Just shy of 18 months after Cypress Pro launched, Sapphire surprises us with a customized ATI Radeon HD 5850 Xtreme. Yes, you read that right - this is an ATI Radeon HD 5850, featuring the Cypress Pro core that originally debuted at just under $300 USD. It's back in the Sapphire HD 5850 Xtreme at $150USD. Boom, HD 6790 headshot!

Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Extreme

The Sapphire HD 5850 Xtreme features a custom PCB design, with heatpipe cooler design and large centrally located axial fan for cooling. The new design includes improved voltage regulation, which combined with Sapphire's TRIXX utility allows for fan profile management, overclocking and voltage adjustment.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Xtreme Specifications

• $149USD SEP

• 40nm Cypress Pro core

• 725MHz engine clock

• 1440 STREAM cores

• 18 SIMD (VLIW-5)

• 1GB GDDR5 VRAM

• 1000MHz (4Gbps QDR) Memory Clock

• 256-bit Memory Interface

• 72 Texture Units

• 32 ROP's

• 27W Idle / 170W Load

• AMD 2-way CrossFireX Support

• 3 outputs: DL-DVI + HDMI 1.3 + DisplayPort 1.1

Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Extreme

This new Sapphire HD 5850 Xtreme is the same size as a GeForce GTX 460, and promises to offer the best bang/buck at the $150 price point. Our investigation today looks at its performance relative to the recently released AMD Radeon HD 6790, and the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series that just became quite expensive looking.