Here it is, the all new AMD offering. It's the 55nm, DirectX 10.1 ready Radeon HD 3870 and not the Radeon HD 3870 XT or XTX edition. The other model to launch is the Radeon HD 3850. In the old naming scheme the RadeoN HD 3870 would represent an XT while the new Radeon HD 3850 is a PRO version. We have on hand today the brand new Radeon HD 3870 from ASUS. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered and mainly, how does it perform? Where does it sit on the market? How much is it going to cost? Should you buy it? And a somehow important aspect for the competition, are NVIDIA in trouble are can it withstand this new powerhouse? - TweakTown

ASUS Radeon HD 3870 512MB Graphics Card Review

In typical high-end ASUS style we have another large box. The front of the box is covered by Company of Heroes with the mention of the hottest DirectX 10 game. The top left corner of course has our brand while across the bottom of the box we get the main information like the model, in this case the Extreme AH3870 including other features like 512MB of GDDR4 memory and PCI Express 2.0 support. Turning the box over we have some extended information on the card. There is also some explanation on the ASUS specific features along with a system recommendation.

The card looks good as soon as you pull it out of the package, it isn't overwhelming in size and the cooler seems to be an improved version of the previous Radeon HD 2900 XT type. Card length comes in the same as the Radeon HD 2900 XT but the cooler is slightly smaller, you can see the memory sinks across the top of the card. Having a look around the card the first thing we notice is that we move back to a single PCI Express connector, which is great news. The 8-pin connector was really annoying, a lot of power supplies don't offer it and without it you lost ATI Overdrive functionality.

The card isn't the beast that we thought it would be. While it carries with it a next generation naming scheme and some fancy new features it seems to be more half step like the GeForce 8800 GT was for NVIDIA. The particular core name is the RV670 and carries with it new 55nm architecture, what this give us is a smaller, cooler and hopefully faster core. It runs at 777MHz, comes with 320 stream processors. And the Samsung GDDR4 memory comes clocked in at 2252MHz and uses a 256-bit interface. The card is of course PCI Express 2.0 like we mentioned and there will supposedly be support for Quad CrossFire.

The Radeon HD 3870 is good but it's not fantastic. We don't doubt though that as we see new drivers from AMD performance will begin to go up. You have to remember though that this card is priced at $250 so it's not an expensive card like your normal next-gen offering. Looking over our questions from the intro the card does perform quite well and is a nice step up from the Radeon HD 2900 XT at a very good price. It's really in direct competition with the GeForce 8800 GT although it never really manages to perform as well as it, bar a few cases. But maybe it doesn't have to as it has some extra positive aspects.

The card is good, there's no denying that and it's a decent purchase for someone who wanted an AMD offering and was looking at the Radeon HD 2900 XT. The bottom line though is that it's not fantastic, which is okay, the price is good and little things like the quieter fan, HDMI convertor and DirectX 10.1 support make it a more attractive card for some people but as a straight out performer it's just good. As we come up to the jolly season it's time to start buying yourself a new video card and if AMD can get a good driver update out early next month, it could become a fantastic card.

Personally we would probably almost opt for the Radeon HD 3870 for a few reasons we have already mentioned. The noise level is great, the GeForce 8800 GT is really just a loud and hence annoying card. Really who wants to bother messing around with aftermarket coolers and taking the risk of voiding the warranty? Stock also doesn't seem to be an issue and price is pretty good. The inclusion of HDMI and UVD are nice so it could be retired to my home theatre PC when the true next generation cards come out. With better driver support there is no doubt that in no time this card will be screaming along.