Sapphire HD 5750 1GB Vapor-X Video Card Review

A Closer Look at the Sapphire HD 5750 1GB Vapor-X

This card’s claim to fame is of course the Vapor-X heatsink that dominates its otherwise reference looks. To be perfectly honest with you, we were a bit disappointed to see such a massive cooler on a card that is advertised as being efficient. This was mentioned during the original HD 5750 1GB review but it is even more baffling here since Sapphire has demonstrated in the past that that Vapor-X cooler can be slimmed down to single-slot height while still providing phenomenal temperatures. What makes matters worse is the fact that the cooler’s shroud actually protrudes about an inch over the PCB which expands the card’s length to about 8 1/4”.


The unique heatsink is topped by an 80mm fan along with an interestingly designed shroud that incorporates a healthy dose of Sapphire’s corporate blue into it. It really is a great looking piece of hardware that is made all the sweeter by the incorporation of a blue-lit Sapphire logo into the side of the shroud.


Sapphire has also used what they call their “Black Diamond Choke” on all of their higher-end cards. This choke design incorporates a finned design used to quickly dissipate heat by utilizing more surface area and thereby increases overall efficiency. The memory modules are left naked since they can leverage their proximity to the heatsink for additional airflow.


The back of the Sapphire HD 5750 Vapor-X is identical to that of the reference card with a cleanly laid out PCB and a quartet of GDDR5 memory modules.


On the connector front, this card sticks to the reference design with a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector and the usual array of output connectors on a dual slot backplate. Two DVI outputs as well as connectors for DisplayPort and HDMI are included if you have some (short lived) aspirations of using this card for Eyefinity gaming.