Noise, overclocking
A little hesitation was allowed with regard to noise level when considering the cooling system chosen by AMD. Let’s see the differences between each card thanks to a sonometer placed 2.8” (7 cm) away from the fan.
In the end, the situation remains very acceptable. The HD 3850 isn’t noisier than the GeForce 8800 GT and remains inaudible at all times. On another note, the HD 3870 is only silent when idle; its fan accelerates in peak to become audible, but remains relatively discreet.
Temperature-wise, the RV670 of the HD 3870 displays 158°F (70°C) when idle and climbs up to 197.6°F (92°C) in peak. In absolute, those are elevated values, but they are often seen on graphic cards that traditionally have a much higher tolerance than CPUs. Therefore, these values don’t surprise us.
Overclocking
The Radeon HD 3850 from AMD was quite playful, as we’ve been able to go from 670 MHz to 776 MHz for the RV670 (+16%) and from 833 MHz to 1050 MHz for the GDDR3 (+26%). The improvement in Age of Empires III in 1600 x 1200 does reach 16%, which is interesting given that the increase is higher on games that are bandwidth limited.
Concerning Sapphire’s Radeon HD 3870, it’s clear that AMD has pushed the RV670 higher and that it doesn’t have a lot of margin anymore to increase it without seeing its yields collapse; we have thus reach stability’s limit at 839 MHz from 775 originally (+8%). It’s not the same for the memory; the GDDR4 was certified to run at 1200 MHz and was able to reach 1270 MHz on our sample, from an official clock of 1125 MHz as we’ve seen already, that’s +13%. The increase reaches in the end 9%, which is only 2 % less than the 8800 GT; we keep, however, the same proportions.
- Previous page Consumption
- Next page Conclusion
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- AMD HD 3800 To Support DX 10.1
- Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT Reviewed
- DirectX 10 Shootout: Geforce 8x00 vs. Radeon 2x00
- DirectX 10 Cards on a Budget
- The Best Gaming Graphics Cards For Your Money: October 2007
- Can Integrated Graphics Cut It For Gaming Or HTPC?
- ATI's Radeon 2600 XT Remixed
Personally I'd be happy with that as it means my £400+ investment will last me a good number of years.
If you're disappointed that there's games you can't play I have a 6800 Ultra I'll happily swap for your 8800 GTX
:|
I have an 8800GTX SLI system and I struggle with Crysis on medium settings @2560x1600.
I'm waiting for something faster... whether it is from ATI or nVidia.
ATI continue to disappoint.
On a more important note: where are the Crossfire and SLI scores? The great thing about these new cards (both the 8800GT and the 3850/3870) are the fact that you're getting what, just months ago, was enthusiast-level performance for mainstream-level pricing. This makes SLI and Crossfire immensely much more affordable than they have ever usefully been before.
Previously it was always the case that you got better price/performance from a single high-end card than you got from two mid-range ones. Now, for the first time, that may no longer be true: 3850s in Crossfire might even outperform 8800GTX some of the time, and they're actually *cheaper* than single GTX.
So, come on: where are the benchmarks?
Finally, your noise level measurements are obviously flawed: you've got a 43dB noise floor, resulting from components other than the graphics card, or possibly from stuff going on outside the case. So it doesn't matter how quiet the GPU fan goes, you'll always read ~43dB. The cooler on the 3850 is rated at just 31dB, which is *miles* below the noise level you get from an 8800GT. Your figures are misleading.
At least I want to know if it's as good as the 1900 at crunshing lifesaving data!
With AMD/ATI going down the toilet Nvidia is not getting enough pressure to move on the next generation (1Gb+ cards with enough horsepower to handle HD gaming). Rebranding 2xxx cards as 3xxx is pretty desperate!! That is the bottom line... Even with VERY deep pockets you will still struggle to get high quality textures running @1920x1200 (native 1080p the true resolution of BD and HDDVD disks).
I have a feeling that AMD/ATI may not be around much longer. If a company isn't diversified (like Sun) then a failure in your core business means you are pretty screwed. If ATI didn't have products like the X1950Pro they would be in real trouble already...
nicolasb -> Previous comment about Crossfire. THG said the driver was unstable for the new 3xxx cards in the introduction. Perhaps you have problems reading??
Ah well, have to wait till 2009 for that monitor upgrade!!
Bob
I look forward to seeing what kind of scaling these will produce, because that does seem to be their main selling point. As the previous guy said, you can get 2 of these cards for less than a GTX, and potentially equal perfomance, while still leaving room for another 2 cards =)
The HD 2900 XT's scaling results were actually pretty impressive, SLI showing a 50% boost at best, while crossfire showing as good as 90% in some games.