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Summary
The following is a summary of the more detailed analysis of the AMD Radeon HD 3800 series graphics cards. For all the in-depth analysis and testing you'd expect from us, be sure to click this link to get all the details! 
With games like Call of Duty 4, Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 already in your collection (they are, right??) many of you while find your system lacking in the GPU area. We have already seen NVIDIA's holiday bargain deal in the 8800 GT released a couple of weeks ago and now AMD is throwing their hat into the right with a pair of new products previously known as RV670 and now known as the HD 3800 series. In its most simple form, the new RV670 architecture is a die shrink of the R600 architecture we saw released earlier in the year as the HD 2900, 2600 and 2400 graphics cards. The changes in the GPU go further than that of course, as we saw with NVIDIA's G92 revision of their G80 architecture, and we'll dive into those alterations below. If you want more information on the R600 architecture that is the core of the RV670 refresh, then you should check out my previous review of the HD 2900 XT that will tell you all about the stream processors, texture units and ROPs that power these cards. 
The HD 3850 looks like most standard AMD reference graphics boards and uses a single slot cooler that is heavier than the dual-slot version on its bigger brother. The fan on the card is actually very quiet and was about on par with the noise levels of the new NVIDIA 8800 GT. AMD has the cooler rated at 31 dBA and the peak board power at 95 watts. I've already gone over a lot of the specifications for this board but they are worth touching on again quickly here. The HD 3850 sports 320 stream processors and a 256-bit memory bus using 256MB of GDDR3 memory running at 1.66 GHz on our reference board. The core clock runs at 670 MHz while being able to run at 300 MHz while in 2D mode. 
The 3870 uses a new dual-slot cooler that turns out to be very quiet in my testing. AMD has the noise levels at 34 dBA and the peak board power at about 105 watts. If you remember back to our initial review of the HD 2900 XT the estimated peak board power for it was over 215 watts! The HD 3870 has the same 320 stream processors as the 3850 and 2900 XT and uses the same 256-bit memory bus too. The differences start with 512MB of GDDR4 that runs at 2.26 GHz while the core runs at 777 MHz at its peak or 300 MHz at idle. Let's see some quick benchmarks:
When compared to cards of the similar price bracket, like the 8600 GTS
and the HD 2600 XT, the new HD 3850 is just leaps and bounds better for
current DX9 and DX10 titles as we showed you through our onslaught of
benchmarks on the previous pages. There wasn’t a single instance in
which we’d even call the comparison close – the 3850 is really that
much better than what NVIDIA has to offer today.
Coming in at a price of about $220 according to AMD, the HD 3870 is cheaper than the new NVIDIA 8800 GT card by anywhere from $30 to $80 depending on your brand preferences. That’s good news for AMD as the 3870 couldn’t muster enough of a performance gain over the previous generation HD 2900 XT to really compete with G92. Pricing and Availability The AMD Radeon HD 3850 is going to be priced at $179, putting it at the same level as the GeForce 8600 GTS cards which range from $159 to over $200. For as long as those prices stick, the AMD HD 3850 is going to be the dominate card for anyone with a $200 or under budget for a graphics card, no questions asked. As for the HD 3870, the expected price is set at $219 and that puts it in an interesting position. While we already mentioned that some higher end 8600 GTS cards are priced over $200 we have also seen the new 8800 GT cards reach as low as $249 already though it is out stock. The best price on an in-stock 8800 GT card I could find was $299(!!) though it will vary day to day with new shipments arriving to vendors. NVIDIA likes to spin this as the card being so popular they can’t keep it in stock while others might say that NVIDIA couldn’t make enough of them to begin with. The end result is that as long as the 8800 GT prices are high, the HD 3870 will look like a better and better deal to gamers though if NVIDIA can get the G92 card down to the $250 price range reliably, AMD will need to either address it with another card revision or price drop to really stay ahead of the curve. Update 1: Great news for anyone looking into buying these cards, they appear to be in stock and at the prices AMD promised us:
Final Thoughts The AMD Radeon HD 3800 series of graphics cards is ushering in new life for AMD GPUs that is desperately needed. The HD 2000 series was more or less a flop in terms of enthusiast success though no one wants to admit that in Sunnyvale. The RV670 core revision is turning it around though by lowering power consumption dramatically and increasing AMD’s competitiveness in gaming performance. The HD 3850 is the big winner here today as it stomps the GeForce 8600 GTS and HD 2600 XT cards in terms of your gaming experience while offering lower power consumption and nearly identical prices. The HD 3870 still can have a bright future with its price point sitting well below the available GeForce 8800 GT cards and its ability to perform better than its AMD HD 2900 XT cousin while maintaining much lower power requirements. As the time for PC gaming reaches its climax for this fall with the release of titles like Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4, it sure helps when you have companies like AMD and NVIDIA fighting to earn your dollar with their graphics hardware. May the New Year be just as fruitful! 
AMD Radeon HD 3850 Please join us in this thread of our forums to discuss this review and new product! |
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