Sapphire has another surprise for those who always crave more. We got it nicely wrapped in three boxes, but it’s worth every pound. The card is HD 4870 X2 Atomic and trust us when we say that this card is way better than it sounds, although it sounds bombastic as it is.

The cooling is by Asetek, tried and true, and we’ve been using it on our 8800 GTX card for more than a year now. The uniqueness of LCLC cooling is in its simplicity and effectiveness, which Asetek managed by focusing on two components – the CPU and the GPU. Apart from Asetek’s system, Sapphire also pounced on the chance to strap the card with cooling designed for cooling two RV770 cores.

Apart from making sure that your cooling makes your graphics card live "long and prosperous" , you can also replace your CPU’s cooling and thus make the system even more stable.

HD 4870 X2 Atomic’s core runs at 800MHz with the memory running at 1000MHz.



Our test sample’s radiator fan was a bit too loud for our taste, but we’re hoping that Sapphire will, just like they’ve done so far, remedy this problem and use different fans in their retail versions. The fan glows in nice blue color.



Unlike some HD 4870 X2 cards, this card is single slot, but you should know that there are models of HD 4870 X2 cards that take up three slots.





GPU temperatures are around 65 degrees Celsius, which is a good result considering that the CPU block has to cool the quad core QX 9770 too.

The first result we got was vantage, and it reports this card as the currently fastest one around.

 

We’ll soon have more results so stay tuned.