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Tags : 1Gb DDR3   Atomic   H2O   hd3870x2   Reviews   Sapphire   Video Cards   watercooled  

Introduction Specifications Photos and Pictures Installation and Package Test Setup and Procedures Benchmarks: F.E.A.R. (DX9) Benchmarks: Call of Juarez (DX10) Benchmarks: Crysis (DX10) Benchmarks: 3DMark 2005 Benchmarks: 3DMark 2006 Verdict and Conclusion

Sapphire produces the World's ONLY watercooled Radeon HD3870x2 (right out of the box) ... and it's perfect for any hardcore gaming enthusiast

 

INTRODUCTION 

PC watercooling has always been an enthusiast's sacred stomping ground. With machines that can only be described as "insane" ... geeks of all ages just couldn't resist dribbling over a flawlessly made watercooled PC. However, this is all about to change as more and more gamers look towards watercooling. In a recent survey, a whopping 75% of PCs at LAN parties features some sort of watercooling. The notion is ... it's great to have watercooling. I think it's fun and it's got that wow factor, but best of all ... it makes your PC unique. In any watercooling setup, the main component is always the CPU. Lower CPU teps means better overall performance. Watercooling the processor is one thing, but watercooling a graphics card is another story all together. Most enthusiasts will use their existing watercooling setup to accommodate the additional watercooling for the graphics card. This is normally how one would do it. But this time, Sapphire has made it easy for gamers or enthusiast by introducing a totally self-contained and pre-installed watercooling system on their Atomic series.

 

 

Sapphire have already made a lot of innovative products, including the HD3870 Toxic featuring Vapor-X technology. And then, there are the award winning Atomic series ... the same cards but in a nicer packaging.

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So what's next? Well, there's only one thing Sapphire can do ... and that's to produce a high-end enthusiast gaming card based on the HD3870x2 (dual GPUs) with a new and totally self-contained, pre-installed watercooling unit. The package is very impressive to say the least. It comes in a Aluminum flight case with the distinctive Sapphire Atomic logo. Open the case and you'll find extra thick foam padding, which protects the graphics card and watercooling unit. Included near the bottom of the case is the accessory box, containing all the necessary cables, adaptors, instruction manuals, free software and drivers on CD. All-in-all, a very impressive and presentable package from Sapphire. 

 

In this review, our CPU3D review team takes a look at the Sapphire Atomic Radeon HD3870x2 Watercooled. It utilise two slightly overclocked ATI RV670 GPUs @ 860Mhz (default is 800Mhz), with 1Gb of DDR3 ram. What makes is card unique is obviously the pre-installed watercooling unit which is totally self-contained. The L-shaped watercooling unit actually houses the radiator, pump, resevior and 120mm cooling fan ... all of which is powered by a 4-pin molex cable (12v). Since this card card is watercooled, the GPU core temperatures should be lower than a standard GPU on air cooling. This would help tremendously, if you decide to further overclock the graphics card. Before we go any further, here's a brief re-cap on the ATI RV680 (2 x RV670 GPUs). Taken from AMD/ATI's website.

 

 Dual-GPU technology
 Don’t fear cranking up the settings - with dual ATI Radeon™ HD 3870 GPUs working in exquisite precision, you’re ready to dominate the battlefield.

 Over 1 teraFLOPS of GPU compute power
 640 stream processors (320 x 2) deliver the raw horsepower to attack the most demanding graphics applications.

 Incredible performance
 You’ll be blown away by life-like graphics from the latest Microsoft® and future DirectX® 10.1 games, with stunning 3D graphics and shading effects.

 ATI CrossFireX™
 Scale your 3D performance to greater heights quickly and easily with plug-and-play ATI CrossFireX technology that supports up to four GPUs.

-	Radeon HD 3870	Radeon HD 3870X2
Production process	55 nm	55 nm
Stream processors	320	320 x 2
Core clock (MHz)	775	800
Memory clock (MHz)x2	1125	900
Memory / bus (bit)	DDR4 / 256	DDR3 / 256
Bandwidth (GB/s)	72	57.7

 

The real questions on everyone's mind is ... how easy is it really, to install this monster? And what about the price? Surely with a pre-installed watercooling unit, it would cost an arm and a leg. But surprisingly, it's not as expensive as you might think. Sapphire has done well over the past few years, producing good quality gaming cards for users of all types, from budget gamers all the way to high-end enthusiast gamers. The Sapphire Atomic Radeon HD3780x2 Watercooled is no exception ... it's one of the World's first watercooled Radeon HD3870x2 (right out of the box).

 

             

 

We expect the performance of the Sapphire Atomic Radeon HD3870x2 Watercooled to be very good and should outperform the other Radeon HD3870s with no problems at all. But how will it compete against a Geforce 9800GTX?

For our tests, we'll be benchmarking the Sapphire Atomic Radeon HD3870x2 Watercooled with several GPU intensive DX10 games ... with both 4xAA and 16xAF options enabled, as well as your usual 3DMark 2005 and 2006 tests. Our test rig comprises of an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ default 2.4Ghz, DFI LanParty DK X38 T2RB motherboard, OCZ DDR2-1066 2Gb kit, PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 860W PSU and a 19" Dell Ultrascan P990 monitor. All-in-all, it's a decently spec'd system for DX10 gaming.

OK, lets not waste any more time and take a closer look at the Sapphire Atomic Radeon HD3870x2 Watercooled ...  

 

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Introduction Specifications Photos and Pictures Installation and Package Test Setup and Procedures Benchmarks: F.E.A.R. (DX9) Benchmarks: Call of Juarez (DX10) Benchmarks: Crysis (DX10) Benchmarks: 3DMark 2005 Benchmarks: 3DMark 2006 Verdict and Conclusion