The Card

Sapphire's HD 3870 is a bit shorter than the HD 2900 cards which ensures it will fit every case. The cooler follows the typical ATI style with red transparent plastic.


I am a bit disappointed by the quality of the sticker on the card. It really looks like a sticker that was slapped on quickly instead of a high quality product. On the 2900 Series for example the imagery was actually printed on the cooler without a sticker, this made a big difference in looks I must say.


The ATI reference cooling solution uses a dual-slot cooling approach, hot air is blown outside of the case.


On the back you find the usual warranty stickers.


The output configuration also follows today's standard. Two DVI ports are available, both are dual link capable, so you can run two 2560x1600 displays at once. To connect your HDTV via HDMI you use the included DVI to HDMI adapter which also carries the HD audio signal which is created inside the GPU. On NVIDIA's HDMI+Audio solutions you have to feed your motherboard's sound output to the VGA card where it is sampled and converted into a digital signal - with a slight loss in quality, and convenience.
In case you still have an old analog VGA monitor you can connect it as well using the included DVI to VGA adapter.