[W1zzard]

Introduction

Sapphire's new HD 4890 Toxic Vapor-X uses Sapphire's exclusive Vapor-X chamber cooling technology which is designed to move heat away from the GPU as quickly as possible. Think of it as a cooling baseplate that has a heatpipe in it.

In addition to the Vapor-X cooler, Sapphire has bumped the clocks of their HD 4890 to 960 MHz core and 1050 MHz engine which is a nice increase from the stock clocks of the HD 4890 reference design.

	GeForce 9800 GT	Radeon HD 4850	GeForce 9800 GTX	GeForce GTS 250 1 GB	GeForce GTX 260	Radeon HD 4870	Radeon HD 4890	Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic	GeForce GTX 275	GeForce GTX 280	Radeon HD 4870 X2	GeForce GTX 285
Shader units	112	800	128	128	192	800	800	800	240	240	2x 800	240
ROPs	16	16	16	16	28	16	16	16	32	32	2x 16	32
GPU	G92	RV770	G92	G92	GT200	RV770	RV790	RV790	GT200	GT200	2x RV770	GT200b
Transistors	754M	956M	754M	754M	1400M	956M	959M	959M	1400M	1400M	2x 956M	1400M
Memory Size	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	896 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB	896 MB	1024 MB	2x 1024 MB	1024 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	448 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	448 bit	512 bit	2x 256 bit	512 bit
Core Clock	600 MHz	625 MHz	675 MHz	738 MHz	576 MHz	750 MHz	850 MHz	960 MHz	633 MHz	602 MHz	750 MHz	648 MHz
Memory Clock	900 MHz	993 MHz	1100 MHz	1100 MHz	999 MHz	900 MHz	975 MHz	1050 MHz	1134 MHz	1107 MHz	900 MHz	1242 MHz
Price	$110	$140	$160	$149	$240	$190	$200	$249	$249	$315	$425	$350

Packaging

Sapphire uses a black high gloss packaging on their card. All the important product highlights are on the front while the back goes into more detail about the card.

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Documentation + Driver CD
• 3DMark Vantage Full Version + Cyberlink PowerDVD + Cyberlink DVD Suite
• CrossFire bridge
• DVI Adapter + HDMI Adapter
• TV out Adapter
• PCI-Express power cables
• TV out cable

The Card

Sapphire uses their own Vapor-X cooler on the card which allows for greatly reduced fan noise. Just like all other HD 4890 cards the card requires two slots in your system.


The card has two DVI ports, the most common output configuration today. If you want to use the card with your big TV screen you can use the included HDMI adapter. In case you need an analog port you can also use the included DVI adapter.
For HDMI Audio, NVIDIA requires you to feed an external audio source, for example from your motherboard's on-board audio, to the card via SPDIF cable. AMD on the other hand has integrated a sound device inside their GPUs which is the easier solution for most users.


You may combine up to four HD 4890 cards in CrossFireX for better performance and image quality. It is also possible to combine HD 4890 cards with HD 4830/4850/4870 but you will take a performance hit because of the mismatched CrossFire configuration.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.

A Closer Look

As you can see, the cooler reminds more of NVIDIA's latest designs. It cools both the memory and the GPU. In the middle of the cooler base sits the copper Vapor-X cooling plate.


The voltage regulation circuitry is cooled by an additional metal heatsink which sits in the airflow of the main cooler.


Instead of two six pin power connectors, Sapphire has chosen to use a six pin and one eight pin connector. You must connect 6+8, just using two six pin power connectors will not work.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Qimonda and carry the model number IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X. With a cycle time of 1.0 ns, they are specified to run at 1000 MHz.


Sapphire uses an ATI reference PCB which means that the dual Volterra voltage regulators are present. They allow software control of the output voltage which means this card allows easy voltmodding for increased overclocking. One voltage regulator controls the GPU voltage, while the other controls the memory voltage.


This is AMD's RV790 GPU. It is identical to RV770, except for improved signal routing which allows higher operating frequencies. It is made on a 55 nm process at TSMC Taiwan, the 959 million transistors occupy 282 mm² of die area.

