Aug 25, 2011 07:14 GMT  ·  By

Sapphire decided it was high time a new graphics card from the Radeon HD 6000 line got released, so it took one of its better coolers and applied it to a model from the higher half of the set, in terms of performance.

Even though both NVIDIA and Advanced Micro Devices have increased the amount of time used to speak about the upcoming next generation of graphics boards, the current lines are still going strong.

Then again, with how leaks are showing that it will still take months for them to arrive, this is not all that surprising.

In this instance, it is Sapphire that has revealed a new video board, one belonging to AMD's Radeon HD 6000 lineup.

The product in question is the HD 6850 Vapor-X, the name given for the eponymous cooling solution composed of a vapor chamber and a central fan, among other things.

Furthermore, on-board 10-phase power control Black Diamond chokes provide a significant level of overclockability.

Speaking of performance, the card has 1 GB of GDDR5 VRAM (clocked at 4,400 MHz instead of stock 4,000 MHz), as well as 960 Stream Processors.

Meanwhile, the graphics processing unit (GPU) is factory-overclocked from 775 MHz to 800 MHz.

Other specifications include a memory interface of 256 bits, 48 texture processing units, support for UVD (unified video decoder), CrossFireX (multi-GPU configurations) and multiple outputs (HDMI 1.4a, two DVI connectors and a pair of mini DisplayPorts 1.2).

Unfortunately, the company did not disclose what the price of the Sapphire HD 6850 Vapor-X Edition is, though listings should not take overly long to show up, so this final mystery will be unraveled soon enough.

Not long ago, AMD officially lowered the standard price of the HD 6850 in Europe, so it is likely that the item will not leave to big a hole in customers' finances.