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Sapphire has really taken a comprehensive look at the bundling strategy for video cards. The HD 4890 comes in a silver box with the Vapor-X logo on the middle of the box. Sapphire has a penguin in an Arctic setting on the box artwork. The main features of the card including GDDR5 memory, DisplayPort, and the included software bundle. Opening the box we find that Sapphire has packaged the card in a plastic anti-static bag with two foam pieces keeping it snugly fit into a plastic cover. Lifting the cover we find a cardboard accessories box with the various hardware and software included inside it. Safe shipping of the accessories and video card is important and Sapphire delivers with the packaging for the Vapor-X card. Hardware-wise, the HD 4890 comes with two 6-pin power adapters and HDMI to DVI adapter. The modern PSU will have connectors for the 6-pin and 8-pin power already installed, but for those with older PSUs upgrading to a new video card, Sapphire is fixing the bundle so it will be included in future cards sold. The HDMI to DVI adapter allows two DVI monitors to be installed. ATI DriversSapphire includes the ATI drivers from 12-01-08 and I would strongly suggest using the latest drivers from ATI's website as they are much newer. Also included are CyberLink's Power DVD 7 and their DVD Suite software. For the user that wants to brag about 3DMarks, Sapphire includes 3DMark Vantage, the latest version of Futuremark's graphics card benchmark. ATI releases a new Catalyst driver every month. The latest release is the Catalyst 9.7 that was released recently for ATI cards. This driver sports a new interface that has the user click on link on the top menu to change the various settings. Tabs for AA, AAA, AF, and more adorn this menu. Windows 7 users will want to use this driver as well as it is the latest driver for the new OS. Using ATI's Overdrive utility, idle temperatures of around 51C were noticed with the fan speed set to default speeds. The Vapor-X HD 4890 2GB GDDR5 card has an idle fan speed of 31% and it is very quiet in operation. The default clock speed of the HD 4890 is 870MHz and the temperature with it at 100% dropped rapidly to 38C idle. Overclocking had great results with 970MHz core clock speed fully stable and 1055MHz memory clock speed fully stable. With the card overclocked the temperatures reached 65C maximum and 53C idle at overclocked settings with a 100% fan speed. Contents:
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