At the same time, the falling prices of 22" and above Widescreen LCD monitors meant that gaming at resolutions above 1280 x 1024 started to become the norm. Many hardcore gamers have also invested in 24,27 & 30" LCDs for a more enjoyable gameplay experience. These factors and the launch of highly anticipated games such as Crysis, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, World in Conflict, Bioshock, Hellgate: London and Gears of War marks a great year for games and gamers alike. Many of these games are also DirectX 10 titles following in the wake of Windows Vista's launch. With this, many a gamer would surely look forward to purchasing a graphics card that provides higher resolution, DirectX 10 gaming at an affordable price point.

For months now, the only affordable mid-ranged solutions to fill this segment of the market come from NVIDIA and ATI has been hard pressed to compete with them. Today however, we have received not just one, but two new contenders to the G92 cards, the HD3870 & HD3850 by AMD. Placed in the same price bracket as the 8800GT 512MB, we present to you the ATI Radeon HD3850 and Radeon HD3870, courtesy of Sapphire. The launch of these two models also ushers in a new naming convention for Radeon cards. ATI will no longer use the Pro, XT and XTX suffixes for Radeons. Instead, the first digit denotes the generation of the GPU, the next will mark the family and the last two shows the performance levels within families of cards.

Both cards are based on AMD's RV670 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), with the HD3850 sporting 256MB of GDDR3 memory instead of 512MB of GDDR4 found on the HD3870 and clock speeds being the main differences between the two cards. Unlike the R600 found on the Radeon HD2900, the RV670 is based on a 55nm fabrication process. This allows the GPU to offer a smaller die size (192mm² vs 408mm2 of the R600) and lower heat production. Furthermore, the new GPU offers compatibility with DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 (which will be enabled in Vista SP1 in H1 2008 offering features such as realtime global illumination and new AA modes). RV670 is also double-precision capable on the GPGPU front which G92 currently lacks. The RV670 is PCIe 2.0 based and comes with High Definition Digital Audio and Universal Video Decoder (UVD) built into the core.

Those using micro-ATX platforms would be pleased to note that the HD3850 uses a single slot cooling solution and requires only one PCIe 6-pin power connector. Like wise, those who feel that one graphics card is not enough will be glad to know that the Radeon HD3850 and HD3870 will be able to support CrossFireX technology; that is, the ability to CrossFire with 2, 3 or 4! cards on the appropriate platform. AMD has already announced its plans for the 790FX platform and showcased its ability to run 4 Radeons in CrossFire so the wait may not be long before it reaches you.

Today, we shall take these cards out for a spin against the Nvidia contenders and their predecessor, the HD2900XT, at resolutions of 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 respectively.

Let's take a quick look at some basic specifications before we move on...

Feature/ Model	HD3850/ 256MB	HD3870/ 512MB	HD2900XT/ 512MB
Stream Processors	320	320	320
Texture Units	16	16	16
Render Back-ends	16	16	16
Transistors	666 Million	666 Million	700 Million
Fabrication Process	55nm	55nm	80nm
Die Size	192mm2	192mm2	408mm2
Core Clock	670MHz	775MHz	740MHz
Memory Clock	1.66GHz	2.25GHz	1.65GHz
Processing Rate (Math)	428 Gigaflops	497 Gigaflops	475 Gigaflops
Memory Type	GDDR3	GDDR4	GDDR3
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	512-bit
System Bus Support	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe x16
DirectX Support	10.1	10.1	10.0
UVD	Yes	Yes	No

  The Radeon HD3850 uses a single slot copper heatsink with a blower to force air across the densely packed fins.

The passively cooled heatsink over the voltage regulators is part of the HD3850's single-slot cooling solution.

A dual-slot cooling solution is employed on the Radeon HD3870, much like its predecessor, the HD2900.

 

 The voltage regulator heatsink is hidden under the blower.

We have stripped down both cards; HD3850 on the left and HD3870 on the right.

The HD3850 Core

The HD3870 Core

The 1.1ns Samsung GDDR3 modules on the HD3850.

