!: spin of Sapphire Vapor-X Hd 5750 1Gb Gddr5 Graphics Card

Introduction

The Radeon 5000 series of graphics cards were rather recently released by Amd/Ati and for the very first time in a merge of years, Amd/Ati (hereafter referred to as only Amd) is back in the execution lead. Nvidea will release their next generation of graphics cards rather soon but no date is set and very tiny facts about it has leaked to the press.

Just a merge of weeks back Amd released the 5850 and the 5870 graphics cards which were very well received in reviews and by consumers. I did a describe of an Asus 5850 card myself.

Just a merge of weeks later Amd release the Hd 5970 which is a dual Gpu card with the code name "Hemlock", a very powerful and costly card. You can check out reviews at testseek.com on it. Here's the current lineup from Amd:

I already discussed the news with the Radeon 5000 series in my Asus Hd 5850 describe so I'm not going to repeat all things again. Suffice to say, the new generation has some new great characteristics. First, the chips are made in the new 40nm technology which promises lower power consumption and less heat. Secondly, the Ati EyeFinity technology makes it inherent to associate up to three Monitors to each card which means a total of 6 Monitors in CrossFireX. Other leading characteristics are the Ati Stream (Gpu acceleration), Open Cl (Api for processing in parallel Gpu-Cpu) and Directx 11 support.

Engineering Specifications: Sapphire Vapor-X Hd5750 1Gb Ddr5

Ok, sufficient is enough; let's have a look at the specifications of the Sapphire Hd 5750 Vapor-X 1Gb Ddr5:

Sapphire 5750 Hd Steam 1Gb Ddr5

Gpu Juniper Pro (Radeon Hd 5870)

Technology 40nm

Stream processors 720

Texture units 36

Rops 16

Gpu Speed 710 Mhz (700 Mhz Hd 5750)

Memory 1Gb Gddr5 (1Gb/512Mb Gddr5 Hd 5750)

Memory speed 4640 Mhz (4600Mhz)

Bus width 128bits

Memory bandwidth 108Gb/s

Cooling system Steam, double slot

Connectivity 2 Dvi-I

Hdmi

DisplayPort

Compatibility with CrossFireX Yes

External power connectors 1 6 x Pci-E of pin

Maximum power consumption 108W (load)/18W (rest)

Supported technologies DirectX 11, DirectX 10.1n, Ati Power Play, Ati Avivo, Dxva 1,0 & 2,0, Open Gl 3,2 (G.), Dolby True Hd and Dts-Hd Audio Masters, Ati Stream, Ati Eyefinity.

First Impressions: 5750 Sapphire Vapor-X Hd 1Gb Ddr5

On the box Sapphire emphasizes the Vapor-X technology and all the new Amd technologies discussed above.

The card is secured in a card board box and enclosed by the usual anti static plastic bag.

The included Accessories are: a manual; a Cd with drivers and utilities; the application "ArcSoft SimHd"; a coupon to download the Dirt2 game (supports DirectX 11); 2 molex to 6 pin Pcie adapter cables; a Dvi-Vga adapter and a CrossFireX bridge.

In Detail: Sapphire Vapor-X Hd 5750 Vapor-X 1Gb Ddr5

The card itself absolutely looks impressive with its weighty cooling solution. I have had the occasion to see models of the 5750 from quite a few manufacturers and the Sapphire card comes out on top.

The cooling explication occupies a double slot which may be a disadvantage because this card must be rated as a medium range card and many users prefer particular slot cards in this segment. Amd/Ati sets the farranging rules from which the manufacturers can build their cards and they often leave rather small margins which I guess must be the calculate why I have yet to see a 5750 particular slot card.

The technology used by the cooling theory Vapor-X has its origins in the aerospace industry. The cooling liquid, (in this Case water) becomes steam on a hot covering (the Gpu) and the resulting steam is condensed when it comes in touch with a colder covering which turns the steam into liquid again and returns to the hot covering again and so the process repeats itself. Sapphire claims that the Vapor-X theory is much more sufficient than the reference cooling system, up to 7 degrees.

In the right hands, less heat means less noise. And this is also an additional one characteristic of the Vapor-X system.

In order to help the Vapor-X theory to cool the liquid that circulates in its interior, Sapphire has installed an 80mm fan which is perfectly integrated with the black plastic cover. One of the sides of the plastic cover holds the Sapphire logo which glows blue when the theory is running. Check out the image below to see what I'm talking about.

The "Black Diamond" condensers which caused some buzz in the commerce are included on this card. The aluminum polymer in these condensers is classic to the one used one in "normal" aluminum condensers. According to Sapphire, these condensers are 25% more vigor sufficient than normal condensers.

The card has an extra 6 pin Pcie power connector as you can see from the image below.

The 5750 actual has two CrossFireX connections although due to the inefficiency of the Catalyst drivers, it is not recommended to setup more than two cards.

