Now that they're out, we bet you're wondering about the performance of that pair of mid-range,
ATI Radeon cards announced this morning. According to
TG Daily and just about everyone else, the
Nvidia GeForce 8800GT is still the best performing midrange graphics card on the market (for a few bucks more, if you can find it). But if you like the performance of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, you'll be happy with your lower priced, but similar performing Radeon HD 3870 according to
HotHardware. They go on to call the HD 3850 "quite strong" when compared against mid-range cards like the Radeon 2600 XT and GeoForce 8600 GTS. In fact,
Custom PC says that the 3850 "blows both of these cards away." Thanks to the new 55nm manufacturing process, both cards kept power consumption, temperature, and noise levels "way down" in comparison. Lots to love from the benchmarking gang. Only thing left to do now is to track them down for that $179 and $219 MSRP.
P.S. If you spot more benchmarks let us know so we can round the critters up.
Update: Round-up now posted after the break.
Read -- Custom PC
Read -- Hot Hardware
Read -- TG Daily
Read -- AnandTech
Read -- ExtremeTech
Read -- [H]Enthusiast
Read -- Legion Hardware
Read -- TweakTown
Read -- Hardware Canucks
Read -- Guru 3D
posted Nov 15th 2007 8:01AM
All I have to say is:
custompc.co.uk needs a new picture viewer or something. Can anyone make out the benchmark image?
hothardware.com's benchmark charts (as opposed to a crap intro link, sorry): http://www.hothardware.com/articles/ATI_Radeon_HD_3870_and_3850_55nm_RV670/?page=4
tgdaily needs a new format, and thier images suck almost as bad as custompc, except I'll give them credit. I can sort of make out the text, all jumbled together crap-tastic like.
Just save yourselves time and go see anandtech.com's benchmarks:
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=6
or extremetech.com:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2217140,00.asp
LegionHardware:
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=703
TweakTown:
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1222/asus_radeon_hd_3870_512mb_g_ddr4/index.html
Why should ATI be proud? By name (I haven't been following the market lately (make that: since I got a Mac), so I don't know about the processor and all), this is a brand new generation, and it fails to outperform a last generation Nvidia card. :\
amen... it still lags in performance...
besides... good luck to those who would like to look for these cards in retail and in volume...
Wrong this is not a new generation, its a new revision just as the 8800GT is a new revision of an existing generation of nVidia chips.
TR: "RV670 graphics processor, which is basically a revised version of the R600 that's been converted to a smaller chip fabrication process and tweaked in numerous ways."
"This fall's new crop of GPUs looks to be something of a corrective to that trend, and the G92 is a case in point. This chip is essentially a die shrink of the G80 graphics processor that powers incumbent GeForce 8800 graphics cards. The G92 adds some nice new capabilities, but doesn't double up on shader power or anything quite that earth-shaking."
Got any other bright ideas?
the 3850 kicks around an Nvidia 8600GTS and 8600GT pretty handily.
the 3870 comes close to 8800GT performance for less dorrah and expected good availability and pretty great price/performance (isn't bang for buck the real benchmark?).
The ATI parts will likely be fitted with fairly quiet fans and good on the power consumption (and probably better at HD decoding than Nvidia, quality-wise). While traditionally their drivers can/have been iffier than Nvidia, IMO, who knows how things will play out there (neither company is immune).
Overall, how can these two ATI cards be bad news? AMD/ATI are pricing them competitively given the competition and it seems like a good time to upgrade.
It's not a new generation...just a new size manufacturing process, which reduces power consumption and heat, and a nice little bump in speed. It is not a wholly new GPU architecture or anything like that, although it is numbered as if it were.
I think I'll stick with my 8800GTX. It's served me well for nearly a year now, even though Crysis just made it cry a little bit last night... (but only a little :-)
@AlexP Typical mac moron comment. These aren't meant to be high end new gen cards. They're mainstream offerings targeted at the best bang for buck market. While the 8800GT still maintains the performance crown for higher-end mainstream cards, these are priced a bit below it and so offer a little bit better value for money for people who are looking for something cheaper.
"is a brand new generation, and it fails to outperform a last generation Nvidia card"
yes well ATi's long from the dominance they had back in the days of the 9700
and the fact they are competing very well is one thing
also these cards are actually affordable, the 8800GTX at launch was $700
making high-performance cards for a good price is much more important than treating only the rich enthusiasts
Remember those fine days of yesteryear when ATI/NVIDIA and AMD/Intel were neck-and-neck, each outdoing the other practically every other week as they blew through previous records? Ah, how the times change.
TechReport
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13603
try posting benchmarks of sites with a little more credibility!
