The video card market has been turned on its ear by the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 5xxx series. Currently consisting of the HD 5870, the HD 5850, the HD 5770 and HD 5750, ATI has released new chips to cover every market from $129-369. The launch has been so successful that the cards are in short supply on the normal shopping channels like Newegg and ZipZoomFly if you can buy it at all with shipping dates of 10/31 or later.
Most of the video cards on the market based on the new architecture are totally reference based designs without modification to the PCB or clock speed. New cards have started to come out with modifications including the card I’m reviewing today. Today’s card on the review bench is the Sapphire HD 5750 Vapor-X card based upon the HD 5750 chip ATI released last month. This card takes advantage of Sapphire’s Vapor-X technology and is slightly overclocked over the reference clocks.