First up, we have the HD3850's cooler with its shroud removed:

It is a one-piece design meant to cool the GPU, memory and voltage regulators all at once:

A full-copper, skived-fin heatsink is used to cool the GPU whilst the memory and voltage regulators are cooled by copper coloured aluminium heatsinks. 

Packaged items:

A DVI to HDMI adapter is included in the package. As the RV670 GPU has an integrated HD audio unit, both cards are able to output full HDMI through their DVI ports.

Without further adieu, we shall proceed to the benchmarks.

Benchmarking Setup

Single Card Tests, Power Consumption Tests

• Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9650 (3GHz, 333MHzx9)
• ASUS P5E3 Deluxe WiFi-AP/N - Intel X38 Chipset
• Corsair Dominator PC3-1800C7D 2GB Kit (1333Mhz, 7-7-7-20)
• Inno3D GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (600/900MHz)
• ASUS GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB (575/900MHz)
• ASUS Radeon HD2900XT 512MB (740/825MHz)
• Sapphire Radeon HD3850 256MB (670/833MHz)
• Sapphire Radeon HD3870 512MB (775/1225MHz)
• Enermax Galaxy 1kW reV2.0
• Seagate 7200.7 80GB x 2
• Dell 3007WFP
• Windows Vista SP1 Beta (Build 2175)
• ATI Radeon Display 8.43
• Nvidia Forceware 169.09 Beta

First up, we have 3DMark 05 and 3DMark 06; both are very popular synthetic benchmarks from Futuremark.

In both 3DMark05 and 3DMark05, we see the Radeon HD3850 and HD 3870 lagging behind the HD2900XT.  Both cards also fall behind the NVIDIA 8800GT, especially the HD3850 in 3DMark06 where it trails the 8800GT by 2067 points. That said, these are just synthetic benchmarks and what matters more are the actual gaming results.  So read on for the gaming benchies!

From the makers of Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, we have Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.  Based on the Doom III engine and developed with the same fast action, adrenaline pumping gameplay,  Enemy Territory: Quake Wars offers gamers the choice of playing on the side of humanity defending Earth as GDF or joining the Strogg hordes in their invasion in battle.  With its optimizations for online gaming, up to 64 players can congregate on a server to wage war on an epic scale with matching landscapes to boot!
Given the scale of the gameplay and the highly detailed textures within the environment along with the megatexturing technique developed by none-less than John Carmack, lesser graphics cards lacking the processing power and onboard memory would not be able to present the realism and superior image quality possible in ET: QW.  It is with this that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars sets itself as another yardstick in the industry for measuring OpenGL performance of new graphics cards.

Settings

and more settings!

Benchmark Results

In Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, we see the HD3870 matching it's older brother at 1920 x 1200 whilst the HD3850 lags behind by 10FPS.  The 8800GT is ahead of the race with a 10FPS advantage over the HD3870 though.  At 2560 x 1600, the 512bit memory bus advantage the 2900XT has is more evident and tops the 3870 by 2fps.

Crysis is one of THE most anticipated games of 2007. In case you have been hiding under a rock for some reason or another, Crysis is based off the new designed Crytek Engine - an earlier version of the Crytek engine brought the most powerful system to their knees several years ago in the form of Far Cry. Players assume the role of a special forces soldier in possesion of a "Crysis Suit" that grants superhuman strength, agility and even optical stealth camouflage. The mystery of the story unravels as planet Earth is threatened by an Alien race - and it's up to the hero once again to Save the world! The Demos have been circulated around the web, and now we present you with the benchmarks of the full version!

With unprecendented visuals, physics and a tonne of exciting movie-like scenes - Crysis is sure to rock you off your seat. We were blown away by just the demo version of it previously and now with the full version out, we thereby checked the full game out again on the new cards with the latest drivers.

Large and sprawling environments in Crysis will take huge chunk of memory texture space on your Graphics card. Owning any DX10 GPU might help to ensure optimum performance on higher resolutions - and you'll be able to experience the full game in Full Blazin' DirectX 10 realism.

Settings!

