Our most recent review of a
Sapphire brand graphics card [
link] took a look at their 1GB HD5850. It proved to be a strong performer and worth consideration by anyone seeking a card in the $300 price range, but it was lacking one thing I have come to expect from a Sapphire product... A cooler that not only provides enhanced cooling, but an appearance that can't be confused for any other brand.
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We'll be taking a look at another card from Sapphire's HD58XX series of cards in this review, and this one uses the type of cooler you might expect to find on one of their higher card. The Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD5870 1GB graphics card is shown in the promotional image above, and first impressions tell me that this card is ready for battle with a unique cooling shroud that looks like it might be armored. Sapphire's Vapor-X heatpipe cooling system is implemented to cool a GPU that is factory overclocked from 850MHz to 870MHz (@ 2.4%) and the GDDR5 memory that is factory overclocked from 1200MHz to 1250MHz (@ 4.2%). The overclocks might not be extreme, but any extra boost is welcome when it comes to 3D gaming!
Before taking a look at the sample provided for review, let's take a look at some more published data on the card, as taken from the
official product page on the Sapphire website.
Features:
» Vapor-X Cooling Technology
» Microsoft DirectX® 11 Support
» ATI Eyefinity Technology
» ATI Stream Technology
» Designed for DirectCompute 5.0 and OpenCL
» Accelerate Video Transcoding
» 40 nm Process Technology
» Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology
» 2nd Generation TeraScale Engine
» Microsoft Windows 7® Support
» ATI CrossFireX™ Technology
» Enhanced Anisotropic Filtering
» Accelerated Video Transcoding
» Display Flexibility, Supports DL-DVI, DP, HDMI and D-Sub
» HDMI 1.3
» Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio™ Support
» ATI PowerPlay™ Technology8 – Enhanced Support for GDDR5 memory
» ATI Avivo™ Technology Enhanced Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2)
» Supports OpenGL 3.1
Specifications:
» SKU Number: 21161-03
» I/O Output: Dual DL-DVI-I+DP+HDMI, Triple Display Support
» Core Clock: 870 MHz
» Memory Clock: Effective 5000 MHz
» PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
» 1024MB /256bit GDDR5 memory interface
» Dual Slot Cooler with Auto Fan Control, 2 Ball Bearing
» On-board HDMI, supports HDMI 1.3 with High Bitrate Audio
» On-board DisplayPort
