Conclusions

As we mentioned in our introduction, the Radeon HD 4850 has become like a pair of comfy old slippers, so well-versed are we in what it's capable of.  In short, gaming at 1680x1050 is a breeze even with anti-aliasing in place, and quite frequently 1920x1200 isn't beyond the realms of possibility either, serving up excellent performance at its particular price point.  Then you have top-notch DVD and High Definition playback, DirectX 10.1 support and the like to add the cherry to the top of that particular cake.

If you're after squeezing every last drop of performance out of this SKU, then the use of reference clock speeds on the Radeon HD 4850 Vapor-X may be a little disappointing to you if you're not the kind of person to take the plunge and perform said clock speed increases yourself, but if you don't mind "getting your hands dirty" (and using AMD's own OverDrive tool within Catalyst Control Center is hardly a high-risk exercise) then you should find more than enough headroom to boost performance significantly judging by the results we obtained with our particular sample.

Where the Radeon HD 4850 Vapor-X really shines however is in terms of its cooling solution - Not particularly surprising, considering it's the real selling point of the board.  We've been a bit of fan (with every pun intended) of Sapphire's vapour chamber cooling ever since it first emerged in the market, and since then the company seems to have refined its usage further with each iteration, to the point where the Radeon HD 4850 Vapor-X proves itself to be well and truly in the mix when it comes to the coolest Radeon HD 4850 boards on the market, while also sitting pretty as amongst the quietest.  Getting the noise/cooling balance right is one of the most important facets of any modern graphics board, and Sapphire have pretty much perfected it with this part.

In essence then, this isn't the fastest Radeon HD 4850 out of the box for obvious reasons, but it is one of the coolest and quietest, and if that aspect of buying a new graphics board is important to you then the Radeon HD 4850 Vapor-X is hugely impressive, a top-class blend of low temperatures and low noise.  All that remains is to see how pricing for this board shakes up once it hits UK retail stores properly - At present, the only site listing this card has it priced above a Radeon HD 4870, so with a little patience and shopping around hopefully there will be some good deals to be had.

Product information

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Vapor-X

- Vendor web site
- Vendor product information

Recommended retail pricing (at time of going to press):

B4U Direct - £194.61 including VAT

Many thanks to Sapphire for providing the sample for this review

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