After weeks of game fueled bliss and some handful of competitive releases, we wondered if ATI's flagship still makes waves. While a Radeon HD 3870 X2 is an impressive stretch of hardware, is it really worth its salt? And although, dual-GPU salt's a little cheaper these days by about fifty bucks. It's a $400 card now, which is a hair more than crazy but still shy of preposterous. So why not just get two Radeon HD 3870's and rub a little CrossFire into your box? Well, there are two reasons, really. For most people, that's just not an option. Dual PCI Express can easily tag a person onto the price of a motherboard, and in micro-ATX land, it's a mythical beast that visits overclockers in their dreams. - TechLounge

Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 X2 Graphics Board Review

Sapphire's been ATI's partner since forever, which is why their X2 gets Ruby's lashed gaze on their hawt stickers. Besides that, it's a regular X2 meaning stock everything. Stock red and black retention plate, stock dual slot cooling, stock one aluminum and one copper heatsinks, and stock scary looking blower. The power adapters are really a shame since, without an 8-pin plugged in the socket, overclocking options are disabled. Which is strange looking at the current power supplies. The heatsink uses up the entertaining side of the card. Underneath it are twin 320-core GPU's with a PCI Express chip halfway between them.

The Radeon HD 3870 X2's greatest strength are smooth frame rates. Even when the frame rate is low, the frames are whole and the lows aren't that low after all. It's definitely not a gimmick. ATI perfectly executed this dual-GPU marvel. The drivers don't need your input, they just work, which is a relief to anyone who early adopted multi-GPU. Still, we are not totally sold on the X2. We think it has two places, micro-ATX cases and in CrossFireX. Where the high-end is concerned there are three paths, AMD the whole way, which should be great, but Phenom is still holding things back when compared to the Intel multi core technology.

NVIDIA's SLI is dead sexy, but bad drivers and glitchy motherboards have a face only an enthusiast could heart. And last, the love that dare not speak its name. AMD and Intel really do look happy together, at least in the privacy of a case. So, if you're shooting for a decidedly hardcore computer, get one. That is to say, get two, because that's just kick-ass. But if you just want a solid all around performer, then pick up a Radeon HD 3870 1GB edition, or something else that doesn't rely on two GPU's unless that's your only option.