Sapphire recently released a passively-cooled ULTIMATE version of the Radeon HD 3850 GPU (512MiB), promising zero-noise cooling with decent performance for around £125.

The recipient of another passive makeover is the faster, hotter Radeon HD 3870 SKU, as shown above.

Operating at default frequencies and packing in the standard 512MiB frame buffer, the cooling has had to be upgraded from that present on the smaller brother's.

The card will be available to buy at the end of January, and we suspect it'll retail at around £15 more than a reference-cooled model.

The chunky rear-mounted heatsink, coupled to the front via four heatpipes, won't get in the way of some zero-noise CrossFire action, by the way.

Sapphire, then, continues to innovate and offer genuine alternatives to reference designs.

All HEXUS CES 2008 content