Back in Radeon HD 3870 times Sapphire released a special overclocked edition of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 called Atomic. Now the Atomic is back and has been updated to the Radeon HD 4870 X2 series. The card comes with a pre-filled water cooling kit that also includes a CPU water block, which is a novelty. Asetek is the manufacturer of the water cooling components. Also included in the package is a larger software bundle, loads of cables and everything else you could just imagine. Not only the package has been improved, the clocks have been bumped up as well making the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic the fastest ATI card on the market, but also one of the most quiet around. - techPowerUp

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic Refined Review

All this comes with a big big price tag of at least $600. While this may sound like much, Sapphire sold all Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards rather quickly, so we think this one will sell out fast too. The aluminum case is certainly the most premium packages ever found on a graphics card. The case is big and heavy and feels like very solid build quality. And we could imagine it also has potential uses for transporting your gear to and from those LAN parties. Inside everything is neatly organized with foam insets and a transparent plastic sheet covering everything. The footprint of the card is exactly the same as the HD 4870 X2 reference card.

It actually seems that Sapphire uses the same board and just replaces the cooler. Since a water block is uses, this allows the card to occupy just one slot, which is a great thing if you plan to run two of these and your motherboard's slots are next to each other. The card has two DVI ports, the standard output config nowadays. Now in case you need an analog output, you can use the included adapter. And the same counts if you want an HDMI output. If you look closely near the edge of the sticker you can see that it is lifted up a bit. For a product in that price range that claims an absolute premium status, this is unacceptable.

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of RivaTuner, ATITool's successor and some benchmarking suite. The final overclocks of our card are 847MHz core and 4080MHz memory. These overclocks are slim, we would have expected more from water cooling. The memory overclock seems limited by the heat of the memory chips on the back side which are not cooled by the water block. If you are looking for the perfect Christmas present for any ATI fanboy then the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic is as good as it gets. Its a big package that will ensure proper excitement before unpacking.

The presentation is really outstanding, even though the build quality of the water cooling tubing leaves us wanting some real rubber tubes. The included CPU water block seems to be good enough for mainstream processors but we have our doubts that the radiator can handle the Radeon HD 4870 X2 board plus an overclocked and overvolted processor. Still, for users who are not looking to do a lot of tweaking with their system and just want something that is fast and special the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic is definitely a cool toy. But don't make any mistake it comes at a higher price, which can be justified somehow.

Most other users should wait until next year when NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 295 is on the market which is a dual GPU design too that is supposed to be very fast and come at around $500. Though this is a first estimated price, but should be rather adequate to remain competitive.