Sapphire HD5850 1GB Video Card Review :: Card

Card

Sapphire logo

Fan

PCI Express

Sapphire uses the same card design with their HD5850 as the reference design from the cooler to the PCB layout. The front of the card has a female with two swords that is very reminiscent of Ruby, ATI’s mascot. The name of the card as well as the Sapphire logo is emblazoned on the center of the card. The fan is a 47 fin fan with the ATI Radeon Premium Graphics logo on it.

Crossfire bridges

6-pin power

Top View

Rear View

The top of the card has two Crossfire bridges to offer higher performance with two or more cards. ATI allows up to four graphics cards to be installed on the same motherboard assuming the motherboard has enough slots to hold four cards. Connect the cards with a Crossfire bridge, make sure power is provided to the cards and turn the computer on.

Back of card

GPU mount

Two slots

IO

The rear of the card has the two 6-pin power connectors for the card. The HD 5850 takes up more power than provided by the PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot and the modern PSU will generally have more than two 6-pin power connectors on it. The back of the card has the graphics chip mounting bracket, the Part Number and Serial Number stickers. Here is also where the RoHS sticker lies.

The front of the card is a little different than the other HD 5850 card I reviewed. There are two Dual Link DVI-I connectors are located. The most common monitor type in existence today uses DVI connections. There is also a HDMI port and a DisplayPort output. These are the other monitor types in general use today on most computers. Using the EyeFinity software, you can attach up to three monitors to this card.