Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 Passive tested

We managed to get our hands on one of the first Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512MB GDDR3 samples, and we can all finally see what this card can and can’t do. The best thing about this card is that, although it runs at reference 670MHz core and 1660MHz memory, this card is passively cooled. We thought that a 55nm chip would be cool enough, but reference card temperatures easily hit 89 degrees Celsius. Sapphire's passive cooler is a bit more efficient, and their temperatures go up to 82 degrees. With a little help from a small fan blowing in the direction of the card, the temperatures ducked to 60 degrees Celsius. That’s the beauty of good passive cooling – if you have good airflow, the card will end up cool with next to no noise.