Benchmark Results

In Crysis, a DirectX 10 game, we see that the HD3870 has done well, beating the 2900XT by nearly 5FPS at 1920 x 1200, and is a good 5 frames less than the 8800GT. At 2560, the lead drops to 4fps, and trails the 8800GT by 2fps..

Gears of War is a third person shooter game developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Games Studio.  Initially launched exclusively for the Xbox platform, the game has since been ported over the PC.  Based on the Unreal Engine 3, Gears of War offers great texture detail and beautifully rendered characters and scenes.
Gameplay is set about a squad of soldiers called Delta Squad as they fight to free the population of a planet, Sera, from an underground enemy, the Locust Horde.  The player controls Marcus Fenix, the leader of the squad as they journey through the ruins, battling their enemies.  As opposed to many first person shooters, Gears of War's gameplay is not all about mindless shooting and killing.  The game requires extensive use of cover as the player waits for the opportunity to fire at the enemies.  As such, there are many objects and obstacles in-game for the player to utilize to their advantage. 

The settings we used:

Screenshots

More screenshots!

At 1920x1200, the 3870 edges out the 2900XT by 1 fps, but trails the 8800GT by 6fps. At 2560x1600, the 8800GT and the 3870 performs similarly, with the HD3850 choking and churning out unplayable framerates, apparently choking with GOW's intensive textures, having just 256MB of GDDR3 memory.

World in Conflict is one of the newest kids on the block in the RTS genre , but certainly not lacking in strength. It's creator - Massive entertainment - has made use of DX10 to implement many graphical enhancements to make World in Conflict a stunningly beautiful game. Soft particles, "God-ray" effects, and real-time clouds are but some of the graphical advantages of DX10 you'll see when you pair a Geforce 8 series card with Windows Vista. Experience the full intensity of modern world combat - in the harsh realism of the Cold War era.

Fully navigable user interfaces ensure maximum exposure for players in World in Conflict. Players get to choose one of four types - Infantry , Armour, Air or Artillery - for mastery of the battlefield. Online multiplayer mayhem includes up to 16 players - each managing their own type of battle group - in co-operative team-based games !

The settings we ran the game at

More settings

Some nice DX10 screenies

HDR Smoke!

The HD3870 reign against the HD2900XT at both resolutions in WIC, but still trails the 8800GT by 3fps in both resolution respectively.

Unreal Tournament 3 ! The third installment in the extremely popular and highly celebrated Unreal tournament series is back - fully beefed up with the Unreal 3.0 engine, support for Hardware Physics processing, and that same gritty gameplay that gets everyone fired up for some "good ol' fraggin sessions" !

Most notable in UT3 is the Unreal 3.0 engine, which some of you may have already experienced a taste of - in the currently available game Bioshock. You can expect greater attention to graphical detail in UT3, as well as the implementation of physics processing. Enhanced modes of online multiplayer gameplay modes will keep players glued to their seats - and mice/keyboards - for a long time to come !

Apparently, the demo is only DX9 and limited image quality settings. We will eagerly awaits the full version to be out soon.

With Nvidia's latest Forceware 169.09 drivers, we're seeing the G92 churning out much better frames than the 8800GTX. Nevertheless, the HD3870 trails way behind the Nvidia cards and the HD2900XT, albeit still churning out playable framerates.

From the makers of the Call of Duty series, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the higly anticipated sequel to Call of Duty 3, which was only available on consoles.  Call of Duty 4 allows gamers to take on the role of Special Forces personnel and brings them to places around the globe to take the fight to rogue enemy groups.  All this, while armed with an array of powerful, advance military technology and the capability to call on air strikes and land based strike forces.  Although Call of Duty 4 is a DX9 based game, it delivers realistic, next-generation graphics and special effects to immerse the player in its gameplay. It also brings a new dimension to online multiplayer gameplay where players can choose and customize the gear on their characters to better fit the roles they take up.  Experience points can also be used to enable new items and perks as players race across the leadership board.

The settings used.

Some screenshots

Another screenie.

