A Closer Look

Sapphire has chosen to use a fairly simple cooler design that doesn't require any heatpipes. A central copper core soaks up heat quickly and gives it off to the surrounding fins which sit in airflow created by a fan. Please note that the copper you see is a copper cylinder going all the way to the top of the heatsink - not just a base plate.


Operation of the card requires one six-pin PCI-E power connector. Power consumption is low, but in the worst case slightly higher than 75W which would be allowed without power connector.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ1H24AFR-T2C. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


The GPU voltage is managed by a uP6201BQ voltage controller (same as on many HD 4770 designs).


This is AMD's new Juniper GPU, it comes with 1040 million transistors, and is produced on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan.