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In fast-moving world of hardware development, you can consider ATI's HD 4800 series having well-earned its veteran's pension by now. Released almost a year ago -- back in June of 2008 -- the HD 4800 series has proved quite a success for ATI, putting them squarely in the battle for the price-performance crown, and making them a bigger thorn in NVIDIA's backside.

The foremost member of the HD 4800 series, the HD 4870, has been made in many different molds as different companies have tried out different methods of putting together this high-performance video card. While reference-board design HD 4870's are still selling well at stores, the interesting cards have been coming from a some of the big players in the video card industry, such as today's company: Sapphire. 

The latest from Sapphire is this Vapor-X model of the HD 4870. With some enhanced components and a promise of a more efficient cooler, Sapphire recently unveiled its new look for the HD 4870, the Vapor-X series, with two new cards: a 1GB and 2GB model.

If you are going shopping for a card between $150 and $250, you're going to have a wealth of options to choose from. Heck -- even if you are just shopping for a HD 4870 in particular, you'll have no shortage of different cards to look at. Today we'll take a look at this new HD 4870 from Sapphire, which sells for around the $200 USD mark, and see if it has what it takes to stand out. We will be reviewing the 1GB model.