Overclocking

We used ATI's Overdrive software in Catalyst Control Centre to overclock the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X 2GB. We started with the core which is originally clocked at 875MHz. Increasing in 10MHz steps, we hit a wall at 945MHz where Crysis crashed. Reducing 5MHz to 940MHz still didn't solve the issue and we finally settled on 935MHz.

In comparison the Asus Radeon HD 4890 Voltage Tweak was happy up to 1,000MHz so the result from the Vapor-X is slightly disappointing and we suspect all the 1GHz capable cores are simply binned and put in premium priced products. With the core maxed out we turned our attention to the memory. This went a fair way from its stock speed of 1,050MHz eventually reaching 1,135MHz (4.54GHz effective) which is one of the better results we've seen and surprising with higher density GDDR.

Below we can see how the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X 2GB shapes up against a stock HD 4890. It provides a noticeable speed boost out of the box and after a few minutes playing with ATI's Overdrive, we had an even faster graphics card.In raw performance terms this further increase in clock speed didn't result in massive gains, a few frames per second at most we found.

Final Thoughts

While ATIs RV770 and RV790 have undoubtedly brought them firmly back in the game, we have always been concerned about the noise and heat they produced. Not that modern high end Nvidia graphics cards are a lot better, but the argument for ripping off that noisy air cooler and finding an aftermarket cooler or water-cooling block your graphics card has never been stronger. For this reason we're pretty keen on third party coolers included as standard here at bit-tech. Performance first of course but we like quiet, good performing coolers too.

The Sapphire Vapor-X is a great bit of kit that, as we've shown, really does cool very well. With plenty more fan speed in the tank, end users therefore have the option of having similar temperatures to a stock card at greatly reduced noise, or ramping up the fan speed and getting some very low temperatures and faster clocks instead. Even at 70% the fan produced a much more pleasant hum than the stock coolers whir.

However there is still the issue of price and with £50 on top of a stock HD 4890, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X 2GB is certainly a pricey option. It does a good job of giving the GTX 285 a run for its money in many tests, but as we've seen, if you're up for a bit overclocking, there's little performance you can't get from a stock card and you'll be saving £50 in the process. If you've got an existing water-cooling loop with capacity for adding an HD 4890, then that £50 can get you a full cover waterblock: we'd get the Asus voltage tweak HD 4890 in that scenario. Like the 2GB 4870 Vapor-X we looked at earlier this year the extra gigabyte of memory does not that much, despite the extra performance affording more grunt for higher resolutions.

Taking a step back from that wider audience though: if noise is of primary concern and the thought of either having water gushing round your PC or losing a warranty by fitting an aftermarket cooler send shivers down your spine, then the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X 2GB maybe worth considering. However, spending the extra on a 1GB model with faster clocks and similar aftermarket cooler will do you better.

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