PC Perspective - ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 1GB Review

	ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 1GB Review - Mainstream Dual-GPU Option
	Author: Ryan Shrout Date: May 15, 2008 Subject: Graphics Card Manufacturer: Asus

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Summary

The following is a summary of the more detailed analysis of the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 1GB graphics card. For all the in-depth analysis and testing you'd expect from us, be sure to click this link to get all the details!

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When AMD introduced the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB card in January of this year it was an attempt to become competitive once again with NVIDIA's high-end graphics cards like the 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra. It was moderately successful, but of course the 3870 X2 required the power of two of AMD's 3870 GPUs and 1GB of total frame buffer (512MB to each GPU) to do it. Since then AMD hasn't released any new cards but NVIDIA has been actively getting back any ground they had lost in the various markets with the release of the 9600 GT, 9800 GX2 and the 9800 GTX. AMD's partners on the other hand appear to be TRYING to pick up the slack that AMD left dangling: first from Diamond with the less-than-successful Radeon 3870 1GB and now from ASUS.

Taking a look at the new ASUS EAH3850 X2 card you could be confused into thinking you were looking at another ASUS productthat is nearly identical in appearance; the design is obviously identical though this time ASUS has ironed out the issues we saw before and you can actually buy this product too - what a novel idea!

This dual-GPU design uses a custom PCB and cooler design unique to a pair of ASUS cards that are able to provide an improved cooling effect while maintaining nearly the same noise levels.

The GPU-Z application doesn't quite understand the unique design and identifications of the ASUS HD 3850 X2 card quite yet, but it provides us with enough information to talk about the clocks. The two GPUs on the ASUS card are running at a 669 MHz core clock and an 828 MHz memory clock - these are the same clocks that the Radeon HD 3850 GPU first launch with indicating ASUS chose to not try and overclock these cores. The reasoning could have been from engineering (the heat was going to be too much) or more likely simply a business decision to not push these GPUs into the performance territory of the HD 3870 X2 cards.

Performance

Because of these similarities the two products perform just as you'd expect - the ASUS HD 3850 X2 1GB card has an incremental performance drop in relation to the clock speed differences. The single GPU Radeon HD 3870 512MB card doesn't fare nearly as well and is in fact just about totally demolished by the ASUS HD 3850 X2 card. At the beginning of the review I was saying that it was a big positive for AMD to get a product in the stack between the single-GPU HD 3870 512MB and the dual-GPU HD 3870 X2 1GB but it turns out rather than lying in the middle the HD 3850 X2 is really much closer to the 3870 X2 overall.

I mentioned earlier that as for NVIDIA competition the new GeForce 9800 GTX was the most likely candidate in terms of pricing. As it worked out it and the new ASUS HD 3850 X2 card are actually pretty tight in performance as well - which was of course the goal from ASUS and AMD. There are still some games where NVIDIA's GPU is better (Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes) but there are just as many where the ASUS 3850 X2 wins instead (Bioshock, Call of Juarez) and the rest are pretty much ties.

Pricing and Availability

As of this writing the ASUS EAH3850X2 card is already available online for a price of $315 with a $30 mail-in rebate. You can find basic reference design Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards online for about $400 or so - cheaper if you hunt around a bit. The bad news might be that you can find some GeForce 9800 GTX cards for sale below $275 as of today and that price should be falling in the weeks ahead.

The pricing structure of the ASUS HD 3850 X2 card tells me that it needs to come down - but just a bit - to really be a hot seller. If we could get this card in the same price range as the lower end of the 9800 GTX spectrum there is no doubt that the enthusiast fan base would eat it up and users that might have already invested in a single HD 3850 or HD 3870 card would have another reason to try out the world of CrossFireX.

Final Thoughts

The ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 1GB turned out to be a surprisingly competent graphics card that augments the gaping hole between the HD 3870 X2 and the HD 3870 in the product stack. ASUS is the only card vendor currently selling this product design and its likely they will remain so as the life span of the RV670 creeps along. But with the aggressive pricing ASUS has put on the product (that hopefully becomes MORE aggressive) the 9800 GTX from NVIDIA has a new, and very competent, competitor. If ASUS and AMD can get the word about this custom ASUS-built Radeon HD 3850 X2 it might breathe new life into AMD's GPUs this spring.

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