Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X 1GB Review

Specifications

One thing is certain; pushing the architecture to its limits isn’t the goal of the Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X. It sports some minor overclocks on both the core and the memory but nothing that will be noticeable when playing a game. According to Sapphire, we will have to wait a bit longer for higher clocked versions of the HD 5870 but they are on their way so expect a full selection of Toxic, Atomic and other cards in the near future.

Packaging and Accessories

The box design for the majority of Sapphire’s Vapor-X products uses a predominantly white color scheme and this one is no different. What we don’t like however is that the HD 5870 box we see in front of us is festooned with all manner of stickers proclaiming which games are included. This makes an otherwise subtly designed package look like an ad board in a back alley.


The main protection for the card comes from a plain brown paper box that holds a type of egg crate-style holder for the card. In order to make sure the HD 5870 doesn’t move around, Sapphire added in an extra foam pad in addition to placing the card in an anti static bubble wrap bag.


Sapphire seems to be hell-bent on adding a great deal of value to this card through the inclusion of two games. As you may have already guessed from our pictures of the box, a full DVD version of Battlestations: Pacific along with a code to download the full version of DiRT are included. Along with that, you get the usual Molex to PCI-E adaptors, a Crossfire bridge and a DVI to VGA dongle. All in all, this is a well-rounded accessory package.