Elite Bastards take a further look at the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X 1GB video card. This card uses a core clock speed of 870MHz (just 20MHz higher than a reference board, and below the 900MHz seen on other cards), while the GGDR5 memory on the board is clocked at 1050MHz, representing a 75MHz increase over a reference board. The four outputs on the back of the card comprise of a VGA, dual-link DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connector.

As we discussed at the climax of our XFX Radeon HD 4890 XXX review last week, given the already impressive performance available to the Radeon HD 4890 in its reference configuration it's difficult to particularly recommend boards with modest factory overclocks. In pure clock speed terms this is also true of Sapphire's Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X - Despite offering a more intriguing blend of core and memory overclocks compared to other boards we've seen that have ramped up core clock speed alone (although the Vapor-X would have gained more from a slightly higher core clock boost in all honesty), we still only see a gain of around 3% or so under most typical gaming workloads, which isn't particularly enough to differentiate the Vapor-X from reference-based solutions by way of performance alone.

Thank goodness then for the inclusion of that vapour chamber cooling solution on this board, which suddenly makes the offering as a whole far more compelling. While Sapphire's part here is comparable to a reference card in terms of temperature measurements, it achieves those temperatures in a noticeably quieter fashion - A definite bonus when compared to AMD's stock cooler which can get really rather noisy when the going gets tough.

Where the Vapor-X's custom cooler really gets to strut its stuff however is when it comes to overclocking - Quite simply, the Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X is a beast in this department, leaving other boards that we've tested standing when it comes to breaking out Catalyst Control Center's OverDrive functionality and cranking up those clock speeds. If you're willing to tweak and overclock the board yourself, judging by our particular sample you can expect a performance boost of 10% or so from the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X, compared to next to nothing from boards using AMD's reference solution. Now that's a performance increase we can give the thumbs up to and get behind.

At the time of writing we're still waiting for definite UK pricing information for Sapphire's Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X, but overall our results and feelings couldn't be clearer. If you're looking to run a Radeon HD 4890 board out of the box without any additional tweaking or overclocking, then this offering gives you a quieter cooler but nothing hugely compelling in performance terms. If you're willing to overclock your new purchase however, you'll have a lot to gain from picking up a Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X, which is an overclocking monster under that unassuming-looking cooler.