Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic Review - PAGE 1

Sapphire Technologies is getting a bit bold today, with our Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic. The Atomic is the fastest series of cards Sapphire is set to release, and the HD 4890 is the fastest ATI GPU currently available. So what happens when you pair both these things? Fast happens!

Helping the Atomic on its quest to achieve nuclear fission is the patented Sapphire Vapor-X cooler, which we looked at with our review of the HD 4870 Vapor-X in late March. Will it be enough cooling to keep the Atomic from a meltdown? We'll have to see.

The HD 4890 itself was first launched on April's Fools Day. But it proved not to be a joke with performance a step up from the popular HD 4870, with GDDR5 memory employed to tap the full potential of the powerful RV790 GPU. The HD 4890 has helped ATI battle against lower-priced, fast offerings of the 2nd version of overclocked GTX 260 (with 216 shaders) cards, GTX 275, and the heavier firepower GTX 285 cards.

It is almost hard to believe that a new generation of video cards will offer even greater performance that today's top performers, such as the HD 4890. The HD 4890 was made to cut through any game out right now without much of a challenge.

Does the heavily overclocked Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic have enough extra energy to propel it beyond other HD 4890 cards, and the rest of the competition?