Conclusion:

While you may get better out of the box performance with some of the factory overclocked cards, the Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD4850 512MB graphics card allows plenty of opportunity for you to do it yourself. The stock speeds are exactly what you might expect for a Radeon HD4850, but that isn't what this new series of cards is all about.

The biggest selling point may be that this card runs cool, quiet, and it is relatively energy efficient. Sapphire has made a few electrical tweaks, as well as developing a new cooler, that give you all the performance of a Radeon HD4850 without as much heat, noise, or electricity consumption. Couple these improvements with a more compact PCB and you have a card that would work well in a typical tower chassis, as well as many small form factor or HTPC setups.



Newegg.com lists this card at $144.99 (US), which places it near the middle of the pack when compared to other 512MB HD4850 cards. Several have list prices at or below $140, and mail-in rebates bring the final price of some to under $100.

Considering all of the subtle refinements applied to what might have seemed like a stock Radeon HD4850, the Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD4850 512MB graphics card earns the Bigbruin.com "Recommended" award.



Pros:

» Overclocks well
» Runs cool and quiet
» Energy efficient
» Shorter PCB may fit in more systems
» Integrated HDMI port

Cons:

» No memory cooling, and no room to add your own
» Price: some 512MB Radeon HD4850 cards now cost less than $100 (with rebate)

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