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Surprisingly, the box art for the Vapor-X does not
include a scantily clad woman with either guns or a huge sword.
Instead, the Vapor-X features an Antarctic scene, complete with
local wildlife, perhaps as an attempt to convey the "cool" nature of
the Vapor-X's Vapor Chamber.

The back of the box shows off the features of the
HD4850, including its Vapor-X cooling, native HDMI support,
Dual-Link DVI, HDMI audio, as well as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support.

Inside the box, all the bits and pieces are safely
packed away within a pre-formed "egg-crate" style box.

The card itself is much different looking than the
reference HD4850. Much of this is due to the fact that
Sapphire has fitted the HD4850 board with its own custom cooling
design.

The fan Sapphire has chosen to cool the Vapor-X
consists of eleven small, thin blades. Instead of electing to
"push" the hot air through a vent on the PCI bracket, this heatsink
blows directly onto a heatsink, in a design reminiscent of the stock
Intel CPU cooler.

The end of the card reveals to us the six-pin
PCI-e power connector, as well as the new Sapphire "Black Diamond"
power choke. Sapphire claims that this new power choke will
reduce temperatures by 10% and increase energy efficiency by 25%.

The HD4850 sports three different ports: a DVI,
VGA, and native HDMI. I find the choice of a VGA port here to
be a bit odd, considering that DVI is easily converted to VGA via an
adapter, but VGA is not easily converted back to DVI. I would
much rather see two DVI ports and an HDMI, with an included DVI to
VGA adapter.

The back of the HD4850 Vapor-X reveals an
interesting surprise: this design is actually different from the AMD
reference board. The giveaway here is the location of the four
mounting holes; while on the reference card, the core is closely
lined up with the PCI-e socket, on the Vapor-X, the core is moved
back towards the rear of the card. At the top of the picture,
you can see the dual Crossfire connections, allowing up to four
cards, if you have a motherboard to support it.

The bundle includes a Molex to PCI-e 6-pin
adapter, as well as a flexible Crossfire bridge. Also included
but not shown are a manual, as well as the usual copies of CyberLink
PowerDVD, CyberLink DVD Suite, FutureMark's 3DMark Vantage, and the
Sapphire Ruby Rom.
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