So it doesn't seem like all that long ago that we used to long for ATI's graphics partners to start differentiating their products a little bit more. While NVIDIA parts frequently came to market with factory overclocks, third party coolers and other extravagant extras, ATI's offerings tended to stick to the reference specifications most of the time. However, the last few generations have seen this change, and very much for the better. Factory overclocked ATI parts are no longer a rarity, third party cooling solutions on boards are flooding the market, and thanks to Sapphire we've even seen the introduction of fully pre-built, water cooled parts of late which is a great innovation for these high-end cards. - Elite Bastards

Sapphire Atomic HD 4870 X2 2GB Board Style Review

Indeed, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 was the first time we saw Sapphire extend their Atomic brand to refer to water cooling, and we couldn't help but be impressed due to the sheer fact that it's the first time we'd ever seen anything like it from an ATI partner. Well, the Atomic name is now back, and once again it refers to a limited edition, water cooled version of AMD's flagship graphics solution, in the form of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 this time around. Rather than simply slap their previous Atomic solution onto this part however, Sapphire has almost completely reworked their solution, even including a CPU cooler as part of the water cooling.

As you would expect given the Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic's extravagant cooling solution, both core and memory clock speeds do see increases for this particular board. Firstly, both RV770 cores on the card get a 50MHz speed increase to give them an 800MHz core clock, while the 1GB of GDDR5 memory afforded to each GPU gets an 400MHz bump up to a 4000MHz clock speed. The move to water cooling means that Sapphire can do away with the Radeon HD 4870 X2's hefty dual slot affair entirely, replacing it with a single slot water block which covers both GPU's and all of the memory modules on this side of the board.

With factory overclocks already provided by Sapphire on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 Aatomic edition, is there much room for further clock speed increases? Using the Catalyst built-in overclocking tools, we tried to squeeze some more out of it. Despite the presence of water cooling on this board, we found that there wasn't a vast amount of headroom in overclocking terms, as we managed just a 40MHz increase of the Atomic's two RV770 cores to give a final clock speed of 840MHz, while the boards memory only yielded another 180MHz to make up for a final GDDR5 memory clock of 4180MHz effective which is again a nice increase.

As we alluded to in our opening, it's exciting to see that we have now entered a world of plenty when it comes to the differentiation of AMD's graphics products, and it's frequently Sapphire that we look to as the partner at the forefront of such innovations. Sapphire have also learned well when it comes to overclocking this board, pushing as much performance as possible out of both core and memory to make for what is most likely the fastest Radeon HD 4870 X2 offering on the market, while still keeping both GPU's as cool as you would hope for thanks to the joys of water cooling, with idle temperatures particularly impressing us.

The question is however, is this Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic version worth this astronomical outlay? Hardcore enthusiasts will no doubt point to the relative cost of building your own water cooling system from scratch, but if that sounds far too daunting for you then the Sapphire board's warranty will be music to your ears, bringing water cooling in an incredibly hassle free package. If that's the kind of thing you are looking for then you might not be daunted by the Atomic's price point, although if you are looking to build a water cooling rig as an exercise in noise reduction then you'd be better off looking elsewhere.