ATI Radeon HD 3870 & 3850: A Return to Competition
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 15, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Sensible Naming and the Cards
It looks like we may just be seeing some of the fruits of the ATI acquisition here today; no, we're not talking about the Radeon HD 3800 series, but rather the naming of the cards. AMD is releasing two cards today, the Radeon HD 3870 and the 3850, both based off of the new RV670 GPU. Notice anything missing from the GPU names? That's right, gone are the annoying suffixes. AMD is committed to getting rid of the suffix with its GPU products, so you won't see any XT, LE, PE, FUFME, SE etc... versions of these graphics cards. Can we just say now that we think this is a great idea?
Even though the name ATI Radeon HD 3870 is still a little long for our tastes, it's still better than having confusing suffixes. As long as AMD sticks to the higher numbers means better cards methodology we're happy.
There is a method to the nomenclature madness, which the image below should explain:
The first digit is the product generation, the second digit is the family, and then the last two digits refer to performance within that family. This should sound a lot like AMD's new CPU naming system or Intel's current Core 2 family. Note that with today's launch we're already pretty high in the 3800 series, whether or not that means we'll be looking forward to a 3900 or 4000 soon is another matter entirely.
Specifics on the two cards are as follows:
The 3870 is a two-slot solution, it runs its core at a minimum of 775MHz and comes with 2.25GHz data rate memory. Despite the two-slot cooler, the 3870 is actually quieter than the 3850, which itself is much quieter than the 2900 XT.
The Radeon HD 3870
The 3850 is a single slot card, with a 670MHz core clock and a 1.66GHz memory clock. The cards are priced at $219 and $179, respectively (more on pricing later). Like the 3870, the Radeon HD 3850 is actually quiet.
The Radeon HD 3850
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peldor - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Only if it's a HT+Gaming PC. If it's just a HTPC, a 8600 or 2400 is still lower power and lower noise (with fanless options).semo - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
i'm still kicking myself for buying an ati 7500.bryanW1995 - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
I must be psychic. I called that about 30 minutes b4 article was posted. Anand must be reading my mind...:)Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Wanna go double or nothing? How do you think Phenom is gonna turn out? ;)Take care,
Anand
chucky2 - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
10% improvement over WHAT Anand? Come on, tell us... :)Chuck
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
C'mon Chuck, one AMD launch at a time :)GlassHouse69 - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Nice article :)3870 can run games decently on 1920x1200 resolutions. Being that i dont care about Crysis (oh no! taboo comment!) or xbox360 games on the pc (gears o war), it seems like it could be the card to get..... If the retailers do not price gouge. Waiting for newegg to inflate this one.
It seems that the 3850 is the same card as the 3870 in many ways. Any attempt at oc'ing will be really fascinating. I wonder if 1 Gb of gddr4 will make this card more competitive. even 768 megs would be nice/adequate
Kougar - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Newegg has stock on three HD 3870 cards, all three are priced at $220 right now.DrMrLordX - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
I have to ask, was there any antialiasing in these benchmarks? I suspect not but I'd like to hear an answer anyway.The 3850 looks like a good card for overclockers, since it's just a downclocked 3870. At least it's nice to see that the 2900XT and 2900Pro have mostly been rendered obsolete by a cooler, quieter product that can be brought up to snuff with some overclocking.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
We included AA numbers with Oblivion (look for Oblivion AA in the graphs). The problem with AA these days is that most newer games don't really run well enough to have AA enabled and quality settings turned up (read: Crysis). While it's not a problem when testing pairs of 8800 GTXes, we felt it wasn't top priority for the more affordable and less powerful cards.That being said, I'll talk it over with Derek and see what we can do for some of our future articles.
Take care,
Anand