Final thoughts and rating
It's always difficult not to faint when a manufacturer presents a gamer-orientated graphics card with an asking price in the region of £500, plus VAT! - enough, we should add, to purchase both a PlayStation 3 and an Xbox 360 with change left over.
In the current economic climate, you'd think Sapphire has lost the plot, but perhaps not. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC is a limited-edition product and only a certain number will ever be produced - each individually numbered, of course. Exactly how many will be made? Not even Sapphire knows, it tells us to expect hundreds but a final number will ultimately depend on demand. Wisely playing it safe, it seems.
With that in mind, the card has to be seen as an exclusive product for an already niche market. Think of it as a Lamborghini Reventon with an extra helping of horsepower and improved aerodynamics. It sounds good but we wouldn't all go out and buy one on the basis of cost. But, if price isn't an issue and you have to have something lightning quick with a sense of style, why not?
The same could be said of Sapphire's Radeon HD 4870 X2, it's an existing card with higher out-the-box frequencies and improved cooling. If - and it's a big if - you can afford it, there's probably no need to look elsewhere. Sapphire set out to create the fastest ever single-slot liquid cooled card and, with the help of ASETEK, it delivered.
What does NVIDIA have to say about it?
It wouldn't be the launch of a new AMD-based graphics card without NVIDIA trying to put a spanner in the works. This time around, that spanner is the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295. It's no coincidence that NVIDIA has chosen today to unveil the upcoming card, but the green-team might just be onto something.
The GeForce GTX 295 takes two 55nm GeForce GTX 260 GPUs and literally slaps them together. NVIDIA claims it'll be enough to win back the single-card performance crown and it'll arrive in stores at the tail-end of January '09 at a cost of around £350. Certainly sounds interesting, but that's then, and Sapphire's Radeon HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC is now.
The good
The fastest single-slot liquid cooled card to grace our labs
Dramatically lowers Radeon HD 4870 X2 GPU temperatures
Makes water-cooling so easy your Nan could install it
Lowers overall system noise
The not so good
Premium price, the world's fastest never comes cheap. Card could cost as much as £575 retail.
Bundle doesn't include any games
Built-in CPU cooling could be better
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC
HEXUS Awards
Sapphire already offered the world's fastest graphics card - the Radeon HD 4870 X2 - as part of its product range. With no immediate competition, it still found the need to make it faster, quieter and cooler. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC therefore receives our Extreme Innovation award.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC 2GB
HEXUS Where2Buy
TBD.
HEXUS Right2Reply
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