Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Toxic review

It was back at the turn of the year when we looked at Sapphire's Radeon HD 3870 Atomic, a graphics board which remains to this day my personal most popular Radeon HD 3870 graphics board.  Putting to one side the fantastic metallic briefcase it shipped in with the Atomic logo emblazoned on the side (something guaranteed to get you arrested as a terrorist suspect in any major city), that board featured some decent factory overclocks together with a wonderfully innovative cooler that was both cool, relatively quiet and, perhaps most importantly, a single slot solution in a world where the reference ATI cooler is a dual-slot beast.

As we just mentioned however, the Radeon HD 3870 Atomic was only ever a limited edition part - The good news is, a very similar board is now available to the masses in retail under a new name, the Radeon HD 3870 Toxic.  The single slot vapour chamber cooler remains, but the clock speeds are reduced for the sake of increasing yields to allow for the part to be produced in decent quantities.  So, can the Radeon HD 3870 Toxic impress us as the Atomic did previously, especially now this SKU has gotten a few months of additional driver maturity under its belt?  Today, we put it through its paces to see if it's a worthwhile consideration for buyers in the market for a graphics upgrade.