Sapphire 5870 Vapor X

It Has Begun

Every so often it is inevitable that computer manufacturers start to already improve upon their products. This past year we have seen a lot of new computer components hit the shelves, a lot of times these new products come in so fast and so furious that we as consumers can barely keep up.

Last November we were all amazed at the shear raw power of the Intel Core i7 1366 CPU's had to offer us, and with this newer CPU came newer capabilities. Then we saw the Introduction of SSD's (Solid State Drives). These new devices were brought upon consumers, again raising the level of performance we could get from our computers another notch.

Just as things seemed to quiet down a little bit, Microsoft threw us a new OS named Windows 7. This OS quickly became extremely popular among users, because it offered us the stability, and a unique user interfacing that we all been longing for in an OS. As always with a new OS comes newer capabilities, the one capability in specific is Direct X 11. Like its predecessors Direct X 11 promises, a completely new way of interaction with our games (environment). The time between February and September was a dead season. Mostly during this time the major computer manufacturers were re-optimizing their already proving hardware. There's been a lot of discussions and or speculation, on who would come out with what first, who would be the most powerful.

Then Intel Introduced the Core i5/i7 1156 socket CPU, with this new CPU type pretty much ended the reign of the old Intel Socket 775 CPUs life. Just recently on October 22nd Microsoft released Windows 7 to the public. Around this same time, ATI released the very first Direct X 11 video card, the 5870.

Like always we were all amazed at the shear raw power this single core video card offered us. Being able to compete with the mighty 4870X2 video card, and being able to challenge the reigning performance king, the 295GTX video card. Sapphire has brought us another 5870 video card, but this time its not the reference design we have all seen around the web, this time Sapphire brings us the 5870 Vapor X.

Without further ado, lets hide out in the Dragons Lair, break out "Mini Me" from moth balls, stick in the most powerful single core video card, heat things up a bit and lets see what the Sapphire 5870 Vapor X has to offer us.