Looking at the Radeon HD 5800-series, AMD and its partners have been able to keep prices high for the simple reason that NVIDIA does not have a range of DX11 GPUs in the market place. Rather, we will need to wait until the Fermi architecture is made available in Q1 2010.Whilst AMD has a commanding time-to-market lead for DX11 hardware, stock of Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 has been patchy, to say the least.In an interesting move, Sapphire is launching a pre-overclocked version of the hard-to-find HD 5870. Dubbed Vapor-X, it’s a path that AMD’s largest AIB has trodden many times before.
Is it worth forgetting about the reference card and opting for a Sapphire-cooled model? Read on to find out. Sapphire’s Vapor-X model, looking somewhat different to the reference design, still uses the same PCB. Overall, including cooler, it’s very slightly shorter than and not quite as tall as the stock card. Interestingly, the cooling looks more substantial, but the Vapor-X weighs in at 728g, compared to the 958g for the AMD-supplied card. Whilst the Radeon HD 5870 isn’t a particularly power-thirsty card, better-than-reference cooling will help in stabilising higher frequencies. To this end, the Vapor-X - part of the aftermarket range alongside the TOXIC - clocks in at 870MHz core and 5,000MHz memory, up from the default 850MHz/4,800MHz.
Looking quite funky in a perforated black housing, the card is quieter than the reference when idling in 2D, barely noticeable above the background noise, but is a touch louder when playing games. CrossFire fingers enable hook-up to another card for higher performance, although the soon-to-arrive Radeon HD 5970, a dual-GPU card, may well corner the very high-end GPU market. Harnessing the Eyefinity feature-set, the card boasts three distinct digital outputs: DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. All three can be used simultaneously, although DisplayPort needs to be one of the three outputs.
The AMD Radeon HD 5870 is, arguably, the best consumer graphics card that money can buy right now, but we temper this statement with the knowledge that, over a month on from release, supply remains in considerable constraint. Undeterred by the lack of availability, or perhaps playing on this very fact, Sapphire’s using AMD’s underlying PCB and bolting a better-performing cooler on top for the Vapor-X offering.
Sapphire plays the game safe with these clocks, because our sample scaled up to 962MHz core and 5,224MHz memory with a little bit of tinkering, so, based on a sample of one, there appears to be intrinsic merit in the Vapor-X SKU.Augmented by a slightly better-than-reference bundle, we reckon the package is just about worth the extra outlay if you have your heart set on a Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB card - especially if Sapphire can get stock into the channel this week.