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Enough time has passed now that we are beginning to see some non-reference designs of the current top-dog, the HD 5870. In fact, today we will be looking at the very first non-reference design HD 5870. It is from Sapphire, and it is called the HD 5870 Vapor-X.
The 'vapor' in the name comes from the custom cooler Sapphire designed. It is one of the same type that we have seen employed on many other models from prior generations from Sapphire. It utilizes the wonders of vapors to keep things cool. Certainly the HD 5870's seen so far do get hot sometimes, so we look forward to see what this cooler can do.
Right now, if there is one word that can sum up the state of the video card market right now, it would be: shortage. Many models are getting harder and harder to find. From a manufacturing and profit stand-point, the introduction of the HD 5000 series took the bottom out of many Nvidia models. Models such as the GTX 275 and GTX 260 (OC'ed) are able to keep up with the new new-gen new-comers, but are more expensive to put together than AMD's 40nm HD 5000 parts. Thus, there have been shortages of Nvidia parts, and many folks don't expect the supplies to be replenished soon, besides perhaps some key models, such as the still-strong GTX 285 and lower end old, old veteran, the now-labeled GTS 250 video card.
This also puts AMD in the enviable position of being able to keep prices somewhat static -- actually, the price of the HD 5850 and HD 5870 has reportedly raised in some markets, to reflect the fundamental state of the simple supply-and-demand balance. This entire situation has left gamers with an unusually difficult time to come by cards they sought after.
However Sapphire -- producing more cards than almost anyone -- will be trying their best to keep store shelves stocked with new models, such as the HD 5870 Vapor-X. Let's take a gander at what this card is all about on the next page.
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That's the next gen boost for you TBH.
The problem with gaming benchmarks, especially comparing old and new gen, is that it doesn't take into account how much of an improvement it would bring, visually, it just goes by pure performance. THe 5870 is no slouch in the FPS category (usually beating everything but the 295), but the improvements, visually, are not taken into account in those tests.
BTW: Is it just me, or shouldn't the NEW generation of cards have more interface memory than the old? the BFG 295 has way more than any of the others? Granted, I don't really know what it's for, but it strikes me that if an older gen card can have so much, why can't a new one? More is better, I'd think, unless it provides no noticable benefit and increases the cost...
The 5870 has plenty of memory bandwidth for a single GPU, and 1GB handles most games at 2560x1600. Of course, 2GB models will follow in time, as will an X2 (2GPU) version.
I'm not talking about the GPU RAM memory, I'm talking about "Interface Memory". It's in the 'bits' size range.
You're correct that using a wider interface costs more, partly because of the number of traces to the GPU. It's also difficult to connect so many traces for a wide interface to the smallest GPUs. AMD/ATI seem happy to stick with 256bit on their high end, and get sufficient bandwidth by using the fastest DDR5 (effectively twice the clock speed of GDDR3).