Sapphire is back with a new exciting series of graphics cards called “Vapor-X” which has a very special cooling solution. In this review I will be taking a look at the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5750 card.

INTRODUCTION

The Radeon 5000 series of graphics cards were rather recently released by AMD/ATI and for the very first time in a couple of years, AMD/ATI (hereafter referred to as only AMD) is back in the performance lead. NVIDEA will release their next generation of graphics cards rather soon but no date is set and very little information about it has leaked to the press.

Just a couple of weeks back AMD released the 5850 and the 5870 graphics cards which were very well received in reviews and by consumers. I did a review of an Asus 5850 card myself.

Just a couple of weeks later AMD release the HD 5970 which is a dual GPU card with the code name “Hemlock”, a very powerful and expensive card. You can check out reviews at testseek.com on it. Here’s the current lineup from AMD:

I already discussed the news with the Radeon 5000 series in my Asus HD 5850 review so I’m not going to repeat everything again. Suffice to say, the new generation has some new great characteristics. First, the chips are made in the new 40nm technology which promises lower power consumption and less heat.  Secondly, the ATI EyeFinity technology makes it possible to connect up to three monitors to each card which means a total of 6 monitors in CrossFireX. Other important characteristics are the ATI Stream (GPU acceleration), Open CL (API for processing in parallel GPU-CPU) and Directx 11 support.

ENGINEERING SPECIFICATIONS: SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD5750 1GB DDR5

OK, enough is enough; let’s have a look at the specifications of the Sapphire HD 5750 Vapor-X 1GB DDR5:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: 5750 SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 1GB DDR5

On the box Sapphire emphasizes the Vapor-X technology and all the new AMD technologies discussed above.

The card is secured in a card board box and enclosed by the usual anti static plastic bag.

The included accessories are: a manual; a CD with drivers and utilities; the application “ArcSoft SimHD”; a coupon to download the Dirt2 game (supports DirectX 11); 2 molex to 6 pin PCIe adapter cables; a DVI-VGA adapter and a CrossFireX bridge.

IN DETAIL: SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 5750 VAPOR-X 1GB DDR5

The card itself really looks impressive with its massive cooling solution. I have had the chance to see models of the 5750 from quite a few manufacturers and the Sapphire card comes out on top.

The cooling solution occupies a double slot which may be a disadvantage because this card must be rated as a medium range card and many users prefer single slot cards in this segment. AMD/ATI sets the overall rules from which the manufacturers can build their cards and they often leave rather small margins which I guess must be the reason why I have yet to see a 5750 single slot card.

The technology used by the cooling system Vapor-X has its origins in the aerospace industry. The cooling liquid, (in this case water) becomes steam on a hot surface (the GPU) and the resulting steam is condensed when it comes in touch with a colder surface which turns the steam into liquid again and returns to the hot surface again and so the process repeats itself. Sapphire claims that the Vapor-X system is much more effective than the reference cooling system, up to 7 degrees.

In the right hands, less heat means less noise. And this is also another characteristic of the Vapor-X system.

In order to help the Vapor-X system to cool the liquid that circulates in its interior, Sapphire has installed an 80mm fan which is perfectly integrated with the black plastic cover. One of the sides of the plastic cover holds the Sapphire logo which glows blue when the system is running. Check out the image below to see what I’m talking about.

The “Black Diamond” condensers which caused some buzz in the industry are included on this card.  The aluminum polymer in these condensers is superior to the one used one in “normal” aluminum condensers. According to Sapphire, these condensers are 25% more energy efficient than normal condensers.

The card has an extra 6 pin PCIe power connector as you can see from the image below.

The 5750 actual has two CrossFireX connections although due to the inefficiency of the Catalyst drivers, it is not recommended to install more than two cards.

The memory units are visible on the PCB of this card. They are four high quality Hynix GDDR5 chips.

There are four video exits on this card, two standard DVI-I; a HDMI and a DisplayPort. This should satisfy the needs of even the most demanding users. The card is only 185 mm long and thus fits in most cases.

TEST SYSTEM

These are the components in my test system:

Here are screen shots of my test system configuration:

BENCHMARKING TESTS

Sadly I received this card a little too late to be able to test it on my old test system on which I have made many graphics card tests. This means I will have to comment on the numbers without having any real references to results from old tests. I’ll try to be as objective as possible.