The results is pretty evident with all the games we've gone through, at high resolutions, the HD3870 isn't gonna cut it in the competition against the 8800GT. The 8800GT leads by a respectable 11fps at both resolutions.

We tested the scaling of the cards with AA/ AF in ET: QW and World in Conflict at 1920 x 1200.  AA was set to 4X and the AF to 16X.

AA/ AF Test Results

The HD3870 performed at the same level as the HD2900XT and the HD3850 just trails very slightly behind them. 

Image Quality Comparison

Crysis in-game screenshot

Crops from above

Screenshots were taken in-game and crops were taken out for comparison.

In the first 2 pictures, we can discern a slight difference with the HD3870 giving better tonal range in the glass and at the curved edge, we can see that slightly more detail is rendered on the HD3870 than the 8800GT. In the next set of pictures from Crysis, there are more details on the surface of the rocks (mid-top & lower-right)  from the HD3870. In both instances, the differences are not obvious at a glance and we can't say for sure that they would be noticed in gameplay or how much of a performance impact would be caused as a result.

Overclocking Results

We overclocked the cards using their stock cooler to see how much we could squeeze out of them!

We managed to push the HD3850 to 735MHz/1029MHz up from it's stock of 670MHz/830MHz. That's a 65MHz increase in Core clocks and 200MHz in memory! What did that yield? 1040 points in 3DMark06.

With the HD3870, we managed a 83MHz increase in core and 225MHz increase in memory clocks. Better than with the HD3850! This gave an increase of 1292 points in 3DMark 06. Even more increment than with the HD3850!

Click on the image to view in actual size.

We heard your call and so we present to you: CrossFireX with the HD3870 and HD3850 both OC'ed! Yep, you heard right! That's 2 different cards running in CrossFire!!!

Power Consumption

We've did some tests using an ammeter, and it is pretty evident that the 55mm process has successfully cut a great deal of power consumption off the two RV670 cards.

Conclusion

Both the ATI Radeon HD3850 and the HD3870 come in at a price significantly lower than their older brother, the Radeon HD2900XT. At US$179 and US$239 MSRP for the HD3850 and HD3870 respectively, the HD3870 will costs a good USD$60 dollars less than the NVIDIA 8800GT!. At about the same price, the HD3850 is delivering slightly better performance than can be expected of the 8600GTS which is a good sign for ATI. However, the HD3870, targetted at the 8800GT is just falling short of the latter's performance at this point in time, but the 60 dollar difference might just be the deciding factor for th enthusiast to grab a HD3870 over the 8800GT instead.

As the drivers for the HD3000 series are still immature, we might see the cards getting a performance boost once newer, optimized Catalyst drivers are released, which has been evident with the past few generations of ATI cards released.. Just like the 29XT, the RV670s both come with 5.1 sound onboard and are all-in-one HDMI solutions, something that cannot be found on Nvidia's cards.

It is also important to note that both cards have greatly reduced power consumption and heat production as compared to the HD2900XT. In the case of the Radeon HD3850, ATI has managed to cool it without the use of heatpipes unlike NVIDIA's 8800GT despite both cards having a similar power draw and a single slot cooling solution.

In all respect, ATI has demonstrated the advantage in moving to the 55nm process. That the HD3870's gaming performance generally matches, if not surpasses the HD2900XT is further proof of the advantages of moving to the new fabrication process. Added to that, ATI is pushing for CrossFireX which not only allows for more than 2 cards to be used in CrossFire configuration, it also allows for mixed-cards Crossfire abilities. With this, ATI is starting show positive signs in the direction they are taking, especially with the fantastic price point of the two cards, significantly lower than what their rivals are offering.

At the end of the day, the 55mms have proven to be quite a milestone for AMD. It's much cheaper to produce, power consumption is vastly improved over the R600s, performance is definitely not compromised at the same time. In the near future, we should be seeing more new variations of the HD 3000 series. There has been much speculation about dual PCB/core cards by AMD, as we've heard from theinquirer about the 3870 x2.

With the upcoming launch of the AMD 790FX for quad CrossFire capabilities, the Radeon HD3000 series might really be AMD's salvation!

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