Taking a closer look at the Sapphire HD 3870 X2 Atomic card, we will find the first major difference between this card and the others. The Atomic version from Sapphire comes with a pre-installed water cooling loop. The R680 HD 3870 X2 is designed around two of the RV670 chips and 1 GB of memory (512MB per GPU). The main differences between the HD 3870 X2 Atomic and a regular HD 3870 X2 besides the water cooling, is the fact that the core clock has been bumped from 825MHz to 860MHz and the memory is at 1.86Ghz (2x930), which is slightly lower than the single HD 3870's 2.3GHz.
The water block is constructed of aluminum and toped off with a black cover that adorns the Atomic and Sapphire logos. Looking at the Atomic card sitting here, I get the feeling that its not has huge as the air cooled version. It's obviously an optical illusion, because the boards on both are the same.
I didn't actually pull the cooler off of the Atomic card due to time constraints. So I slipped in a couple shots of a standard HD 3870 X2, which is essentially the same. The R680 setup is actually built on two RV670 GPUs with 1 GB DDR3 memory (2 x 512MB per GPU). In between the two GPUs we find the CrossFire Bridge chip that automatically enables CrossFire, which means the user does not need a CrossFire supported motherboard to utilize the HD 3870 X2 Atomic card.
The HD 3870 X2 Atomic is like the standard HD 3870 X2 when it comes to the GDDR3 memory. The Atomic utilizes 8 Samsung K4J52324QE-BJ1A chips per core. Four for each core can be seen from either side of the card. The Samsung chips are rated at 1.9V and have a frequency of 1000 (2000) MHz. The memory clocks are set a little lower at 900 (1800)MHz on the HD 3870 X2 cards
Looking at the rear of the card we will find the same configuration on connections as what is found on the reference design HD 3870 X2. Two dual-link DVI-I ports that support audio-over-HDMI feature. Located between them is a standard 7-pin DVI connector for analog video output. Looking at the right picture, we can see that the HD 3870 X2 only has one goldfinger for connecting two HD 3870 X2's in CrossFire mode.
On the power side, we see the HD 3870 X2 Atomic utilizes one 6-pin PCI-E and one 8-pin PCI-E connector, which gives you a combined total rating of 225 watts, which does not include the 75 watts through the PCI-E slot itself. In the right picture we see the fan connector.
The water cooling assembly houses the radiator, cooling fan, and water pump in a semi-compact housing. This is meant to be mounted where the typical rear exhaust fan mounts on most cases. The unit is branded with a large Atomic logo and does look to be fairly compact and well built.
At the lower rear edge we find the hose inlets with chrome fittings and the 4-pin fan wire connector lead. Toward the lower front edge, you will find the 4-pin molex connection needed for the pump assembly. Personally, I would have liked to see the power connection and fan pigtail located out of the rear or the top of the unit to make routing cables a little easier.
They also have a comment on the housing stating that the cooler needs to be mounted higher than the video card for optimal cooling. The last picture is of the rear of the housing with the exhaust fan just behind the mount.
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