After suffering through most of 2007 without a compelling mainstream lineup to counter NVIDIA's GeForce 8 series cards in the $150-300 range, ATI is finally back with a pair of GPU's that have everyone buzzing, the Radeon HD 3850 and the Radeon HD 3870. Sporting codenames like Gladiator and Revival, the Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 came at just the right time for AMD. Many gamers were disappointed with the performance of previous mainstream offerings like the GeForce 8600 GTS and Radeon HD 2600 XT. The biggest competitor by far to the Radeon HD 3800 series is the GeForce 8800 GT, but cards based on this GPU sell for more than these cards. - FiringSquad

Sapphire Radeon HD 3800 Series Video Card Review

With the initial GPU launch now behind them, AMD's board partners are now focusing on their 2nd generation Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 cards. Many of these newer boards ship with custom cooling and/or higher clock speeds than the early Radeon HD 3800 series cards that were released last year. Sapphire is one of the first out of the gates with cards that fit in this category. Today we're taking a look at their flagship Radeon HD 3870 card, the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Atomic and their high-end Radeon HD 3850 board for silent PC fans, the Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 Ultimate.

Sapphire's Ultimate cards have traditionally been targeted towards hardware enthusiasts looking to build a silent, or near silent PC. While there have been a couple of exceptions to this rule, for the most part, Sapphire's Ultimate line has accomplished this by integrating heatpipe cooling exclusively on their Ultimate cards. With a heatpipe in place cooling the GPU, a fan isn't necessary to keep the chip cool. This allows the card to run silently. At first glance the Sapphire cooler resembles Zalman's VNF100 heatpipe, but it's definitely a slightly different design and still remains a singel slot design as such.

The second RV670 card we're looking at today is Sapphire's Radeon HD 3870 Atomic. And just like the Radeon HD 3850 Ultimate edition, the Atomic's most distinguishing feature is its cooling, but while the Ultimate edition runs at the stock Radeon HD 3850 clock speeds, the Atomic board is overclocked from the factory for additional performance. Again we are talking about a single slot card, and this is mainly accomplished by the Vapor chamber technology. Sapphire's Vapor chamber technology works much like a conventional heatpipe but better. The Vapor-X cooler outperformed the stock cooler, while generating little noise.

Thanks to their unique cooling units, Sapphire's Radeon HD 3850 Ultimate and Radeon HD 3870 Atomic really are in a class of their own among the Radeon HD 3800 cards. The Radeon HD 3850 Ultimate stands out thanks to its heatpipe cooling, which allows it to run completely silent. We were even more impressed with Sapphire's Radeon HD 3870 Atomic. Not only is the board overclocked from the factory, it also boasts a single slot cooler, making it compatible with a wider variety of cases than the stock Radeon HD 3870 boards. Sapphire's Vapor-X cooler is also an incredible performer, running cool and very silent.

The problem with both these Sapphire cards right now is availability, only the Radoen HD 3850 Ultimate has hit retailers shelves, where it currently sells for $230. At that price, it's priced awfully close to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB version. We've been told that the Radeon HD 3870 Atomic pricing should be $10-15 over the stock Sapphire boards, and if that does indeed become the case, upgrading to one of these cards over the stock Radeon HD 3870 would be a definite no-brainer.