Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 ULTIMATE
We've spoken about the existence of a passively-cooled Radeon HD 3850 on page two, and the passively-cooled '70 model is one of eight in Sapphire's range.The obvious strategy in creating an ULTIMATE (passive) version of the HD 3870 SKU would be to use the same heatpipe-based cooler, right?
However, with the HD 3870 running with considerably higher frequencies for the engine, shader, and memory - 777/2,252MHz vs. 669/1,658MHz - the same design wouldn't have cut the mustard, according to Sapphire.
The beefier cooling, which becomes very warm to the touch, cools both the core and the 512MiB GDDR4 memory chips concurrently. Heat is transferred to the heatpipes which then ferry it around to the larger cooling appendage on the back.
The pipes then connect up to a larger aluminium heatsink that helps push the absorbed heat away.
The effectiveness of zero-noise cooling is highly dependent upon chassis airflow, so whilst Sapphire will guarantee that it'll work as is, better airflow will provide significant overclocking headroom and, we hazard, better longevity.
The big-ass cooler may cause installation problems with motherboards whose northbridge is close to the primary x16 PCIe slot, because it extends some 35mm rearwards. Be careful to appreciate the logistical issues if contemplating purchase.
Indeed, it can be described as a three-slot cooler, taking two behind and one to the front. CrossFire support is present but highly unlikely to be used in conjunction with another ULTIMATE card, then.
The outputs are identical to the HD 3850 1GiB's.
Summary
The Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 ULTIMATE ships with stock frequencies and a default 512MiB framebuffer. The clinching factor is the zero-noise cooling, which, like the HD 3850 1GiB, comes at a £27 premium over Sapphire's regular '3870 card.
