Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB
The Sapphire-branded card is, for all intents and purposes, a copy of the R700 reference card we saw a few weeks ago. It's big, it's chunky, and the black PCB gives it a menacing look.
Measuring 266mm x 112mm x 34mm (w x d x h) and weighing in at 1,092g - much of that made up by the copper heatsink - make sure you screw it in firmly, very firmly, to the chassis and mainboard.
The Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB might seem overly-large when viewed in isolation, but it's around the same size as a GeForce GTX 280 1GB - 268mm x 110mm x 38mm - and around 150g heavier.
We know that R700, in retail form, ships with a maximum TDP of 289W, lower than the engineering sample's, but still high enough to necessitate both 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors be used concurrently.
What's more, the portly cooler's fan spins loudly when the GPUs are placed under load; the GeForce GTX 280 is noticeably quieter.
Underneath lies a 2GB framebuffer, split between the GPUs, and it should come into play when limitations are imposed by screen resolution and image-quality settings.
Here you can see the two RV770 GPUs sitting side-by-side, connected via a PLX switch. The single CrossFire connector enables two-card, four-GPU CrossFireX, for what AMD claims is the ultimate graphics subsystem.
Grrr. I'm hard. That's what it would say if it could speak.
The black aesthetic extends to the dual DVI ports on the back. The X2 variant has all the video-related (Avivo) jiggery-pokery found on the single-GPU Radeon HD 4870, too.
Summary
Repeating ad nauseam because you may be partially asleep after watching nightime Olympic action, AMD has added two Radeon HD 4870 1GB cards on to one PCB, stuck in a PCIe 2.0 switch, and a massive cooler on top. That is, in essence, what a Radeon HD 4870 X2 is.
