Overclocking/ Thermal Performance

To overclock the Vapor-X we initially used the inbuilt overclocking utility which is accessed through the driver control panel. ATI Overdrive allows us to move sliders to increase the clock speed manually but ATI offer an additional step, Auto-Tune where the software attempts to find the maximum overclock on its own.

For the Vapor-X card we were able to hit the core limit of Overdrive with ease and then manually tuned the GPU using Rivatuner. This gave us a maximum core speed of 845MHZ. Memory topped out at a little under 1100MHz and was detected by the auto-tune process.

Temperatures
The temperatures below were measured using Everest Ultimate and show the GPU readings when at the desktop and when under 100% load.

As the results below show, the performance of the Vapor-X cooler is excellent at its default/auto settings. Idle temperatures are lower than the reference design by four degrees Celsius with load temperatures an impressive twelve degrees lower. When we set the Sapphire fan speed to 100% in the driver control panel the noise levels do not increase significantly and we are rewarded with a huge drop in temperatures. The end result is a card which is 28 degrees lower than the reference model under full load!