Now we saw Sapphire really mix it up recently with this Radeon HD 4890 Atomic version of these graphics cards. The company hasn't stopped there though, now choosing to do even more with the model. ATI partners really don't have the range of graphics cards to play with like NVIDIA ones. What this means is that we tend to see companies offer more variants of the same model. These Radeon HD 4890 have always been a pretty impressive cards. While it was never the holder of the performance crown, it did manage to offer some serious value for money and for so many people this is more important than an super fast graphics card that they can't afford. Which is really what it is all about to sell more. - TweakTown

Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 2GB VaporX Styler Review

In typical Sapphire fashion we've got some pretty nice box art on hand that gives us all the information we need. Across the top of the box we have the Sapphire logo along with some ATI ones. We also see that the board comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Across the bottom of the box we can clearly see the model. In the middle of the box we have got a bit of an ice scenario going on with mention about the Vapor-X technology that is embedded into the video card. Turning the box over, we've got the same top and bottom that is seen on the front of the box. And in the middle we have some more information on the technology itself.

With the package out of the way it's time to have a look at the card itself and you can clearly see their first major feature of the board is the company's choice to move away from the stock cooler that we see on so many other Radeon HD 4890 cards. We've got a new design here that we haven't seen before and it certainly does a pretty good job of looking mean. To the right we have a heatsink that sits atop some of the hotter components. Next to that we have a few more heatsinks, while the rest of the card is taken up with a large heatsink with fan solution with also a heatsink covering some part of the back.

Sapphire has taken the time to overclock the Vapor-X variant and we can see the company has moved the core to 870MHz. We can also see that the memory has been moved from the default to just a more aggressive 4200MHz effective setting. While not as aggressive as the Atomic version which carries with it an 1000MHz core, so this bump in performance should yield a nice little performance increase over a stock clocked model. The first thing we have to say is that there's an solid performance increase when it comes to the 2GB strong Vapor-X edition. We can honestly say that most of that gain would come from the increased overclock.

Does that make it a waste of money? Not really, as this Vapor-X offers more than just some extra memory. For around $250 you are getting an newer cooler which while it doesn't cool quite as well as the stock one, does a good job of dropping noise levels. You've also got a bump in core and memory clock. If you want 2GB of memory on a graphics board and don't want to break the bank, the Sapphire Vapor-X model is pretty impressive. The good news is that if you're not interested in spending the extra money that the 2GB card carries, Newegg also offers a 1GB version for about $219 if wanted.