Sapphire are certainly a name you will have seen over the years and have earned their place as one of the top ATI manufacturers in the business. They always go the extra mile with their models and often offer overclocked cards with custom cooling solutions. Recently we tested the Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X which offers a slight improvement over the reference model with an rather modest overclock and a custom cooling solution. Today however we will be taking a look at the real powerhouse that Sapphire have on offer, their Radeon HD 4890 Atomic graphics card. This Atomic edition's core is clocked at a mind numbing 1000MHz, a whole 150MHz increase over the reference model and Vapor-X cooler. - DriverHeaven

Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Atomic Video Card Review

This is an enormous boost for a factory overclock and it is supplied with a beefy Vapor-X cooling solution that unlike their Vapor-X model we looked at utilises heatpipes in a more elaborate design. With the huge performance boost over the reference model it will be interesting to see how the card stacks up to NVIDIA's flagship single core offering, the GeForce GTX 285. Sapphire have packaged the Atomic version in a rather special box. Their front side of the box contains no information about the card itself save for the Vapor-X logo, however the Atomic branding certainly lets you know that this product means serious business.

Following Sapphire's recent overclocked models the Atomic utilises a custom Vapor-X cooler on top of the company's custom blue PCB design. This Vapor-X cooler is one of the larger versions we've seen with a series of heatpipes included in the design. And as such one of the most impressive aspects of the board is the Vapor-X cooling solution. Now despite being heavily overclocked to 1GHz the temperatures stay within perfectly acceptable limits and additionally, the cooler is extremely quiet. Even under full stress their fan is inaudible above any other system fans and really puts the cherry on top of a fantastic cooling unit.

The ATI Radeon HD 4890 is an impressive card in its own right and this Atomic edition is really quite special. Now as we mentioned earlier, some of these cores won't even reach 1GHz in a stable manner so purchasing one of these cards is essentially like having a handpicked board. With the increased clock speeds it offers superb performance in just all of the latest titles and in a select number of cases outperforms the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 accelerator. In addition to this card's very strong performance the Vapor-X cooler is a fabulous inclusion and offers great thermal cooling especially with the immense clock speeds.

Additionally it is almost silent which is a huge bonus considering the noise levels some of ATI's reference coolers can subject you to at high fan speeds. Sapphire have supplied the end user with an impressive bundle containing all the dongles and adaptors you could need, the most noteworthy addition is the HDMI cable which earns Sapphire bonus points. Everything considered, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Atomic is a brilliant video card that offers a lethal combination of high performance and low noise levels in parallel with a strong bundle. Considering its stunning performance it earns a best in class recommendation.