Test System

Test System
CPU:	Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache)
Motherboard:	Gigabyte X58 Extreme Intel X58 Kindly supplied by Gigabyte
Memory:	2x 1024MB OCZ DDR3 Platinum @ 1140 MHz 6-6-6-19
Harddisk:	WD Raptor 740ADFD 74 GB
Power Supply:	BFG ES-800 800W
Software:	Windows Vista SP1
Drivers:	NVIDIA: ForceWare 181.20, GTS 250: 182.06, GTX 275: 185.63 ATI: Catalyst 9.1, HD 4890: 8.592.1, HD 4770: 8.60

• All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
• All games were set to their highest quality setting

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

• 1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing, No anisotropic filtering. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
• 1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing, 8x anisotropic filtering. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
• 1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing, 16x anisotropic filter. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing, 16x anisotropic filter. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates.

Call of Juarez

Call of Juarez was one of the first DX10 titles available on the market, that's why it was heavily used to demonstrate the benefits of DirectX 10. It runs on the Chrome Engine created by the polish game studio Techland. This first-person shooter game is set in a Wild West theme with the plot unfolding from the perspective of two characters: Billy and Reverend Ray. Each offers a different play style to keep the game interesting. Also included in the game is a "Concentration Mode" which slows down time in hectic situations - a feature first pioneered by the Max Payne Series.

Company Of Heroes

The real-time strategy game Company of Heroes is set during World War II where you take two American companies through several fights all over France to liberate the country from German occupation. Company of Heroes is the first game to use Relic's next-generation engine "Essence Engine" which includes support for HDR lighting, Shader Model 3.0, normal mapping, dynamic lighting and shadows. You are able to zoom in from the tactical view of the battle field to see the individual units fighting. Often you catch yourself admiring the detailed animations of the soldiers while the fight around you is raging.

Crysis

After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their latest shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, the forums were full of "Can my system run Crysis?" threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like correct physics. For example when you fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over leaving a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are by far the best ever seen in a PC game so far, yet the game still runs well on most computers.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

The first-person shooter Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is set in the science-fiction universe of Quake and requires several classes to work together to achieve certain goals on a map. In the campaign mode you gain experience which you can use to buy upgrades for your class. The player gets to pick from five classes of either the Global Defense Force or the Strogg faction. As underlying game engine, the successful id Software Doom 3 engine has been licensed, but several features like MegaTextures have been added, giving the outdoor world a much more detailed appearance.

Far Cry

Far Cry was released in early 2004 by the new development studio Crytek. It quickly became a massive success because it was one of the first titles to take you in a beautiful 3D outdoor world. Far Cry was one of the most demanding games at its time. Even with today's video cards you can still see big differences in frame rates, especially at the higher resolutions.

Far Cry 2

Four years after the success of Far Cry, Ubisoft has published the sequel called Far Cry 2. While the first part was set on an island, Far Cry 2 takes you deep into Africa with game play that resembles Grand Theft Auto much more than the original Far Cry, which was a classical 3D shooter. Ubisoft engineered a completely new 3D engine called "Dunia" which offers a large amount of popular features like DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 support, destructible environments, physics and non-scripted AI while not being as much of a resource hog as Crytek's CryEngine.

FEAR

The first person shooter F.E.A.R, developed by Monolith Game Studios, was released in Fall 2005 and has a great 3D engine that uses a large number of shading and shadow effects to accurately model the game world. In addition to that it features a realistic physics engine that lets you interact with many objects in the game world. The game was voted game of the year by several publications.

Prey

Prey is based on a highly modified 3D engine made by id Software. This first person shooter brought a completely new way of gaming to the genre. In many levels you find yourself walking upside down or on the walls. This adds a completely new aspect to the gaming experience in this genre.

Quake 4

The Quake titles are among the most successful first person games. Developed by id Software, the famous game studio that brought you DOOM, you find yourself in a sci-fi world that is full of aliens and shocking effects. The main focus of the game is the single player story line. Quake 4 puts you on the home planet of the Strogg. In a number of missions you and your fellow marines will encounter all sorts of enemies, including some really huge aliens.

Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory

The Splinter Cell Series is endorsed by popular book author Tom Clancy. In the 2005 title Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory you play the NSA agent Sam Fisher who has to use stealth and finesse to make his way through a number of levels mainly set in eastern Asia. The game is based on a modified Unreal 2 engine with support for HDR, normal mapping, parallax mapping and soft shadows. A patch added Shader Model 2.0 support for ATI in addition to the Shader Model 3.0 support which was already part of the original shipping game.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Before its release in 2007, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was one of the most hyped games of the last years. This RPG/FPS hybrid game is set a few years in the future, after a nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The release of radiation causes strange things like mutations in the nearby area. You take the role of a Stalker who seeks fame and riches in the contaminated area around Chernobyl. The game engine features all the latest buzzwords like HDR, bullet physics, skeletal animation, soft shadows and weather effects. Stalker's vast outside world is richly modeled, you can interact with a large number of objects in the game thanks to the physics engine.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Clear Sky

STALKER Clear Sky is GSC Gameworld's prequel to the 2007 hit "STALKER". Just like in the first part the game is set around the Russian area of Chernobyl and Pripyat, most well known for the nuclear accident that occurred there. You play the role of a mercenary who spends his days in The Zone trying to make a living. The Zone is an area which is affected by so-called anomalies which cause mutants to appear and laws of physics to change. While you investigate these anomalies the plot leads up to the events that happened right before the first game starts. A new in-game faction system encourages you to befriend various groups in The Zone in exchange for information or items. While the graphics of Clear Sky are based on the first Stalker game engine, there are numerous improvements, including support for DirectX10 and depth-of-field/volumetric effects.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 by the famous people from Valve software builds on an improved Half-Life 2 engine to deliver an action packed, team oriented, comic graphics first person shooter game. Even though the game features nice graphics, it tends to be very CPU limited, especially on lower resolutions. Players get to team up being either RED or BLU with a selection of nine classes. Each class offers a different play style, just like in the original Team Fortress games.

Unreal Tournament 3

The fourth game in Epic's highly successful Unreal Tournament Series is simply called Unreal Tournament 3. It is based on the all-new Unreal 3 engine which is a major step forward from the previous engine. The game principle is centered about an arena style gameplay where several contestants try to reach a certain kill count or capture a flag for example. As you would expect from a new 2007 title, the graphics are top notch, with large and detailed textures. One major drawback of the way the engine is designed is that there is no support for Anti-Aliasing.

World In Conflict

The realtime strategy game World In Conflict by Massive Entertainment is set in 1989 taking the player through a fictional conflict during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unlike other RTS games, World in Conflict is not centered around building a base, you command units on the battlefield with a number of reinforcement points available to replace lost troops.
Massive's Masstech Game Engine makes heavy use of level-of-detail techniques which allow you to zoom in closely on the action displaying fights in high-fidelity with a large number of effects.

Folding@home

GPU accelerated computing is the latest trend to speed up computationally intense applications. One of the first projects to implement such a GPGPU method is Folding@home. Participants install a small program on their computer, the "Folding Client", which downloads work units from a server to be processed on the system.
In the past folding has been performed on on the CPU. Recently new clients have been developed for Folding on PlayStation 3, ATI and NVIDIA CUDA.

We used version 6.20r1 to download a work unit and fold it using whatever GPU acceleration is available. Due to the different GPU designs, different types of work unit were used. However, for most Folding users the PPD (Points Per Day) metric is the most important because that's what determines their ranking in the system.

Please note that we will not start multiple client instances. If a manufacturer chooses to implement native support for multiple GPUs, our client will benefit from that however. For comparison: a PlayStation 3 gets about 900 PPD, a Core 2 Duo E8400 about 550 PPD per processor core.

If you want to join the good cause, use team number 50711, which is TechPowerUps own Folding Team.

3DMark03

Futuremark Corporation is the number one player in the world of synthetic benchmarking. The 3DMark series is the most popular test suite for video card testing and is used by gamers, overclockers and manufacturers alike to determine how fast their hardware is. Even though it is a few years old, 3DMark03 can easily stress today's video cards.

3DMark05

Another benchmark from Futuremark is 3DMark05 which comes with four completely new game tests that make massive use of shaders and lighting effects. 3DMark05 is a great test for modern video card architectures - in some tests you are often close to the 30 fps mark, below which your games will feel sluggish.

3DMark06

Even though it's based on Futuremark's 3DMark05, the new 3DMark06 adds new tests for Shader Model 3.0 and HDR rendering. It is also the first 3DMark to incorporate a CPU score into the final 3DMark score. All tests have received an overhaul, for example in the Canyon Flight test you can now see beautiful sun glare effects with the help of High Dynamic Range rendering.

Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs.

