Appearance

The Ultimate is the same length as the Toxic, and it measures up to be almost the same size as the nVidia GeForce 8800GTS at 220mm ×100mm. The heatsink on the Ultimate is massive.

Heat from the GPU's heatsink is transferred by four heatpipes to the massive set of fins on top of the card. If this card is installed in the first PCI-E slot on a motherboard, it still definitely covers one or two slots above it if there are any.

The Radeon HD3870 Ultimate is powered by a single 6-pin PCI-Express connector, as the power from the PCI-Express x16 slot isn't sufficient.

Next, I look at the Radeon HD3870 Ultimate's specifications and features before getting to the installation of the card.