Introduction

PowerColor, unleash the gaming power. Somehow we figure that most of you know PowerColor already, which means an introduction might not be needed. But just in case for those who don't know PowerColor yet, we will share it with you. PowerColor, established by TuL Corporation in 1997, is a graphics industry leading brand name and also well known for its outstanding performance and innovative technology. As a leading provider of graphics cards, PowerColor offers powerful, reliable and cost effective solutions to customers worldwide. And to succeed in this competitive industry, great products need to be complimented by speed to market, cost and service. PowerColor strives to the very best, both to their customers and to society, thereby making a brighter future for tomorrow.

Only a couple of months ago AMD released the Radeon HD 2900 series and along with that introduction came as well the low-end and mid-range products to go up against NVIDIA. Since then the Radeon HD 2900 series didn't do that well against the already well known GeForce 8800 series which delivered superior performance, at least the top high-end cards like the GTX and Ultra edition. Just recently NVIDIA did a re-spin of their popular G80 core, with a die-shrink and optimizations to come up with a renewed G92 which is powering the GeForce 8800 GT and at a very attractive price tag. And now AMD couldn't sit and wait too long so they also did work hard to come up with the first DirectX 10.1 compatible graphics core the RV670 and also supporting PCI Express 2.0.

For the most part, the specifications of the Radeon HD 3850 resemble somehow those of the recent high-end Radeon HD 2900 series. Based on the somehow successful Radeon HD 2900 series, the Radeon HD 3800 series brings DirectX 10.1 to the masses, empowering every PC gamer to enjoy the next generation graphical experience. The power of geometry shader, unique instancing, massive texture arrays and high dynamic range rendering will all be shown in an amazing line up of DirectX 10 titles coming out the last few months of the year. The Radeon HD 3800 series takes all the great architectural features of the Radeon HD 2900 series and makes it available for the more mid-range minded buyers who want to spend about $200-250. And at the same time these Radeon HD 3800 series will have to withstand the G92 based NVIDIA products such as the GeForce 8800 GT and upcoming GTS re-spin.

The Radeon HD 3850 is the successor of the Radeon HD 2900 PRO, which had a hard time keeping up with the GeForce 8800 series as great value DirectX 10 graphics card. With the Radeon HD 3800 series we expect that ATI can turn the tables and become one of the popular DirectX 10 accelerators. The Radeon HD 3800 series are available in two configurations, and several variations depending on the memory used. First you got the Radeon HD 3850 which comes with GDDR3 memory and can be equipped with either 256MB or 512MB memory. The better part is the Radeon HD 3870 featuring the faster GDDR3 or GDDR4 memory chips. The Radeon HD 3850 GPU contains 390 million transistors, using the new 55nm architecture and implements a highly parallel, unified shader design, consisting of 320 individual stream processors.

Main Features

• Radeon HD 3850 (RV670 at 720MHz)
• 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 Memory (1800MHz)
• High-speed 512-bit Memory Interface
• Memory Bandwidth of 56.5GB/s
• PCI Express 2.0 x16 Compatibility
• High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection
• H.264 Playback with Avivo HD Engine
• Multi-GPU CrossFireX Interconnect Support
• DVI-I Connector for Analog/Digital Display
• HDMI Interface Display Connector

It didn't take long for AMD to realize that their Radeon HD 2900 series didn't make a good start by not being able take back the performance crown on the graphics card market. But that didn't stop them from releasing the Radeon HD 2900 XT which came at a very nice price tag with decent performance. But in the end it wasn't as successful as wanted and with NVIDIA taken the lead with their popular GeForce 8800 series it was time for AMD to move one step further. So the next step is now, with the introduction of the Radeon HD 3800 series, supporting the PCI Express 2.0 interface and also being DirectX 10.1 ready.

Due to the RV670 being a distinct new chip, based upon the same principles present on the Radeon HD 2900 series, it does set some expectations. And although the architecture is somehow deducted from the R600 chip, some changes are made to the manufacturing process. The RV670 GPU's on these cards are built using a 55nm manufacturing process, and they are the first shipping graphics cards to do so. Compared with the GeForce 8800 series, these ATI variants have a greater number of stream processors, but fewer raster operation and texture management units. The Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme card from PowerColor is actually equipped with the so called PRO version, but the suffix will not be used in the official naming for these new products.

The PowerColor version we got in our hand though is a bit more special as it comes with a dual slot professional cooling solution, which is optimized by ZEROtherm. Due to this better cooling system, we can also see that the clock settings are not the reference settings but are increased for this Xtreme edition. This means that the Xtreme version is clocked at 720/1800MHz which is nice boost when looking at the default ATI settings of 668/1656MHz. The Radeon HD 3850 also supports amore advanced version of the multi-GPU solution, CrossFire. In fact this is now the CrossFireX technology that allows you to bundled more than two cards together taking your gaming experience to the next level with more scalability, performance and compatibility.