Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X - The Cool Dude

The Vaporizer Returns

It's been almost three months since the first of ATI's new Evergreen graphics card hit the market and they have been favorably received thus far. The new Radeon HD 5970, HD 5870 and HD 5850 brought about unprecedented levels of graphics performance, and left all of NVIDIA's high-end GTX 200 offerings trailing in the dust.

The Radeon HD 5870, powered by the awesome Cypress XT chip, is presently the fastest single GPU card in the world. Boasting over two billion transistors and 1600 stream processing units, the chip is capable of 2.72 teraFLOPs of pure computing power. The only minor niggle we have with the Radeon HD 5870, however, is that all vendors are offering only reference-designed versions of the card. But that's understandable given that the card is still relatively new. It is also such a high-end card that it's expensive to figure out a custom cooling solution. Nevertheless, we yearn for that little bit of fresh air, and fortunately, Sapphire has a solution.

The Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X comes in an Arctic white box, and is plastered with stickers proudly proclaiming the new features of the card.

The card we have in our labs is the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X. For readers familiar to the brand Sapphire, you'll know that the "Vapor-X" moniker means that the card comes with a customized vapor chamber technology cooler. For the unacquainted, vapor chamber technology is a method of cooling that promises faster heat transfer by the means of liquid vaporization and condensation. It's similar to the familiar heat pipe technology, but the difference being it has a large surface area to directly interact with the heat source (the GPU), and thus large radiators and fans can be implemented directly above it while heat pipes can further augment the vapor chamber technology if required.

Again, if you've been faithfully following our articles, you'll also know that we haven't had the best of experiences with Sapphire's Vapor-X technology. Previous experiences with Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4890 and Sapphire HD 4870 1GB Toxic Edition , both of which feature vapor chamber technology, were disappointing. So will this time be any different? Read on to find out.

The Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB GDDR5

Sporting a custom vapor chamber technology cooler, it goes without saying that the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X looks markedly different from other Radeon HD 5870 cards. Physically, you'll notice immediately that the fan now sits directly above the GPU core, unlike reference designs where it was off centre. Peering closer, you'll also notice three thick copper heat pipes sprouting out from the base of the heatsink that further assist the vapor chamber base. To add, we found that during operation, the fan was quiet and smooth.

Underneath the cooler, there are also other differences. The Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X uses the same Cypress XT GPU as all other Radeon HD 5870 cards do, but it comes factory-overclocked at 870MHz for the core and a heady 5000MHz DDR for the memory. This is a minor, but nevertheless substantial increase in clock speeds when compared to a stock card's 850MHz at the core and 4800MHz DDR at the memory.

As part of the package, the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X also comes bundled with a redeemable copy of Dirt 2 and Battlestations Pacific.

Test Setup

The graphics cards were tested using our Vista system which has the following specifications:

Windows Vista SP1 Test System:

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.00GHz)
• Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 motherboard
• 2 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Aeneon memory in dual channel mode
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
• Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1

The Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X will be pitted against a stock Radeon HD 5870 card. Given its slightly higher clock speeds and vapor chamber technology custom cooler, we are expecting it to be marginally quicker, and hopefully significantly cooler during operation. For comparison, we have also lined up results from its less powerful sibling, the Radeon HD 5850 and from the green camp, the GeForce GTX 295 and GTX 285.

The full list of cards and their driver versions used: 

• Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.10)
• ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.10)
• ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.10)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 191.07)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB GDDR3 (ForceWare 191.07)

The cards were tested using the following benchmarks: 

• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
• Crysis Warhead
• Far Cry 2
• Warhammer: Dawn of War 2

3D Mark Vantage Results

Thanks to its slightly higher clock speeds, the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X was able to edge out a reference Radeon HD 5870. Its scores were also substantially higher than the Radeon HD 5850 and also a GeForce GTX 285. The dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295, however, gave the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X something to think about.

Crysis Warhead and Far Cry 2 Results

The Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X was marginally quicker than a stock Radeon HD 5870 on Crysis Warhead thanks to its slightly higher clock speeds. Despite that, it could not surpass the twin-GPU power of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 295.

Once again, the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X was slightly quicker than a stock Radeon HD 5870, but the difference is nearly negligible since both cards are running well above the 30fps playable threshold. Interestingly, the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X was as quick as the GeForce GTX 295 or a little faster at times when 4x anti-aliasing setting was used. But when we upped the intensity by enabling 8x anti-aliasing, the GeForce GTX 295 stormed ahead, partly thanks to its larger 1792MB frame buffer. 

Dawn of War 2 Results

It was pretty tight on Dawn of War 2 as the cards managed very similar results. But as we can see from the graphs, the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X was just about the quickest of the lot.

Temperature

Based on previous experiences, our biggest gripe with Sapphire's vapor chamber technology cooler was that it didn't really work any better than some of the heatsink and fan based coolers. This time round, things got a little different. At load, the Sapphire card recorded a 'cool' 63 degrees Celsius, which marks a commendable 15 degrees Celsius improvement over the stock cooler. Now this is the sort of improvement we want from a vapor chamber based cooler to justify its extra cost.

Power Consumption

Power consumption figures of the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X were in line with our expectations, since they were nearly identical to a reference Radeon HD 5870. Despite its high performance, the two Radeon HD 5870 cards managed a remarkably low power draw when compared to the two NVIDIA cards. 

Overclocking

Using the in-built ATI Overdrive overclocking utility, we were able to push the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X to the maximum allowable limit of 900MHz at the core and a stunning 5520MHz DDR at the memory. This gave us a slight boost in performance, bringing the Sapphire's card score on the Extreme preset of 3DMark Vantage up to 8548 from 8354. This was still some way off the 8970 3DMarks achieved by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295. Perhaps third-party overclocking software tools might help push the card even further, but just be mindful of how much you nudge it; you wouldn't want to spoil your investment for just minor increments.

Third Time Lucky

To our knowledge, Sapphire is the only major graphics card vendor employing this technology in the high-end space. While on paper it sounds good, we've tested two of Sapphire's vapor chamber technology offerings in the past (the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4890 and Sapphire HD 4870 1GB Toxic Edition ) and both were underwhelming as far as operating temperatures were concerned. This time round, the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X seems to have nailed it, managing a good 15 degrees Celsius reduction in operating temperatures over the stock cards.

When it comes to performance, the card performed up to our expectations. Sure, the factory overclocking might be a tad on the conservative side, but since this isn't a Toxic or Atomic edition, we will let that slide pass. That said, and as our overclocking test shows, the card is an eager overclocker and with ATI Overdrive so easy to use, we can expect many users to get their hands dirty and squeeze out that extra bit of performance.

Unfortunately, don't expect the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X to come cheap. At a recommended retail price of S$689, the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X is a whopping S$100 costlier than the most affordable standard Radeon HD 5870 we could find. For that kind of money, we expect to have more aggressive clock speeds, but alas, with the new NVIDIA Fermi cards nowhere to be seen, ATI has it easy.

So if you have cash to splash and want the absolute best, the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X is a good bet that performs to its billing.

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