Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 2GB Vapor-X Video Card Review

Sapphire HD 4890 2GB Vapor-X Specifications

As you can see, even though the Vapor-X cooler on this card supposedly makes short work of temperatures, for some reason the core receives a paltry overclock of 20Mhz. This in and of itself won’t make a perceptible difference in games but the 300Mhz (QDR) added to the memory speeds could add a few frames per second here and there. Where this card differentiates itself from the other products on the market is its 2GB framebuffer which should help at extremely high resolutions and texture settings.

To be honest, we were hoping for some serious overclocks on the Vapor-X but that just wasn’t meant to be. Granted, the clock speeds on the memory should help differentiate it from a stock speed card but the main selling point of Sapphire’s card is its 2GB of memory. Whether or not it makes any difference will only be decided once the benchmarks are complete.

Packaging and Accessories

*Please note that it has been brought to our attention that the accessory package of the product reviewed here differs from the version that is widely available at retail. While this package you will see below includes a number of software products, the version at the majority of retailers only holds a driver disk. Meanwhile, the cables and connectors detailed below remain the same. The version reviewed here has an SKU of 11150-09-40R while the version most retailers list is the 100269-2GVXL.


Vapor-X boxes are usually a predominantly white color to show off how “cool” they are and this one doesn’t buck the trend. Sapphire’s Vapor-X technology also has a pair of mascots so to speak and they make an appearance as well in the guise of those penguins you see on the front and back of the box.

The exterior graphic design for this box does a lot to tell us exactly what’s inside –from software to the Vapor-X technology itself but nowhere can clock speed specification be found.


The exterior package is nothing more than a sleeve that hides the plan brown box which contains the card and all the accessories. Once this box is opened we can see that Sapphire did a great job of protecting the precious cargo within by padding every exposed side with high density memory foam.


The HD 4890 is additionally protected within an anti-static bubble wrap speeve.


The accessories are housed within their own box and include an 8-pin PCI-E adaptor, a Molex to 6-pin cable, a HDMI to DVI break-out box and a Crossfire bridge. Software-wise, this card comes with a good bundle including 3DMark Vantage, DVD Creator, Power DVD and a driver CD.