A Closer Look

The cooler uses a baseplate made from Copper which transfers the heat upward to a large number of fins. The fan sucks in cool air from inside the case, passes it over the fins and exhausts it near the rear of the case.


Two separate heatsinks are installed on top of the BGA GDDR4 memory and the voltage regulation circuitry.


You can use this card in CrossFire with any other Radeon HD 3870.
Also it is possible to run triple or quad-CrossFire next year with this card, called "CrossFireX". But since performance of this is to be determined yet, I would not buy a card only for the purpose of being able to run CrossFireX. Don't forget you will also need to purchase the appropriate motherboard and CPU.


Even though PCI-Express 2.0 has a higher power delivery capability, the card needs a 6-pin power connector for operation. This is also the case on a PCI-Express 2.0 capable motherboard - the power connector is always required. Also it is important to note that this card will work fine on any PCI-E 1.0 or 2.0 motherboard. Both standards are interchangeable. The main benefit of PCI-E 2.0 is that bandwidth per pin is doubled, so a 2.0 x16 link has the bandwidth a regular x32 link would have.


The naked card shows the GPU sitting in the middle and eight GDDR4 memory chips spread around it. Further toward the right of the card, the black ICs, are the voltage regulators which are cooled by another small heatsink.


The GDDR4 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4U52324QE-BC08. With 0.8 ns latency (= 1250 MHz) they are very fast (and expensive).


Just like on the HD 3850 card, the GPU is the AMD RV670. It is fabricated in a 55nm process, with 666 million transistors. Our chip here has been made in week 41 of 2007.