While our recent look at the Radeon 4770 proved that ATI's powerhouse entry-level boasted decidely mid-range performance in a 40nm setup, we know that the high-end market garners the attention that manufacturers covet. To that end, we took a look at Nvidia's Nvidia's GTX 275 and found it packed quite a performance punch for today's gamers. Of course, no heavyweight goes unchallenged, particularly in the gaming graphics industry, and ATI's counterpoint is their Radeon 4890, positioned to go toe-to-toe against Team Green.

Sapphire is a company known for taking stock ATI products and pimping them up in various ways, often with higher clock speeds, but more importantly, custom coolers to achieve those high speeds. Their innovative Vapor-X heatsink technology is particularly noteworthy, and they've continued this trend with their latest release, the 4890 Vapor-X, which sports a good factory overclock and promises great performance at cooler temperatures.

Today we'll pit the Sapphire 4890 Vapor-X directly against the GeForce GTX 275 and see if there's a knockout blow to deliver.

Thanks go to our friends at Sapphire for providing the Radeon 4890 Vapor-X for this review.

Pioneers in a new era of how data is displayed and games are played, Sapphire shepherds the performance oriented with ground-breaking solutions to an environment that remains in a constant state of flux and ultimate evolution. For over ten years Sapphire has held true to its unwavering commitment, the commitment to deliver the most feature rich and soundly engineered products.