Sapphire are one of the most well known board partners of ATI and over the years have constantly produced some of the highest quality graphics cards the market has to offer. And already this year Sapphire have earned our highest award with a number of products, the most notable being the Radeon HD 4870 equipped with a whopping 2GB of GDDR5 memory. But Today we are going to be checking the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X version. So this specific model of the Radeon HD 4890 slots in just above the basic card and below the Toxic edition which is clocked at slightly higher speeds. There is also an Atomic version of the board with a 1GHz core which we will be looking at shortly as well. - DriverHeaven

Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB Vapor-X Style Review

Now don't be mistaken though, the Vapor-X model still has fantastic potential and is supplied with a custom cooling solution, increased clock speeds and just an impressive output configuration all tied together with an attractive price tag. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X is supplied in a box carrying the company's blue and white colour scheme. And instead of the female avatar found on basic models this packaging has an illustration of a penguin on ice, an image used to represent the Vapor-X cooling system. The Vapor-X version breaks away from the reference design and is characterised by the custom blue PCB style layout.

We've seen a number of different Vapor-X coolers on Sapphire's cards in the last few months and have been impressed by the combination of cooling performance and low noise levels they offer relative to those reference models. This particular Radeon HD 4890 card is powered by two 6-pin connectors, just like the reference card. One of the key features of this model is the plethora of connectivity options available. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X is an impressive product which offers improvements over the reference model in every aspect. In all of our gaming tests the card outperforms the reference model thanks to a modest overclock.

In addition to the increased performance and aftermarket cooler Sapphire have included a wealth of different outputs. Which provides huge flexibility without the use of numerous dongles and adaptors. It is great to see Sapphire including such a versatile configuration for this board with all the major digital interface options catered for. The card appears to be entering the market at an aggressive price point and you'll even find reference cards at the same price as this model. At this moment the card is on sale for around $229. Taking into account the features this card is supplied with the pricing certainly offers value to the customer.

Additionally, the bundle contains all the various accessories you might need. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X is a great product all around, so packed with features and we would strongly recommend it if you're shopping for a Radeon HD 4890 graphics card to upgrade your system.