A few weeks ago Sapphire launched the Atomic homepage with content aimed at the enthusiast market. So now we have the first of their enhanced products, the Atomic HD 3870. With this card Sapphire have done all they can to improve on the reference design and in addition to this the overall package has also been enhanced. This is actually one of the true first Radeon HD 3870 cards which comes with their own PCB and improved cooling solution, and overclocked out of the box. These Atomic series will give some extra performance boost, which should improve the gaming experience. Let us take a look at what makes this particular Radeon HD 3870 so special. - DriverHeaven

Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 512MB Video Board Review

The Atomic is packaged in a box which is without doubt the most impressive we have seen to date. It is a metal and plastic design with handle and so looks like a briefcase. The inside of the box is foam lined and when opened the card is in full view with an information pullout resting on top. The number of components included is nothing short of exceptional, for starters we have all of the standard items such as manuals, drivers, video out connector, power cable and CrossFire bridge, and next to that also a bunch of software games bundle. There will also be a voucher included worth $30 to put towards a game of choice.

The basic design of this particular PCB is similar to a reference design, that being PCI Express 2.0 with a 6-pin power connector. There are two CrossFire connectors on the top of the card which indicates the ability to use CrossFireX and there are two dual link DVI ports. The ability to output HDCP signals and HDMI audio and/or video along with full high definition acceleration are also present. The memory on the Atomic is Samsung GDDR4 0.8ns and these are 2.4GHz chips and are running at their rated speed. The core is ATI's RV670 which is a 55nm part featuring 320 unified shaders and DirectX 10.1 support.

Both the memory and core are cooled by Sapphires custom Vapor-X cooler. As with other vapour chamber coolers the theory is the same. Heat is passed from the GPU to the copper base which causes the coolant within the sealed vacuum chamber to change state from liquid to gas. This gas then passes to a higher part of the chamber where it condenses and returns to a liquid state. The liquid then returns to the base of the cooler where the process repeats. The use of this Vapor-X cooler allows Sapphire to set their core speed to 850MHz which equals the ASUS TOP edition card and dual slot cooler.

Anyone reading this who knows the Radeon HD 3870 should be aware that the initial batch of cards released featured a BIOS limitation on core overclocking. On these cards there was no way to pass 860MHz until a new BIOS was released. Unfortunately the Atomic card features this BIOS lock as well and without a BIOS flash the card will run at a maximum of 850MHz core and 2530MHz memory, checked using ATITool. When we flashed the card with a fixed BIOS, the overclock achieved was 891MHz on the core and 2530MHz memory. This provides a small performance boost.

From the moment we saw the metal case containing the Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 we had a hunch this was going to be something very special. The inclusion of such a strong hardware and software bundle adds great value to the card and particular mention has to go to the cold cathode, HDMI cable and money off voucher. It will be interesting to see if any other companies try to compete with Sapphire's incredible package. The single slot cooler is a huge selling point when comparing the Atomic card to any other Radeon HD 3870. Combining this with the very capable thermal dynamics it becomes all the more impressive.

High definition video performance is a great selling point of recent Radeon cards and this particular model keeps the ATI flag flying high. So far so good, however the best is yet to come, gaming performance. The Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 card is the fastest RV670 based card we have seen to date and in every scenario it is a noticeable amount faster than a stock Radeon HD 3870 graphics card.