The Sapphire Vapor-X HD5750
Today we are going to take a look at the Sapphire Vapor-X HD5750. While it's not the only one to break away from the reference design, it is the first (to my knowledge) and only to come factory overclocked. Coming clocked at 710MHz/1160MHz versus the reference card's 700MHz/1150MHz gives it a little bit of an edge over the competition.
The Sapphire Vapor-X HD5750 graphics card has twin dual-link DVI outputs as well as HDMI and a DisplayPort. You can use up to 3 monitors at one time with the Vapor-X 5750, though one of the monitors must be equipped with a DisplayPort. The Sapphire Vapor-X HD5750 supports ATI's Eyefinity technology. More information on ATI's Eyefinity can be found here.
Below you can see that the Sapphire Vapor-X HD5750 requires one 6 pin PCIe connector. The Radeon HD 5750 draws only 18 Watts at idle and a maximum power of 108 Watts under full load. The Sapphire Vapor-X HD5750 requires a 450 watt or greater power supply with 1x 75 watt 6-pin PCI Express power connector recommended (600 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX Technology in dual mode).
Once we take the Vapor-X cooler off of the card we get to see what this card is made of. Looking towards the right side of the image below you can see the voltage regulation circuitry. This circuitry has been upgraded by the use of solid capacitors and Sapphire's Black Diamond Chokes. According to Sapphire the Black Diamond Chokes allow the cards to run 10% cooler and 25% more energy efficient. The black diamond choke is used only on the Vapor-X HD5750, as for some reason they are not used on the Vapor-X HD5870.
The Sapphire Vapor-X 5750 is based on the Juniper core and is built on 40nm technology. The Sapphire Vapor-X 5750 has a total of 1.04 billion transistors. The 1GB of GDDR5 memory is supplied by Hynix and is rated for a speed of 1250MHz or 5.0GHz effective.
The Sapphire Vapor-X 5750 has a total of 720 stream processors which is 80 less than the HD48xx series.
Taking a look at the back of the card you can get a clear shot of the CrossFireX interconnects as well as four memory IC's. Arguably the most important piece of information on the back of the card is the serial number. The serial number is required if the card ever needs to be RMA'd. Sapphire backs their card with a two year warranty.
