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
Out with the Old, in with the Mid-Range
We did this comparison in our 8800 GT review and decided to port the numbers over here too. To make the comparison a little more dramatic, we're pitting the lowly Radeon HD 3850 against the some of the previous kings of the hill: the GeForce 7950 GT and the Radeon X1950 XTX.
At only $179, the Radeon HD 3850 manages to outperform both cards. You might view Bioshock as an exception but keep in mind that the X1950 XTX is running the DX9 codepath while the Radeon HD 3850 is running a more GPU-intensive DX10 path, the new midrange card still wins.
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Agent11 - Sunday, November 18, 2007 - link
I was very disappointed with the use of a p35 chipset to compare crossfire to SLI.You use a motherboard with 16x by 16x pcie lanes for SLI but use one with 16x by 4x for crossfire... And then make a point of crossfire not scaling as well!
Ask any bencher, it does matter.
SmoulikNezbeda - Sunday, November 18, 2007 - link
Hi,I would like to know what numbers in graphs really represents. Are those average FPS or something like (min + max + ave)/3 FPS?
Thanks
Agent11 - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
If it isn't average then theres a problem.wecv - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Hello, I am from the future.We now have 2GB GPUs with GDDR5 as entry level, 4GB-8GB GPUs for midrange with GDDR5 and 8GB GDDR5/GDDR5X/HBM2 or 11GB GDDR5X for High-end and enthusiast!
You may go and live back in the past.
TheOtherRizzo - Saturday, November 17, 2007 - link
What would you need a frame buffer of 512 MB for? That's enough room for about 80 1080p images. Sounds to me like someone at ATI is stuck in 1994 when framebuffers were the only memory on a graphics card...wecv - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Hello, I am from the future.We now have 2GB GPUs with GDDR5 as entry level, 4GB-8GB GPUs for midrange with GDDR5 and 8GB GDDR5/GDDR5X/HBM2 or 11GB GDDR5X for High-end and enthusiast!
You may go and live back in the past.
ZipFreed - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
Lol, this comment is awesome and cracked me up. I am reading these older GPU reviews researching something and have been thinking similar sentiments to myself as I go.Glad you necro'd this.
0roo0roo - Saturday, November 17, 2007 - link
the convoluted naming systems of gpus garrantees pretty much only geeks in the know will make good purchasing decisions. this matters to the health of the pc game industry, i'm sure many have been turned off by the experience of going to their local store and buying a card within their budget and little other useful information and getting a lousy experience. i'm sure retailers actually benifit from the confusion since they can charge more and just hope the customer just bases their decision on their price range.Shark Tek - Saturday, November 17, 2007 - link
Finally GPU manufacturers are thinking right. Instead of making oven like heaters power hogs GPUs they're trying to make things right like Intel and AMD are doing with their CPU lines with less heat and power consumption.Lets see the upcoming generations how they will perform. ;)
araczynski - Friday, November 16, 2007 - link
I'm assuming this is a mid line card with better stuff coming out?otherwise I don't see the point of getting anything other than an 8800gt, prices are too close to give up top of the line for merely 60 or so bucks, or better yet, waiting a few more months till the 8900's roll out.