Just a few short weeks ago, the HD 68XX series video cards from AMD and its partners came rolling out of the warehouses to consumers and hit a new price/performance point that seemed to fit the holes in the market strategy of AMD. While the reference cards delivered great performance for their price point you had to wonder what was coming up next with the factory overclocked models. I have already looked at a few and they all have improved clock speeds and better cooling that translates into better performance for the gamer in you! We did not get a look at Sapphire's reference model but the wait for its Toxic Edition is finally over. The Toxic Edition HD 6850 is a card that differs from the reference card in may ways. You get a custom PCB with a four phase digital power circuit, improved cooling solution and higher clock speeds. The reference design cards come with clock speeds of 775MHz on the 40nm 1.7 billion transistor core and 1050MHz on the 1GB of GDDR5 memory. The Toxic Edition has that covered and more with a 45MHz jump on the core and 50MHz bump on the memory to 1100MHz, giving the gamer in you more performance for your dollar. Add to that the availability of Sapphire's TRIXX overclocking utility and you have a combination that has some serious overclocking potential. Let's see if the Toxic HD 6850 lives up to the Sapphire Toxic Edition series performance legend.