Introduction

As it usually happens, after the official launch of a new GPU architecture, there are many partners that propose their own version, reviewed and enhanced in many ways. It’s common for the partners to redesign aspects of the reference board, customizing some elements. With the Radeon HD 4800, as with the GeForce GT200, the partner manufacturers were the ones responsible for keeping the market alive with their many different specifications and cards.

Now that we have the new HD 5000 series for a few months in the market, it hasn’t changed: many customized versions can be bought and seen on the market. With this series of articles, we’ll be reviewing the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-x, a card proposed to the high-end market by the famous ATi partner.

The card doesn’t only offer high performances, but also a different cooling system than the standard, more efficient and capable of giving more possibilities of working with frequencies that are beyond the standard.