It’s not a secret that AMDs cards often get surprisingly high scores in the FutureMark benchmarking programs (3D Mark 06 and 3D Mark Vantage). And this time was no exception as you can see from the graphs above.

The Unigine tests of the DirectX 10 and Direct 11X was interesting to me because of the results I got with the same tests on the Asus HD5850 card a couple of weeks back. One of the main marketing points of the DirectX 11 is that it is supposed to be much faster than its predecessor. With the HD 5850 I got the opposite results and as you can see from the graphs above, the same goes for the 5750 card. Obviously AMD are having troubles here. Hopefully we will see improvements with the release of new Catalyst drivers.

GAMING I

The performance of the Radeon HD 5750 is spectacular. It is able to maintain a high FPS rate with all the games in this first series. It had no problems when I beefed up the resolution and turned on filters. The fact that it includes 1GB of GDDR5 with a bandwidth of 108 GB/s must be what ultimately keeps the smoothness in the games going even with filters on.

GAMING II

In the second battery of games which includes the most demanding games, the limitations of the HD 5750 comes to light. Although it doesn’t prevent us from enjoying the games altogether, it is clear that this is a mid range card. In favor of HD 5750 it is necessary to say that even the incredibly powerful HD 5850 had some troubles with these games with all the settings at max. Considering that the HD 5850 has double the amount of stream processors compared to the HD5750 it is fair to say that the HD 5750 is a very potent card.

OVERCLOCKING, COOLING AND POWER CONSUMPTION

The release of the HD 5750 brings power to the medium range segment. Up till now, I haven’t said much about its overclocking abilities but reports from other reviews and forums have been positive. Therefore I was very eager to test a HD 5750 card myself and see of the overclocking potential really was as good as I had heard. I cannot deny that I got even happier when I learnt that I would be able to test a HD 5750 with the Vapor-X technology.

Indeed, the overclocking capacity of this card is high. Check out the following screen shots which I obtained without modifying voltages but by only using Catalyst Control Center.

After having tested innumerable combinations, I received a stable configuration at 860 Mhz for the GPU and 1345 MHz for the memories. This means an increase of the default numbers of 23% for the GPU and 17% for the memories (percentages was calculated based on the values for the reference model with 700 MHz for the GPU and 1150 MHz for the memories).

The Vapor-X cooling system obviously does a fantastic job. In the following graph you can see the temperatures when the card is in IDLE and FULL LOAD modes. The IDLE temperatures were measured after the system had been running for half an hour without any load. The FULL LOAD numbers were taken after the system had been in full load (using Furmark 1.7) for a half an hour. The room temperature was 17˚C.

The Vapor-X technology clearly does a lot to keep the temperatures down. It was a long time ago I saw these low numbers at full load. I say it again; the Vapor-X does a great job.

The noise level is always hard to talk about since it’s a very subjective thing.  The fan can be set manually or automatic. During my overclocking the fan was set to regulating itself and it rotated at 50% of the max speed. I think that the noise it made on these levels ware perfectly OK but when it goes above it becomes noticeable and somewhat annoying.

The power consumption of the 5800 series has been reduced rather drastically thanks to the use of the ATI PowerPlay technology that diminishes the consumption in 2D. According to the specifications from Sapphire, the power consumption of the card in idle mode is as low as 18W. The maximum consumption is 108W at full load. The graph below shows the power consumption of my entire system when the card is in IDLE and FULL LOAD mode respectively.

RESULTS OF THE OVERCLOCKING

OK, here are the results from the overclocking tests.

It could not be better. The results are almost hard to believe. In Far Cry 2, I saw an increase of up to 10 fps.  In Crysis Warhead however, the increase of the performance was more limited.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 Vapor-X is the most “overclock friendly” card I have tested in a long time. Considering the other reviews available for this card I suspect that my results are not due to an especially good sample of the card.

CONCLUSIONS

Some has called the arrival of the new generation of AMD/ATI cards a revolution. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it a revolution even though they have pushed the performance up a level or two.  But nVIDIA has definitely been challenged by the new AMD generation with the combination of great performance and low power consumption. Time will tell if they can come up with a good response, I wouldn’t be too surprised.

