Retail Box and Bundle

The retail box for the Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X lists the features that the cardcomes with and also shows that the video card comes with a key to activate the off-road racing game Colin McRae: DiRT2 and the full version of Battlestations Pacific ($27.99). Colin McRae: DiRT 2 is one of the most anticipated racing games of the year and will take full advantage of DirectX 11, adding realism to the racing environment. The game also will have hardware tessellationthat is said to improve the appearance of water and other surfaces, as well as crowd animations. Utilizing the EGO Engine, DiRT 2 should raise the bar for PC gaming and is a definite must-have for PC gamers as it will have cars and tracks twice as detailed as those seen in Race Driver: GRID. This is likely a $50 game title, so to have that included with the other $28 game title in the card's $399.99 purchase price is very nice.

Turning the retail box over, we see even more marketingtext and a statement that says the box is made with 100% recyclable paper. The Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X isn'tlacking any text, so let's take a peek inside.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X bundle included with the graphics card includes a single DVI-to-VGA adapter, a quick installguide, a pair of 4-pin molex to single 6-pin PCIe power adapters, CrossFirebridge, a drivers CD, a product keyfor the PC game Colin McRae: DiRT 2 and the game disc with key for Battlestations Pacific.

Taking a closer look at the VGA driver disc we can see that it also comes with drivers, Adobe Acrobat reader and an online user's manual.  No overclocking utilities are included with this card, which is a shame, really, as it will likely overclock much further than what ATI's OverDrive utility will allow.