Sapphire R7 250 Ultimate Passive 1GB GDDR5 Review

A Closer Look

The aesthetic design is very stylish and the elaborate heatsink design really does take centre stage.

The top has an interesting design where the heatsink curves over behind the graphics card and above the PCI slot height. We’ve also got a blue PCB, not my favourite but each to their own.

The heatsink also overhangs the PCB in length as well as height terms. The length is 19cm or 7.5 inches

Here you can see in more detail the strange top heatsink, presumably this is to take advantage of heat convection inside a computer case.

The heatsink has four 6mm heat pipes, two leave at the bottom and two leave at the top. Each feeds into a totally independent heatsink.

The card effectively takes up three PCI slots when you consider the extrusion from the rear of the PCB. The bulky design all but rules out compact HTPC usage scenarios.

The rear I/O has Dual Link DVI-I (VGA compatible with provided adapter), HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2 MST (Amen!). The inclusion of the DP port means 4K at 60Hz is possible – this can therefore make a great choice of card for driving 4K content, even if you won’t be able to make a compact HTPC to use it.