Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Vapor-X Review

Performance Analysis

As is to be expected from a card with just a two per cent core and four per cent memory overclock, the Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Vapor-X isn’t too much faster than a stock HD 5870 across the board, adding a frame or two to both the average and minimum frame rates in most circumstances and matching the stock HD 5870 in circumstances where performance is CPU limited like Fallout 3 or Dawn of War 2 at lower resolutions.

We know the HD 5870 is a wickedly quick card though and a minor bump in clock speeds out of the box is never going to change things massively. It’s the cooling performance of this card that’s more under the spotlight here then and we were delighted to find that once again the Vapor-X cooler has continued the tradition of making stock cooling look rubbish.

The stock HD 5870 is already one of the coolest cards at idle but the Vapor-X beats it by 4°C and at load the difference jumps to 15°C. What’s so impressive about the load performance is that while the Vapor-X cooler did spin its fan up to 1,900 rpm, it remained utterly inaudible over the cooling in our test systems and we literally had to stop every other fan in the case in order to hear even the mildest whisper of noise from the card. In comparison the HD 5870 was clearly audible at load and while not invasively so, you’d still know it was sweating.

Also of interest are the card’s power consumption numbers that show almost no difference in comparison to a stock HD 5870 other than the two to five Watt increase we’d expect from higher clock speeds and the minor variations between GPUs – so much for Sapphire’s Black Diamond chokes then.

Overclocking

Having had plenty of fun overclocking Asus’ Voltage Tweak HD 5870 we hoped the Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Vapor-X would also prove a solid overclocker, especially with the upgraded cooling and we weren’t disappointed. After a few attempts with ATI’s GPU clock tool we soon had the card stable at 950MHz core, 1300MHz (5.2GHz effective) – overclocks of twelve and eight per cent respectively. These allowed us to jump from frame rates of 49avg/27min fps to 52avg/29min fps in Crysis at 1,680 x 1,050. The Vapor-X cooler continued to perform admirably despite the overclock and while temperatures did rise by 6°C at load, the card remained wonderfully quiet.

Final Thoughts

Giving any kind of recommendation of the HD 5870 or HD 5850 is tricky at the moment due to continued stock shortages making pre-ordering almost mandatory to secure a card – hardly an ideal situation for consumers, retailers or board partners. Nevertheless, the Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Vapor-X is a pleasingly impressive bit of kit, offering significantly upgraded cooling on top of ATI’s already monstrously fast GPU as well as a minor performance bump out of the box that, while not worth shouting too loud about, is still welcome.

As always though the key issue with an aftermarket cooler equipped, pre-overclocked partner card is price and in that regard this card is seriously difficult to judge – it’s not in stock anywhere and the small amount of stock trickling down to retailers is only available on pre-order. This isn’t Sapphire’s fault of course (GPU fabricator TSMC has to shoulder the blame here) but it means pricing varies enormously from the highly competitive £311 to an extortionate £399. At £311 this card is a fantastic choice, with stock cards priced at roughly £300 but at £399 it’s not really worth the extra cash for the admittedly excellent cooler and minor factory overclock.

However, with ATI’s board partners having no trouble shifting stock and rumours of literally hundreds of thousands of unfilled pre-orders for ATI’s latest family of cards we’re sure that the Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB Vapor-X will have no trouble finding a host of prospective buyers and those who do pick one up will be rewarded with a card that combines wonderfully cool and quiet operation with the blistering performance of a full fat and mildly overclocked HD 5870. While the Asus Voltage Tweak HD 5870 will be able to surpass it for overclocking ability, the Vapor-X is easily the better card for actually living with day to day. Just try not to pay over the odds for it.

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Score Guide