The Atomic branding on the Radeon HD 3870 card just sounds high-end, and we eagerly awaited for it to show us that Sapphire still has what it takes. Sapphire took RV670's GPU and had a green light to play with GPU and memory clocks, and of course, to develop a new cooling system. The reference design is usually good enough to keep the card temperatures at bay, but we and every other enthusiast out there always want better and more efficient cooling. For the new technology to develop it takes time and a lot of effort, at least if you want to have something good and revolutionary. So how did Sapphire actually solve this burden and came to Atomic edition with improved cooling? - FudZilla

Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Atomic Video Card Review

Sapphire has taken a shorter route and took Vapor Chamber technology and effectively implemented it to cool down the graphics card, branding it Vapor-X GPU cooling. The cooler was named Atomic, and the same brand was just passed on to the card, Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Atomic edition. The Vapor-X cooler works similar to heatpipe technology, but it is much more advanced, and it uses clean water and a process called water vaporization. In the process of cooling water gets vaporized by heating, and vapor fills the vacuum chamber. The chamber has low air pressure, which enables water to evaporate much faster.

An important role is played by three layers in the vapor chamber, a vaporization wick, a condensation wick and a transportation wick. The GPU and memory are in direct contact with the vacuum chamber and they represent the heat source that heats the vaporization wick. The created vapor then moves freely in all directions toward the colder part of the chamber where it comes in contact with cold parts of cooler air and becomes plain water again. The condensation wick then takes that water and the transportation wick routes it back to the vaporization wick. The good side of this type of cooling, is the single slot design.

Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 is based on the RV670 GPU, which is works at 775MHz for reference cards. It was expected for Sapphire to overclock this card, and they decided that 825MHz is the magical number. This is a boost of just 50MHz, but it is as far as it goes with single slot cooling. We managed to push it all the way to 860MHz, which is a better result, but the card was completely stable only at 845MHz. The memory is also overclocked and works at 2400MHz for 512MB of GDDR4, which is not that bad when compared to the default 2250MHz. The card uses Samsung 0.8ns memory chips, rated at 2400MHz.

No matter how Sapphire tries to make a hero out of the Radeon HD 3870 card, Atomic is still based on the RV670 GPU, which is no match for the G92 GPU of the GeForce 8800 GT card. But even then the difference is not that huge when you consider that the Atomic card is cheaper, has full HDMI with audio, and that you get a three meter long HDMI cable. The Atomic HD 3870 is a single slot cooling solution card with a cooler that is much better and quieter then reference, and the idle temperatures are the same. Atomic's specially designed cooler is based on vapor chamber technology and managed to be quite cooler.

If you need space, and you don't like the dual slot cooling solution, then the Sapphire Atomic HD 3870 is definitely the card for you. With plenty of add-ons and software that you get with the card, don't forget the nice aluminum briefcase that can be used for something else when you place the Atomic card in your system. We can sincerely recommend the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Atomic edition for gaming, as well as for multimedia purposes.