Products: Sapphire Toxic HD3870 512 MB, Asus EAH3870 512 MB
Websites: www.sapphiretech.com
www.asus.com

ATI (sorry, AMD) HD3870, aka RV670, chip is hardly fresh news now - it's already appeared in the X2 dual-GPU edition as well. And yes, we're awaiting its new major stepping to up the performance too.

In the meantime, key ATI graphics card vendors are doing their bit to speed up the cards while reducing the heat. Sapphire, the "preferred" ATI GPU source up to now - remember, they were making oh so many ATI reference boards - has gone out with something interesting: Vapor-X vapour chamber cooling, first seen on their ATOMIC HD3870 cards.

This approach - basically a higher-performance evolution of the usual heat pipes, again based on internal low-pressured water circulation and evaporation, dissipating the heat in many directions - lets you reach heat and overclocking limitations akin to typical waterblocks, but without all the tubing and other wetness. Still, it keeps within the critical 1-slot thinness, so that the Crossfired setups still have space for other cards - not to mention less system clutter. Vapor-X is, for now, seemingly exclusive to Sapphire.

The card, being a cheaper follow-up to its similar looking ATOMIC cousin, comes with the usual 512 MB GDDR4 memory, two DVI/HDMI outputs, and Black Box voucher with games such as Half-Life2 Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. Standard stuff. It is pre-OC'ed to 800 MHz GPU and 2x1152 MHz GDDR4 memory - but, as you'll see, it is far below its real limit.

I compared the card with the Asus EAH3870TOP reference type - enhanced by Asus with extra pre-overclocked speed settings of 851 MHz GPU and 2x1140 MHz GDDR4. Using the ATI reference cooling, this card runs fine at that speed, but not more.

Here are the 3DMark results for the default Toxic, overclocked Toxic at 860 MHz GPU / 2x1257 MHz memory, and EAH at default. As usual, all done on the Skulltrail configuration.

default Toxic

OC Toxic

Default (near max OC) EAH

As you can see, there is some benefit to Vapor-X besides the slimness and relatively quiet operation: extra overclocking. Toxic HD3870 manages to overtake the bulkier EAH3870 TOP here.

Temperature-wise, there is about 2 - 3 deg C temperature benefit for Vapor-X under full load, but both it and the reference card still hover between 88 and 92 C full load GPU temp, depending on whether or not I blow a kitchen fan at the Skulltrail mobo.

In summary, Toxic HD3870 is a good card for an ATI GPU fan - after all, the results in 3DMark may be behind Nvidia, but it doesn't necessarily reflect the gaming performance. The BluRay HD performance will be on the ATI side, anyway, for now. And, slim format enables easier Crossfire fitting for two or three cards. Now, I'd like to see how will Vapor-X cooling handle the upcoming short-format HD3870X2 with A12 GPU rev, new PCI-E v2 double-speed bridge and 2 x 1 GB GDDR4 memory...

Good: thin yet fast, less noise due to more advanced cooling. Affordable performer
Bad: ATI GPU needs some speed-up
Ugly: The fortunes of Sapphire, a great company, still tied to AMD. Duh

Bartender's Verdict: