Sapphire Joins the Graphics Memory Wars

Those not doing intense gaming can, these days, get by with onboard graphics solutions, eschewing the extra heat production, and power consumption, of the external graphics card.

These days, it is nothing to have 1 GB of video buffer memory on a PCIe card, though only the newest, most complex games will actually need the memory or use the extreme processing speed of the graphics processor, Sapphire Technology, a major supplier of AMD/ATi graphics solutions,  is not immune to the pursuit of making scads of money from the few who wish to have the greatest, fastest, or most costly video card included in their computer case.

Because there is lots of money to be made in this segment, Sapphire has announced a Radeon card with 2 GB of onboard RAM, and an exotic cooling system.

Sapphire Technology is currently gearing up to introduce a new RV790 card, namely, a Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X with 2GB of onboard memory, which is double the amount found on the previously-released Vapor-X model. Other than the added memory, the new card isn’t different from its slightly older relative and features a blue PCB, the dual-slot Vapor-X cooling solution, 800 Stream Processors, and factory overclocked frequencies – 870 MHz for the GPU and 4200 MHz for the GDDR5 memory.

The 2GB Radeon comes with D-Sub, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs and is available for pre-order around Europe for as low as 226 Euro.

the dual slot cooler means that heat from the video card should ideally flow out the back of the  case, but solid case fans make certain air flows as designed

if you plan on one of these, plan on some good cooling  for your case, and a large power supply.

Boasting nearly every type of video connector known to current usage, I would prefer a second DVI port, because D-sub conversion is simple, and doesn’t suffer from being fragile. Display Port, for anyone other than an Apple owner, is a solution in search of a problem, so its inclusion here is superfluous. (It does, however, lead some to see the card as more obsolescence proof – clearly the uninformed).

Sapphire does usually make a solid product, and does not deviate from the reference firmware, so ATi drivers work without problems.

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Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.-   William Somerset Maugham

One wonders how he knew…