Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X 1GB
Very fast, very quiet
Review When Sapphire had added its Vapor-X cooler to AMD's Radeon HD 4850 it turned a standard single-slot board into a very, very quiet dual-slot card. Now it has performed the same trick on the Radeon HD 4890.
Sapphire's Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X: very, very quiet...
The two Vapor-X designs look very similar, but there has been a small change made to the new model. The backplane of the 4850 carries DVI, HDMI and VGA outputs, while the 4890 gains a DisplayPort connector. If you have two digital TFT displays connected to your PC, you'll be grateful to learn that Sapphire now includes an HDMI-to-DVI adapter in the box so dual DVI is an option.
Despite the cosmetic similarities, the 4890 is a more formidable gaming beast than the 4850. Its GPU core is clocked at a higher speed and the use of 1GB of GDDR 5 memory rather than 512MB of GDDR 3 increases the bandwidth substantially. If you fancy paying a £35 premium you can buy Sapphire Vapor-X with a mighty 2GB instead.
Sapphire has been quite realistic about the system requirements for this graphics card. You need a 500W PSU if you’re using a single 4890, and 600W if you fancy some CrossFireX luvvin’. But you need two six-pin connectors to power each 4890. This might pose a problem if you don’t have four six-pin PCIe connectors on your power supply. However, Sapphire supplies two power adaptors in the package with a six-pin PCIe connector on one end and a single four-pin Molex connector on the other. You also get a CrossFireX connector and three CDs that contain CyberLink DVD Suite, CyberLink PowerDVD 7 and 3DMark Vantage.
...but no let-up in gaming performance
Installation of the Sapphire is straightforward provided your case can accommodate a 9.5in (240mm) graphics card.
COMMENTS
I like it.
i have this card, i've had it for a month (the 2gb version)
i like it, pretty decent, not arsed about DX11 (look at the DX10 debacle!)
you can make it sound like a hoover if you go into catalyst and set the manual fan to high.
Oh and the blue LED goes bye bye with a pair of tin snips, however, since my case lights are green, a soldering iron and a green LED were a better idea.
@AC
Yep, ATI drivers still crash Vista when aero is running, it has to be disabled to avoid crashes.
It's the only way, I've had this issue, tried every new driver release and it still isn't fixed.
The Return of Captain Obvious
Hmmmm. Nvidia 275 has higher performance and less power and CUDA/PhysX. Takes two cards in crossfire to beat this - but could add a 2nd Nvidia ard that will once again beat this card hands down with less power.
Captain Obvious has returned.
what about the 4850X2?
CONSISTENTLY being named as THE card to get?
quieter cooling is definitly to be appluaded tho..
some cards/pc's sound like hoovers!
cheers,
bill (eupeople.net/forum)
Looks pretty useless to me
Nice technology, but overpriced. Heating up the interior of the case is not encouraging - the point is to expel the air out of the case.
With the 5850/5870 you'd have to be an idiot to buy a card now. 4870s are going from 100 quid inc VAT too..
Now, if they can produce a Vapor X 5870 with Eyefinity, then I'm seriously interested..
