The ATI Radeon HD 3800 graphics card series is the much anticipated new line of graphics cards by AMD. Many of our readers know that ATI's line of desktop graphics cards has some price gaps that their key competitor offers cards at. ATI really doesn't have a graphics card in the $150 to $250 price range nor the $399 and above category. This have given NVIDIA free reign at these price points, but that all changes today as the Radeon HD 3800 series fills the price gap between $150 and $250. Other than putting a product line at this key pricing segment, they have also introduced a new GPU core known as the RV670 that has several new features that make it stand out from the competition. - Legit Reviews

ATI Radeon HD 3850 CrossFireX Video Board Review

The ATI Radeon HD 3800 series will consist of the Radeon HD 3870 and the Radeon HD 3850. Both cards have the same core and the only major difference is the clock speeds that the cards operate at. Today, we will be bringing you an in-depth view on a pair of Radeon HD 3850 graphics cards. The ATI Radeon HD 3800 series are the first graphics cards in the world to support DirectX 10.1 capabilities and plug and play CrossFireX multi-GPU upgradeability. And yes, CrossFireX is similar to CrossFire, but up to four graphics cards are paired together this time around, which allows to make quad-GPU systems.

If you would like to run eight displays or want the ultimate gaming performance from AMD, CrossFireX is the way to go, but you have to use an AMD 790FX motherboard with four PCI Express x16 lanes to make it possible. DirectX 10.1 brings awesome new lighting features like global illumination to reality, but in order to support Microsoft DirectX 10.1 these cards will need to be used on a system with Microsoft Vista SP1, which isn’t due out till sometime in 2008. Once the first service pack for Vista comes out, game developers will be able to individually light hundred if not thousands of moving objects individually.

So, what changes has ATI made that we can enjoy today? How about the fact it's built on the world's first 55nm process for a GPU, PCI Express 2.0, Unified Video Decoder for full decoding of H.264 and VC-1 and lastly, how about ATI PowerPlay? The GeForce 8800 GT will be known as the first desktop card on the market to support PCI Express 2.0, but the Radeon HD 3800 series was just a couple weeks behind. Current games have pushed the PCI Express 1.1 to its limits with high frame buffer demands, so PCI Express 2.0 was developed and launched, and supported with the Intel P35 and X38 chipsets.

To overclock the ATI Radeon 3850 HD video card, we used ATI Overdrive that is part of the Catalyst Control Center. When you unlock the ATI Overdrive, you can manually set the clock and memory settings or let the autot une utility to set the frequencies for you. Just for the fun, we tried out the auto tune feature to see if it could really find a stable clock configuration for the Radeon HD 3850. The starting point for our overclock is 669MHz on the core and 1858MHz on the GDDR3 memory chips. After ATI Overdrive finished, it showed the clock speeds being 759MHz on the GPU and 2198MHz on the memory.

The move to 55nm and the overall features of the RV670 core were obviously much needed for ATI and have boosted graphics card performance across the board. The ATI Radeon HD 3850 256MB video card has a price tag of $180 and we have confirmed with ATI and Newegg that the Radeon HD 3850 will go on sale today at the suggested retail price of $180 and the Radeon HD 3870 will be $220. At this price point, ATI has come up with a wonderful solution for the mainstream market. Competition in the $150-250 video card niche is fierce now that NVIDIA GeFrorce 8800 GT can be found for about $250.