Introducing the RV670!

Up till just 3 weeks ago, bang-for-buck, mid-range DirectX 10 graphics cards was limited to just the NVIDIA 8800GTS 320MB. The situation changed when Nvidia launched their much anticipated 8800GT based on the G92 architecture. Not only was it cheaper than the NVIDIA 8800GTS 320MB, its performance surpassed the 8800GTS and Radeon HD2900XT in just about every single game and benchmark; at points, the 8800GT even put up a close fight with the 8800GTX! At this point, many an enthusiasts cried out that it was the best bang-for-buck graphics card ever released and few others felt disgruntled at having bought an 8800GTS just before the 8800GT's launch.

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 Sapphire HD3850 pictured.

  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.

and the Sapphire HD3870 caught!

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.

Out in the cold... Cards stripped naked!

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.

Cooling solutions examined

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

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

Futuremark's 3DMark 05 & 06

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!

OpenGL - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

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!