Sapphire has succeeded in perfecting an already good product, the AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5750. The Sapphire card has great performance, support for DirectX11, lower power consumption, doesn’t emit too much noise and has great overclocking abilities. It’s currently available for around $150 which to me is a real bargain. Buy.

Pros:

• Looks and finish
• Compact dimensions
• Vapor-X cooling system
• Overclocking capacity
• Price

Cons:

• None I can think of

The final score is 98 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5750 1GB DDR5″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Sapphire for letting me review this card.

Check out alternatives of the Radeon 5800 series at testseek.com

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

Summary: Can the price reduced AMD RV790 GPU (Radeon HD 4890) be an interesting alternative now when all focus is on AMD’s recently launched HD 5800 series?.

INTRODUCTION

At the time being, all the spotlights on the market for graphics cards are pointed towards AMD ATI who is in the process of launching a new generation of cards supporting the new DirectX 11 standard. One of these cards is the AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870 which we have loads of reviews of at testseek.com, go and check out.

However, when a new generation of cards is introduced, one can often make a bargain on a high end graphics card from the previous generation. Therefore I decided to take a look at the Radeon HD 4890 which has drastically dropped in price since the 5890 was introduced.

For a long time the HD 40xx series from AMD was topped out with the HD 4870 model, but as nVidia pushed on, AMD decided to put out a boosted version of that card and call it 4890. Besides the increase of the card’s memory frequency, the HD 4890 also has some extra memory, 1GB GDDR5 instead of the 512MB with 4870 (standard model).

OK, before we take a look at the specifications you should know that Sapphire has released many different versions of the HD 4890. The one which I will review here is the “Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB GDDR5 PCIe 21150-00-40R ”:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The card comes in a rather big cardboard box with a lot of attractive graphics on it, as is customary with all retail graphics card boxes.

Inside the box I found the card in an antistatic plastic bag which was placed between some black foam plastic protecting the card. The accessories were placed in a box below the graphics card containing; a printed documentation; CDs with drivers; 3D Mark Vantage; PowerDVD; DVD Suite etc; some video adapters and adapters for molex to PCI-E 6 pin and lastly a CrossFireX bridge.

SAPPHIRE RADEON HD 4890 IN DETAIL

The card is really more or less the same as AMD ATI’s reference card, it has the same heatsink/cooling solution and the frequencies of the memory and GPU are the ones recommended by AMD. Sapphire also has customized models with a greater amount of memory, specialized cooling solutions and overclocked memory and GPUs.

The card is thick, it occupies 2 slots, basically because of the great size of the heatsink/fan which is made of copper and incorporates several heat pipes to secure a better cooling performance. The fan has a diameter of 70 mm, which is common with AMD cards.

The length (240mm) of the card is also considerable which is pretty normal these days with high en cards. This can of course be a problem depending on the space inside your case so measure the available space before purchasing is my advice.

The voluminous cooling solution leaves very few details in view, but we can see that Sapphire uses solid condensers, which should assure stable power feeding and a long lived card. The card has 2 6 pin PCIe connectors, reason why along with the power from the PCI-Express port, the card can get to consume up to 225W (in theory).

The bracket with the connectors consists of a metal grid on the upper part, to favor the air flow. The lower part holds two DVI connectors and one HDTV exit.

INSTALLING THE TEST EQUIPMENT

OK, so for this review I used the following test system:

The below images shows screenshots of the hardware and the configuration:

In all tests I used the highest possible graphics setting. I did tests with filters both on and off.

BENCHMARKING TEST RESULTS

The results are a little confusing to me because in 3D Mark 06 the result is about the same which I obtained in my review of the Gigabyte GTX 285, whereas the results from Lightmark and Furmark are clearly below the results obtained with the GTX 285 card.

GAMING TEST RESULTS

The results from the test with the first group of games clearly shows that the 4890 isn’t able to reach the high results which I had with the GTX 285 but considering the price difference the result is still very competitive.

REAL RESULTS OF TEST II

The second group holds the most demanding games on the market today. As expected the results dropped somewhat with these games. Generally, all games were perfectly playable in the highest resolutions even when applying filters, except for Weapon 2 and Far Cry 2 in which I had to lower the resolution or graphic quality settings to make the games enjoyable to play.

