The Apollo HD 3850 is on a red PCB. The board itself is fairly short for this day and time, about the length of traditional mid-range graphics cards, so it should fit in any ATX case.

The video card has an aggressive-looking cooler reminiscent of a Zalman VF-700Al (it's not one though - it isn't nearly as heavy), where the fins are extrusions of the base, all made from one billet. The cooler takes up a second PCI slot. The base is fairly shiny but not quite lapped.


The Apollo HD 3850 sports 512 megs of Samsung DDR3 memory. There is no memory cooling at all, other than air blowing on the bare chips. DDR3 memory runs fairly cool, but just the thought of it will probably limit my memory clock attempts.



The Radeon HD 3850 is based on the AMD/ATI RV670 Pro GPU. The Apollo card is clocked at 668 mHz, which is the stock clock for the GPU. For additional power, the 3850 has one 6-pin PCI-E power connector.

The PCI bracket takes up two expansion slots. Though some people may not like this, I think that it is an excellent idea, not for the extra venting, but for the extra support for the card. Heavy cards and heavy GPU coolers have pretty much outgrown single-slot, tool-free solutions. The 3850 itself is not heavy, but it will be well supported.

Bundled with the card is an installation booklet, a driver CD, a Molex to PCI-E adapter, an HDTV cable, an S-Video cable and a DVI to Sub 15 adapter. No Crossfire bridge is included.