The memory units are graphic on the Pcb of this card. They are four high quality Hynix Gddr5 chips.

There are four video exits on this card, two standard Dvi-I; a Hdmi and a DisplayPort. This should satisfy the needs of even the most demanding users. The card is only 185 mm long and thus fits in most Cases.

Test System

These are the Components in my test system:

Test equipment

Processor Intel Core 2 Quad 9300 @ 3.245 Ghz

Cpu cooler Zalman Cnps9900A Led

Motherboard Gigabyte Ep45C-Ds3R

Graphics card Sapphire Hd 5750 Vapor-X 1Gb Gddr5

Soundcard Integrated

Memory Ocz Reaper Hpc Ed Ddr2 1150 2×2Gb (5-6-6-18)

Hard disk Seagate Barracuda 7200,12 500 Gb

Power supply Corsair Hx850W

Case Cooler scholar 690 Pure

Operating theory and software

Operating system Windows 7 64bits

System Drivers Catalyst 9.11

DirectX August 2009

Benchmarking software 3D Mark 06

3D Mark Vantage

Furmark 1.7

Unigyne Heaven Benchmark

Games The Last Remnant

Tom Clancy´s Hawx

Street Fighter Iv

They reside Evil V

Weak May Cry 4

Stalker Clear Sky

Weapon 2

Officers' Club of Revolutionary Armed military Cry 2

Crysis Warhead

Other software Cpu-Z 1.49

Gpu-Z 0.3.7

Occt 3.1

Here are screen shots of my test theory configuration:

Benchmarking Tests

Sadly I received this card a tiny too late to be able to test it on my old test theory on which I have made many graphics card tests. This means I will have to criticism on the numbers without having any real references to results from old tests. I'll try to be as objective as possible.

It's not a hidden that Amds cards often get surprisingly high scores in the FutureMark benchmarking programs (3D Mark 06 and 3D Mark Vantage). And this time was no irregularity as you can see from the graphs above.

The Unigine tests of the DirectX 10 and Direct 11X was provocative to me because of the results I got with the same tests on the Asus Hd5850 card a merge of weeks back. One of the main marketing points of the DirectX 11 is that it is supposed to be much faster than its predecessor. With the Hd 5850 I got the opposite results and as you can see from the graphs above, the same goes for the 5750 card. Obviously Amd are having troubles here. Hopefully we will see improvements with the release of new Catalyst drivers.

Gaming I

The execution of the Radeon Hd 5750 is spectacular. It is able to assert a high Fps rate with all the Games in this first series. It had no problems when I beefed up the resolution and turned on filters. The fact that it includes 1Gb of Gddr5 with a bandwidth of 108 Gb/s must be what finally keeps the smoothness in the Games going even with filters on.

Gaming Ii

In the second battery of games which includes the most demanding games, the limitations of the Hd 5750 comes to light. Although it doesn't preclude us from enjoying the games altogether, it is clear that this is a mid range card. In favor of Hd 5750 it is indispensable to say that even the incredibly powerful Hd 5850 had some troubles with these games with all the settings at max. Considering that the Hd 5850 has double the number of stream processors compared to the Hd5750 it is fair to say that the Hd 5750 is a very potent card.

Overclocking, Cooling And Power Consumption

The release of the Hd 5750 brings power to the medium range segment. Up till now, I haven't said much about its overclocking abilities but reports from other reviews and forums have been positive. Therefore I was very eager to test a Hd 5750 card myself and see of the overclocking inherent absolutely was as good as I had heard. I cannot deny that I got even happier when I learnt that I would be able to test a Hd 5750 with the Vapor-X technology.

Indeed, the overclocking capacity of this card is high. Check out the following screen shots which I obtained without modifying voltages but by only using Catalyst operate Center.

After having tested innumerable combinations, I received a stable configuration at 860 Mhz for the Gpu and 1345 Mhz for the memories. This means an growth of the default numbers of 23% for the Gpu and 17% for the memories (percentages was calculated based on the values for the reference model with 700 Mhz for the Gpu and 1150 Mhz for the memories).

The Vapor-X cooling theory obviously does a phenomenal job. In the following graph you can see the temperatures when the card is in Idle and Full Load modes. The Idle temperatures were measured after the theory had been running for half an hour without any load. The Full Load numbers were taken after the theory had been in full load (using Furmark 1.7) for a half an hour. The room temperature was 17ËsC.

The Vapor-X technology clearly does a lot to keep the temperatures down. It was a long time ago I saw these low numbers at full load. I say it again; the Vapor-X does a great job.

The noise level is always hard to talk about since it's a very subjective thing. The fan can be set manually or automatic. While my overclocking the fan was set to regulating itself and it rotated at 50% of the max speed. I think that the noise it made on these levels ware perfectly Ok but when it goes above it becomes noticeable and somewhat annoying.