Conclusion
In the end, the Radeon HD 3870 is far from being a revolution, despite what its name and the Direct3D 10.1 compatibility might suggest. Anyway, thanks to its slightly higher clock, due to its greatly reduced process (55 nm), it manages to outgrow the HD 2900 XT on the majority of games, despite a smaller bandwidth (see averages next page), but it doesn’t reach the level of the GeForce 8800 GT, which remains 11% superior when filters are disabled and 18% when they’re enabled. However, this is all the more coherent with its aggressive price, since at less than $200 it proves to be 20% cheaper than the 8800 GT, whose availability will remain weak until January. The performance-price ratio is, as of today, slightly better for AMD, which took the opportunity to correct the consumption and noise level, without however matching NVIDIA, once again.
The Radeon HD 3850, on the other hand, displays performances 17% inferior (filters disabled but its 256 MB do not call for their activation) than the HD 3870, for a price 20% lower. First and foremost, it poses as the card that allows you to play decently at the lowest price, since the previous most powerful mainstream card, the 8600 GTS is highly surpassed (65 % in 1280 x 1024, 74 % in 1600 x 1200) and for a price barely more expensive. If you only have a $150 to put in a card dedicated to games and video decoding, this card proves to be perfect, and NVIDIA doesn’t have anything on offer to match it, even if it counts on the arrival of the 8800 GT 256 MB, which should be, unless there’s a surprise, more expensive and should suffer little availability.
It remains, however, disappointing that once again AMD hasn’t been able to offer a card with a performance level outgrowing the new actual mainstream range. Besides, we can’t help but regret that the manufacturer hasn’t taken advantage with its new chip to correct its antialiasing problems and the number of texturing units, when looking at the profusion of power and bandwidth it must display to stay in the competition. Such a contribution would have been far preferable than supporting the future Direct3D 10.1 or the quad-Crossfire.
- Positives
- Negatives
- Better price-performance ratio than today’s GeForce 8800 GT 512 Mo
- Very low idle consumption and a noise level greatly decreasing
- Includes UVD and AVP
- Sends heat outside the casing (double-slot design)
- Inferior performances than the 8800GT despite a superior raw power and bandwidth and a smaller process
- Reasonable consumption and noise level, but superior to that of the 8800 GT
- Doesn’t correct the shortcomings of the R600 architecture
- Positives
- Negatives
- Best performance for the price among today’s mainstream cards
- Low consumption and noise in idle as well as in peak
- Includes UVD and AVP
- 256 MB greatly limit the activation of antialiasing
- Doesn’t correct the shortcomings of the R600 architecture
- Previous page Noise, overclocking
- Next page Performance Roundup
- BIOS Flash - Overclock Your Graphics Card in 5 Minutes
- Six Graphics Cards with Luxury Trimmings
- Workstation-Shootout: ATi FireGL V7600 vs. Nvidia Quadro FX 4600
- 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.