With the mainstream graphics cards, the larger external power supply required, are of the normal look and requirement for users who like to have the latest games in playable, and in high resolution. With the cases and the CPU utilisation catches up with the power and usability of the graphics cards potential rather than a gaming powerhouse. As the introduction of the NVIDIA’s 8800GTS in the market, being one of the largest card ever come out of a silicon manufacturing, and started the era of large double slot cards, and since then, these are of normal look for graphics cards.
With the same concept as the ATI radeon, with the start of the HD2000 series with the high end HD2900XT being a hot contender in many ways than one, a little slow for the current 8800GTS series, so the revision of the HD3000 and the newer HD4000 series made a better alternative to the green flagship, and even beating it in some occasions like the 3870X2 and the 4870X2.
So with another revision, the 4890, a good revision to the RV790XT, this core revision, is still a the product characteristics of the former 4870 with a little bit of bump in the transistor count and also a higher core and memory frequency by about 5% increase. As for the reference from, the Sapphire HD4890 Vapor-X is a core frequency of about 870MHz, with also the same frequency in the shader clock. With the memory in the vapour X is a 2GB standard buffer with a good number of 4.2GHz.
The design and physical form of the vapour X series, still is the same as the other ATI’s high end single core chips, with also a dual slot form factor, and a slight need of a DVI, two HDEF ports and one VGA is an unusual combination. As well as the memory size, a two gigabyte memory located in the front and the back, it looks great in the resource allocated system but the raw frequencies does matter in the quest of gaming playability in the high 30’s or so.
As well as the performance in the graphics production in the card is pretty limited to a single high clocked card with a heap amount of GDDR5 memory, cooling as another factor in the card, as it doesn’t draw the heat out in the back of the fan with its open form factor, can be a hassle for limited air movement inside the case, but overall the card itself doesn’t top about 50dBA in max load in the fan.
As for the price of being about the round $259Us in the internet, it is a little bit expensive but also, by comparing it with the NVIDIA cards more in touch with the GTX275, these would cost you about a tad more. Overall the vapor X, is over doing the memory resource buffer, but still keeping the style of the card and also raw performance in its optimum requirement, making this as a good medium range gaming card, can be a great config when there are multiple cards in the equation.