Packaging   

Sapphire has not varied much from the standard ATI design for the HD2870 X2's packaging.  The front of the carton states the card has 1GB of memory, what it actually has is two GPU each with 512MB of memory, therefore you end up with a total of 1GB when they are combined.  The first of the carton also shows that the card supports HDMI, is Vista supported, supports Crossfire X and finally that it is a Radeon class graphics card.

The rear of the once again has a picture of the sword bearing Ruby standing beside a list of the boards features.  Overall the cartons are very tastefully done and still they provide the needed information that a prospective buyer looks for when making a knowledgeable decision.

 

A Closer Look

The Sapphire HD3870 X2 is packaged in such a way that any fear you might have about the video card being damaged on its way you can pretty much be set aside.  First you have the shipping card that hold the main shipping carton, inside this carton you will find that a rectangular area has been cut out of the Styrofoam to allow the video card to be placed into the opening you have created.  Then a small piece of Styrofoam which has the same dimensions as area where the card is going to reside is placed over the card to protect it.

With the 3780 X2 removed from its static-discharge wrapper you can immediately see just how large the card really is.  Overall the card measures approximately 10.5" and to insure the card has best possible cooling you can see the fan and channel vent system runs almost the entire length of the card. And what would an ATI Radeon card be if it didn't have a picture of Ruby on?

To make certain everything matches on the video card the copper heat sink including all of the pins that are attached to it have been painted a nice shiny red cool to match the customary red of the circuit board.  These pins passively cool the memory modules located directly below them.

Also visible are the six and eight pin power connectors, if you power supply happens to only have two-six pin cable you can use then, but it is not recommended that the card be overclocked unless you have a 6-pin and 8-pin cable to plug into the card.

You can see that the 3870 X 2 is a double wide card and that one of the slots is used to vent the fan on the heatsink.  As far as hook-ups are concerned you have a pair of DVI connectors and one S-Connector with which you can use.