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/3270-his-radeon-hd3870-review-crossfire-performance-preview.html#post26213
I'd remove that coin before firing this up - otherwise there might be sparks!
A heatsink might also be a good idea...
Check the Guru3d site it has reviews of the 3850 256 MB, 3850 512 MB and the 3870 512 MB against the 8800GT.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/472/
Here is one that you missed:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQxOSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
Hell, if they're selling them for a quarter I'll take 3!
I just want to say "TG Daily" is horrible. It used to be good...
uhg.. nvidia needs to hurry up and approve SLI for X38 mobos. Crossfire with crap ATI cards is teh suck!
...In fact, Custom PC says that the 3850 "blows both of these cards away."..
It sure as heck better blow those cards away since they were introduced a while ago. The question is how is the HD3850 256MB going to compare with the 8800GT 256MB coming out in a week for $149 retail?
Worth mentioning for those unaware, ATI recently changed their driver policy in regards to linux. Allowing people to choose between their proprietary linux drivers or community created open source drivers.
Do the oss drivers have dri enabled? Do you still have to install xgl to use compiz?
Note to Apple: video processor chips continue to evolve. Now how about swapping out the anemic graphics processors in your consumer-grade Macs with something decent so we Mac users can play a game or two (even in Boot Camp if necessary)?
It's unacceptable that decent 3D processing (read: gaming) in Macs doesn't start until the $2,500 Mac Pro level.
Note to Quix:
Until Apple allows their users to upgrade their computers this will never happen. Apple cannot keep up with the entire market by itself.
Apple used to allow user-replaceable cards in their mid-range machines, which were at the time Power Macs and could be had for around $1,200 to start. The problem was there just weren't many cards on the market that supported Macs, and those that did were horrendously overpriced.
Apple needs a new tower in the sub-$1,500 range, and they also need to make more frequent updates to their video processors in their iMacs and portables. The iMac I have was released (Jan. 2006) with a Radeon x1600, and Apple continued with that same chip until the new iMac models were released a year and a half later. That's *way* too long without a video processor refresh. And what they replaced the x1600 with is nothing to get excited about either.
All this news about resurgent gaming on the Mac platform is pointless without good 3D capabilities in their consumer-grade machines.
My argument was that they should allow for other companies to make their own drivers. Not that I'll ever buy a prebuilt computer again but just sayin'.
Too bad it doesn't work [well] with Linux. This will be true for many years to come.
im still on my X800...and it still look pretty good to me on BF2142 and Half-life orange box, i dont see the need to upgrade, I use my hardware to the full extend or till the last possible moment.
There're so many variations of different types of cards on market now, if I didnt follow the news for a month, I'll be lost.
Do you guys still remember (or ever heard of?) the legendary Voodoo 3d add-on card and the Riva TNT in the good old days? kinda wanna dig one of those up and see if it still run games in the 21st century
Can any1 tell me if the "Palit GeForce 7300 GS" is good enough to play Civilization V???
If not, which GPU should I at least get (got no interests in other games)?
Thanks in advance!
http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/601644/ati-radeon-hd-3870--first-benchmarks/page2.html
I replaced my x800aiw for an 8600gts w/hdmi for 140$ months ago couldn't be happier to leave ati behind. I'm glad they have a stellar midrange card but. I'll always have a bad taste in my mouth from them building their last midrange set without proper shaders, and the horrible drivers issues.
Another one: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=482
Where is the AGP version for cheap bastards like me? ;)
OCC: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/sapphire_hd_3870/
Just a conjecture but it seems to me that Nvidia has found out about the performance of these cards way before us. This would explain the overpriced 8800gt and it's unavailability.
I believe Nvidia's actual price for the gt is around $300. However, after knowing about the 3800, they got scared of the 3800's availability/price and decided to be sneaky (think of what would've happened if the 3800 was released first). So, Nvidia tried to release the GT early to undermine the 3800, this results in a shortage. Second (this is where Nvida messes with us), they promise the gt to be in the 200-250 dollars range to be super competitive to the 3800. The fact is that Nvidia has fooled us, they never intended to sell that cheap right off the bat. Instead, they made a promise to keep us happy (happy but screwed none-the-less). So in the end, we are here waiting the the GT to go down in price to kick the crap out of the 3800s, because Nvidia has brain washed us into believing that those two card are in the same price range. Mark my word but you'll probably not find a $250 gt within 3 months of it's lauch, which is plenty of time for Nvidia to cut it's price to the promised "250".
Sorry for the long post, I am pretty excited now that the two companies are actually "competing" again. Ofcourse this is just my imagination, if the 3800s come out to be close to $300 too then all of what I've wrote is crap.