Introduction

AMD's current flagship graphics card is the Radeon HD 3870 X2. It comes with two RV670 GPUs on the PCB that run in CrossFire mode. As you can imagine this setup produces quite a bit of heat.

Sapphire who is one of AMD's biggest board partners has always been looking for innovative and exclusive solutions that will give them an advantage over the competiton. The Sapphire HD 3870 X2 Atomic Edition is just another example of that. It comes with a pre-filled, completely self contained watercooling solution on the graphics card. The additional cooling potential that watercooling offers also allows Sapphire to increase the operating frequency of the card.

Not only the card itself has been pimped out, the package itself screams "premium product" with its huge silver metal case and tons of accessories. Of course all this comes at a price. The Sapphire HD 3870 X2 Atomic Edition retails for around $550 with limited quantities available.

Packaging & Contents

This metal case packaging was introduced by Sapphire with the HD 3870 Atomic Edition (non-X2). For the HD3870 X2 Atomic it is even bigger. When you buy this card with your hard earned cash you will definitely get something to carry home proudly. However, I'm not sure how airport security would like the "ATOMIC" logo and text.



You will receive:

• Graphics card with pre-installed watercooling
• HDMI Cable
• 2x PCI-Express power adapter
• 2x DVI Adapter, 1x HDMI Adapter, TV Out cable
• CrossFire Bridge
• Manual
• Driver CD, Power DVD full version, 3DMark06 full version

The Card

The waterblock which covers most of the card looks extremely sexy. When looking at the card from the side you can see that the card requires two slots, with plenty of space left though.


The card has two DVI outputs, in case you need an analog VGA port you can use one of the two included DVI adapters. The included HDMI adapter lets you use this card with HDMI+HDCP+Audio, perfect for your media PC. An HDMI cable to connect your TV is also included in the package.


The tubing selected is thick black rubber which can do some tight bends without kinking. A 90° joint connects the tubing to the waterblock, you can rotate the tubing around the joints freely which helps you arrange everything in your case during installation.


Sapphire has chosen not to cool the memory chips on the back of the graphics card, while the chips on the front are cooled by the water block. This means that while overclocking memory, the chips on the back will get hotter and hotter and the ones on the front stay cool, effectively limiting the memory overclock.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article. I reused the pictures of the original HD 3870 X2 review, because the Sapphire card uses the exact same PCB.