OVERCLOCKING AND COOLING

Finally, it’s time to see what this card is really capable of. One must consider that the HD 4890 is really an overclocked 4870 card to begin with.

It was with a bit of a disappointment that I had to conclude that the most I could overclock this card was a meager 30MHz for the GPU core and 15MHz for the memories.

In order to measure the temperatures of the card I resorted to push the card to the max for a session of 30 minutes with Furmark.  I compared this to another measurement when the computer had been in idle mode for 30 minutes.

As you can see from the image above, there’s a rather big difference between idle mode and full load, which should be expected. In full mode the card is quite noisy, but I still feel there’s been an improvement compared to other high end cards I have tested recently. In idle mode the noise doesn’t bother me at all.

RESULTS OF OVERCLOCKING

The very small increase in GPU and memory frequencies which I received in my over clocking attempts resulted in an improvement of 1 or 2 fps in real life gaming situations. In 3D Mark 06, I got a 300 point improvement which is a rather big improvement considering how little it was possible to overclock the card.

CONCLUSIONS

At present, the Radeon HD 4890 is no longer is the most powerful graphics-GPU from AMD ATI. With the release of the HD 5800 series, the prices of the HD 4800 series models have been reduced considerably, reason why it is a wonderful opportunity to acquire one of these cards.

With this card, Sapphire demonstrates why they are considered as one of the top graphic cards assemblers. I am mostly impressed by the card’s bundle and its price/performance ratio. The card is sold for around 150 Euros ()

Pros:

• General quality
• Rich bundle
• Good price/performance ratio
• Rather cool and silent

Cons:

• Almost no overclocking possible

The final score is 90 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sapphire Radeon HD 4890″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Sapphire for letting me review this card.

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

Summary: AMD’s mid-range graphics cards are having great success. The AMD Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 is an example of this. It’s an excellent graphics card with a very inviting price.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had the chance to take a look at a graphics card. So, we thought it was time now to end that drought and examine one of the new models that have flooded the market in recent months.

INTRODUCTION

Sapphire looked favorably upon our request and sent us one of today’s mid-range models with the best price/performance ratio: the HD 4770. AMD is doing well with its powerful HD 4000 series. After launching high-range and mid-range cards, it has introduced various intermediate models, starting with the HD 4830 and then the HD 4770. This completes a well-populated range of cards and makes it harder for buyers to choose a particular model.

The main difference between the HD 4770 and other models just above and below it on the performance scale (the HD 4850, HD 4830, and HD 4670 respectively), is that this card uses GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate 5) memory to provide better bandwidth. This should let the HD 4770 obtain excellent results without having a wider bus, which would make it much more expensive. It also doesn’t need to operate at stratospheric speeds, which allows for better temperature control. Here’s a summary of the card’s technical specs:

Admittedly, the HD 4770 doesn’t have any really new feature that we haven’t already seen in other cards in the HD 4000 range. Its most interesting point is something we pointed out earlier, its good price/performance ratio. But maybe we’ve gotten a little ahead of ourselves. So we’ll need to see what it can offer in our tests.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Sapphire sent us a Radeon HD 4770 in its retail configuration, just like you’d find it in a store. The box’s serigraphy is very striking. The front lists many of the card’s features, the most outstanding of which is its 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. Another item that stands out is that the card is accompanied by various Cyberlink programs for digital leisure.

On the back, Sapphire details what it feels are the Radeon’s outstanding features. It also gives a brief explanation of the advantages of each of its technologies. And it lists prizes that make it one of the industry’s biggest award winners.

The first thing you find on opening the box is the card itself, perfectly protected in an antistatic plastic bag. The accessories are in a separate compartment. They include 3 CDs with drivers and software, a manual, a CrossFireX bridge and several adaptors: DVI to HDMI, DVI to VGA, Molex to PCI 6-pin connector, and S-Video to RGB. We can’t complain about the bundle that Sapphire has given its Radeon HD 4770!

