 Game Test 2 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance 4x Anti-Aliasing / 8x Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   38.6  35.7  33.5   0 38 75 Game Test 3 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance 4x Anti-Aliasing / 8x Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   60.2  55.3  52.9   0 40 80 Game Test 4 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance 4x Anti-Aliasing / 8x Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   34.0  31.8  31.7   0 20 40 Vertex Shader - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance 4x Anti-Aliasing / 8x Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   91.5  80.6  72.4   0 65 130 Pixel Shader 2.0 - Average Framerate Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

3DMark03 Overclocking Performance 4x Anti-Aliasing / 8x Anisotropic Filtering

1024x768   6932  6440  6148   0 6000 12000 Overall Score - 3DMarks Toxic X800 Pro 510/600 Toxic X800 Pro (APE) Toxic X800 Pro

Some of the improvements are fairly good, but in my opinion you don't really gain enough from manually overclocking the card to make it worth the risks. I think you would be better off keeping your warranty intact and using Sapphire's APE instead.