Test System
CPU:	Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache)
Motherboard:	Gigabyte X58 Extreme Intel X58 Kindly supplied by Gigabyte
Memory:	2x 1024MB OCZ DDR3 Platinum @ 1140 MHz 6-6-6-19
Harddisk:	WD Raptor 740ADFD 74 GB
Power Supply:	BFG ES-800 800W
Software:	Windows Vista SP1

The three result values are as following:

• Idle: Windows sitting at the desktop (1024x768 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed.
• Average: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Average of all readings (two per second) while the test was rendering (no title screen).
• Peak: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Highest single reading

Sapphire's HD 4890 Toxic Vapor-X has a slightly reduced power consumption in idle compared to the HD 4890 reference. Under load the power consumption is a bit higher which is due to the increased clock speeds. Overall the power consumption is very reasonable.

Fan Noise

In the past years users would accept everything just to get more performance. Nowadays this has changed with people being more aware of the fan noise and power consumption of their graphic cards.
In order to properly test the fan noise a card emits we are using a Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound level meter (~$4,000) which has the measurement range and accuracy we are looking for.


The tested graphics card is installed in a system that is completely passively cooled. That is passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, passive cooling on the motherboard and Solid-State HDD.
This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified) the measurement is conducted at 100 cm distance and 160 cm over the floor. The ambient background noise level in the room is well below 20 dbA for all measurements. Please note that the dbA scale is not linear, it is logarithmic. 40 dbA is not twice as loud as 20 dbA. A 3 dbA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing is a bit different and it is generally accepted that a 10 dbA increase doubles the perceived sound level.

Sapphire's HD 4890 Toxic Vapor-X is fairly quiet in both idle and load. Based on my previous HD 4890 reviews this is the quietest HD 4890 in idle. It seems that the Vapor-X Technology can finally shine. Also the temperatures look very well optimized to me.

Performance Summary

To create this graph we took all performance results of the four resolutions we tested, threw them together and calculated the relative performance of each card, compared to our review sample. In a fifth graph we also combined all tests in all resolutions to calculate the total relative performance of the review sample.

Performance per Watt

This graph was created by taking the relative performance numbers and putting them in contrast to the average power consumption results. To offset power consumption of the rest of the system we subtracted 150 W from the average consumption.

Performance per Dollar

If you are looking for the best bang for the buck, then you will love this graph. We looked up the current USD price of each card on the popular online shop Newegg and used it and the relative performance numbers to calculate the Performance per Dollar Index.

Overclocking

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of ATITool's successor and our benchmarking suite.
The overclocks listed here were achieved with the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. Please note that every single sample overclocks differently, that's why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.



The overclocks of our card are 970 MHz core (1% overclock) and 1100 MHz Memory (5% overclock). Both overclocks are very disappointing but were to be expected since the default clocks are already quite high.

Unlike many other HD 4890 manufacturers Sapphire did not increase the GPU voltage too much to reach higher overclocks. So if you choose to go beyond the stock voltage of 1.4V you will easily reach 1000 MHz GPU clock.

I did a quick run at 1.5V to test this and reached spot on 1000 MHz.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies we ran a quick test of Call of Duty 4 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.


The actual 3D performance gained from the "normal voltage" overclocking is 1.7%.

Temperatures

The temperatures reflect the perfect balance between fan noise and GPU temperature in my opinion. Around 80°C is perfectly safe for any graphics card.

Value and Conclusion

	Sapphire is offering their HD 4890 Toxic Vapor-X for $249.
	Quiet High default clocks Voltage control support for memory and GPU voltages Six + Eight-pin power connector Nice aesthetics
	Very limited overclocking potential No support for CUDA / PhysX
9.4	It looks like Sapphire has struck gold with their HD 4890 Toxic Vapor-X. The card offers considerably improved performance over the HD 4890 reference design and can beat the GeForce GTX 280. It does all that without being noisy, it is much quieter than all other HD 4890 cards I tested so far. It's great that Sapphire finally listened to our constant nagging: "your cards are too noisy". Another plus is that Sapphire has gone with the reference design voltage regulators which means that the card supports voltage control via software for GPU core and memory voltage. Personally I am not sure if there is a gain from going PCI-E 8+6 voltage connectors from 6+6 but it certainly won't hurt. The only thing that I can complain about is that the overclocking potential beyond Sapphire's stock clocks is very limited - we saw only about 1%. However, since Sapphire's card runs at 1.4V, you can up the voltage to 1.5V safely, then you should be able to reach 1 GHz on the core.