In our introduction, we mentioned that the factory overclocks seen with this board have been cut compared to those previously used on the Radeon HD 3870 Atomic - Thus, while that board featured an 825MHz core clock, this board utilises an 800MHz core clock (still 25MHz higher than a reference board), with memory set to 1152MHz against 1200MHz on the Atomic and 1125MHz for a reference board.

The real key feature of the Radeon HD 3870 Toxic is its Vapor-X vapour chamber cooler. The advantages of this cooler are obvious in its size compared to the behemoth which sits atop a reference Radeon HD 3870 graphics board, with the Toxic's effort occupying just a single slot while actually cooling the graphics core more effectively and less noisily, which is a definite win in my book.