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Sapphire HD3870 Atomic Edition |
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A Closer Look
Sapphire's Vapor-X cooler looks just like any ordinary cooler at first sight. Even when taken apart you don't see any magic components. When taking a closer look however, you can see that the whole baseplate is one big heatpipe that transfers heat from the GPU surface to the cooling fins faster and more efficient.
The following slides from Sapphire illustrate how the Vapor Chamber Cooling Technology works:
CrossFire is supported of course, even the new CrossFireX which will work with up to four GPUs in the future can be used once the ATI drivers support it.
Near the back of the card you find a single six pin PCI-Express power connector. It is required for operation at all times, even when the card is running in PCI-E 2.0 mode which has a higher power delivery capability over the bus.
The GDDR4 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4U52324QE-BC08. With 0.8ns they are the fastest GDDR4 memory chips available on the market today and should be able to handle at least 1250 MHz (if the memory controller in the GPU can handle that speed).
The GPU is the ATI RV670 which is made in a 55nm process at TSMC.