A DETAILED LOOK AT THE SAPPHIRE RADEON HD 4770

As we mentioned in the introduction, Sapphire has given the Radeon HD 4770 a customized cooling system. In this case, it’s dual slot, and made of aluminum. It also added an 80 mm (3.15″) fan, which should make it run quietly. To complete the cooling system, it put an aluminum plate in the in the power regulation system to get better heat dissipation without having the unit cover the entire PCB.

This graphics card requires external power. This is supplied by a 6-pin PCI-E connector. It consumes about 125W, receiving up to 75 of additional power. It’s not overly long — about 206 mm (8.1″) — so you shouldn’t have much trouble installing it any kind of box

The card has the usual video outs, 2 DVI and 1 S-Video. In case your monitor doesn’t have DVI or you’re interested in another type of connection, Sapphire includes all the necessary adaptors with the accessories. No matter what, you should be able to have your own way.

The only thing worth mentioning on the back of the card is the light heatsink adaptor, which only needs 4 screws to be properly anchored.

INSTALLING THE TEST SETUP

It’s time to get to the heart of the matter. So, here’s the equipment and software that we used in our tests:

Since the processor sometimes limits the ability to test a graphics card, we decided to overclock it to 3.5 GHz, while lowering the memory speed to 1 GHz. Our Phenom II X4 920 didn’t disappoint us. Here are some results for different components:

In all the games, we used the highest possible resolution, first without filters and then with them. In many cases, we saw low performance figures, but it’s important to remember that we were very demanding in picking such high resolutions.

SYNTHETIC TEST RESULTS

Note: This figure, and others after it, use commas as a decimal point, instead of a period. So, the first result is 341.4.

We limited our synthetic tests to the 3 that we thought were the most representative. We were very satisfied with the results, above all the excellent score in the 3D Mark. Some other cards are more powerful, but if we add in the price variable, the HD 4770 scores very well.

REAL TESTS I

For this analysis and the following ones, we introduced new benchmarks to better reflect the card’s performance with state-of-the art games.

The card performed very well in these game tests. But these aren’t the most demanding ones in our test bench. Frame rates were excellent in all cases, allowing us to enjoy excellent quality play, with no surprises.

REAL TESTS II

We reserved our most demanding tests for this section. Here’s where we must note that the HD 4770 is a mid-range card, which can produce minimal frame rates of over 30. From the data we collected, we believe that especially at lower resolutions, it can let users enjoy games with a high graphic quality, but that it doesn’t have much to boast about in terms of overall game performance.

OVERCLOCKING AND TEMPERATURE

The ability to overclock is one of the most interesting factors when it comes time to choose a specific graphics card, above all when we’re talking about the mid range and are looking for some extra performance. In our case, we used Catalyst for overclocking and got pretty good results:

To measure working temperatures, we used GPU-Z and Furmark. We measured the temperature when the system was at rest, after being in the Windows desktop for 30 minutes without doing anything. For our test under load, we ran a 30-minute Furmark 1.7 session. Here are the results:

The measured temperatures were very good. Leaving the fan in auto mode didn’t cause any problems except at brief moments when its rotational velocity was over 35%.

TEST RESULTS WITH OVERCLOCK

To see the performance gain from overclocking, we used just 3 tests, but the results are definitely representative. The gain didn’t turn out to be too large. The 3D Mark 06 results show that, but with Far Cry 2 we can see that the frame rates increased, making that game run much better. You can’t do much with Crysis, which continues to be the most demanding game. There’s no remedy other than sacrificing graphics quality to play it without jerkiness.

CONCLUSIONS

A mid-range product is always a safe investment. In this range, we usually find products with the best price/performance ratio. That’s what Sapphire has shown with its Radeon HD 4770. Its price ranges from about $125-$140. Given the card’s good performance, it’s a must-buy if your budget is tight and you don’t demand the ultimate in playability.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 offers everything that any mid-range user needs, starting with its good included bundle and continuing with its cooling system. Its cooling is very effective, and except in extreme situations, is quiet. And we can’t forget its overclocking capability. Some of the frequencies it reached were more than acceptable, although we’re completely sure that simply installing some memory heatsinks could enable even higher frequencies.

To sum up, we can definitely recommend this card. As with us, it won’t leave you feeling cheated in any way.

The final score is 90 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 Video Card” our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks to Sapphire for loaning us a Radeon HD 4770.

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Ed Winograd