Introduction
01
AMD released the high-end
Radeon
HD 5870 graphics card just over
a month
ago. Priced at £300 for the range-topping model, the DX11
architecture has since spawned the £200
Radeon
HD 5850 and sub-£150
Radeon
HD 5770 and HD 5750 GPUs.
Looking at the Radeon HD 5800-series, AMD and its partners have been
able to keep prices high for the simple reason that NVIDIA does not
have a range of DX11 GPUs in the market place. Rather, we will need to
wait until the
Fermi
architecture is made available
in Q1 2010.
Whilst AMD has a commanding time-to-market lead for DX11 hardware,
stock of Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 has been patchy, to say the least.
In an interesting move, Sapphire is launching a pre-overclocked version
of the hard-to-find HD 5870. Dubbed Vapor-X, it's a path that AMD's
largest AIB has trodden many times before.
Is it worth forgetting about the reference card and opting for a
Sapphire-cooled model? Read on to find out.
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