A Closer Look

Sapphire's Vapor-Chamber cooler uses two heatipes and a large baseplate to keep the card cool.


The card requires a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector. This configuration is good for up to 150 W of power draw.


For voltage control the card uses the ST L6788A chip, which is the same as on many HD 5770 models. While it does offer software voltage control it severely lacks in the overclockers department. For example, it is not possible for software to read the current voltage, unless the chip is running on manual voltage mode (which is not the case when the card is at stock, with stock drivers).


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Elpida, and carry the model number W2032BBBG-50-F. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


AMD's Cape Verde graphics processor introduced a new shader architecture, it is also the second GPU to be produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC. The transistor count is 1.5 billion.