Reviews - Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Vapor-X 512MB: last throw of the RV770 dice

[HEXUS]

Custom cooling on a proven GPU, how good is Sapphire's Vapor-X?

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[Tidus]

A nice looking card, cool and quiet when idle and gives good performance when needed. The output's are a smart choice allowing for 2 monitors to be connected leaving the HDMI for HDTV, which is how I like my displays connected.

Switching the VGA output for a DVI output would be even better or another HDMI output if 2x DVI takes up too much space. If 2x HDMI is used people needing VGA could use a DVI-VGA adapter and people needing 2x DVI could purchase a HDMI-DVI cable/adapter, this would allow two monitors to be connected in digital with a HDMI out for a HDTV.

[3DWizard]

hey
I have been following the price / performance wars closely lately, From what i have seen in recent reviews the XFX 4850 card beats many others on peformance especially the new Sapphire Vapor-X offering, and scan now have the XFX card at £103, the vapor X is £140+ i believe, and i dont personally think the extra option of HDMI on the vapor X warrants the extra £40? Do you?

[scaryjim]

scan now have the XFX card at £103, the vapor X is £140+ i believe...

I'd be very wary about relying *purely* on price as a guide, especially since there don't seem to be any Vapour-X cards "in the wild" yet. The XFX XXX 4850 @ scan is certainly a massive bargain: I can only assume that XFX cut their channel pricing just as Scan put in a new order. It's quite possible that in 2 - 4 weeks we'll see Vapour-X 4850s at ~ £125 and the XFX cards coming backup to ~ £115, as channel pricing and the exchange rates do their usual merry little dance. Don't forget that the official word on pricing of the Vapour-X series is "between the stock versions and the toxic": Ebuyer currently have Sapphire's stock 4850 @ £124 and the Toxic version @ £142, so the Vapour-X is more likely to be just over £130.

Besides, ask around the graphics / hardware forums here and you'll find a lot of people have had poor experiences of XFXs reliability / support / customer service. You pay for more than just the technology when you buy a graphics card...

[baggieboy]

ScaryJim - you are either employed By Sapphire or 'their Channel' or their biggest ever fan, and never had to return a product to them!!!

I have - i had to return an old Radeon card to my retailer i brought the card from, they then demanded original proof of purchase from me, although the card was nearly 18 months old, and then said i needed to wait for a card to be serviced, when i finally did receive the card back it was a refurbed card replacement - which i kicked off about, only to be told that this is in the terms and conditions of their RMA support...

so if you ask me, especially when my wallets being hit at the moment, i would go for the XFX card.

Unless i get a job like yours where i dont have to worry about things like the above.

[scaryjim]

neither a Sapphire employee nor their biggest fan: however I've never had to return a card to them (although, to be fair, I've only ever bought 2 Sapphire cards). I was just going by what people said in the forums - i.e. XFX products tend towards unreliability and XFX do not give good customer service.

If you want balance, I've also had 2 XFX Graphics cards in the past, one of which had such inadequate cooling that I had to buy a PCI slot exhaust blower to stop it crashing as soon as you put any 3D load onto it.

There you go, happy now?!?

[DeludedGuy]

I also have had 2 Sapphire cards and never had a problem, in fact they are still around somewhere, and I'm sure they are still working.

If the price of this card is £120 I would certainly consider it, even though I know there is a similar performing Asus card.

[dfour]

The XFX card from scan is only on pre-order with no eta so the price could change quite dramataically between now and then for them.