This week AMD came to unveil its latest generation of ATI graphics hardware, an awaited release that without a doubt created a lot of expectations and much speculation especially because of two factors. The dominant player, NVIDIA had just killed its whole high-end line up two weeks before, in favor of an affordable and more efficient model, the GeForce 8800 GT card. And the holiday season that has shaped up to become one of the most exciting in recent times for PC gamers, with a buttload of good titles like Unreal Tournament 3, Crysis, and the list goes on... But AMD's secret was not so much of a well kept one, and we knew upfront it would not be a top level performer. - TechSpot

ASUS Extreme AH3870 512MB Graphics Card Review

Back in May the first brainchild of AMD/ATI was launched and despite of being a good performer, the Radeon HD 2900 XT was undoubtedly a bit of a flop. The product arrived late to compete with the GeForce 8800 series and while its performance was good for the most part, it varied too much depending on the game and on the quality settings you used. Then on the sub-$200, it was the battle for the less worse card between NVIDIA's dismal GeForce 8600 series and the just as unimpressive Radeon HD 2600 series. So until now, your best bet for an affordable video card was the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, still sold for +$300.

While AMD has been slow to answer to NVIDIA's offerings in the recent past, they were quite snappy answering to the latest GeForce 8800 GT challenge. But wait a second, it's quite likely things did not happen in that order, and in fact the GeForce 8800 GT was the result of a super quick reaction from NVIDIA to steal ATI's thunder. This move is costing NVIDIA who pretends to remain at the top of the add-in graphics market. So, designed to combat the GeForce 8800 GT is the Radeon HD 3870, which features a long list of very impressive specifications and being the first DirectX 10.1 ready graphics accelerator.

Already we have learned that the Radeon HD 3870 delivers Radeon HD 2900 XT like performance for the most part, which is both disappointing and impressive. It is disappointing because the GeForce 8800 GT is faster than the Radeon HD 2900 XT in a majority of titles. On the other hand this new Radeon features an attractive price tag, making it a fair bit cheaper. More impressive is the fact that AMD just announced the Radeon HD 3870 and it's already selling for just $220. While the GeForce 8800 GT may have won the performance war, the Radeon HD 3870 could still come out on top if availability remains an issue for NVIDIA.

However being an early introduction in the market do not expect a typical well elaborated ASUS graphics card, as the Extreme AH3870 could easily be mistaken for an AMD reference card. Other than the ASUS label on the fan, there is very little distinguishing the two. The smaller 55nm design of the Radeon HD 3870 allows it to operate at 775MHz which is just 30MHz higher than the Radeon HD 2900 XT. The GDDR4 memory also works at an impressive frequency 2.25GHz on this particular model. The Radeon HD 3870 features as well 320 stream processors, but a smaller 256-bit memory interface.

So while the Radeon HD 3870 is clearly not able to match or beat the power of the GeForce 8800 GT, at least in a consistent manner, it is able to get within close range from it for the most part. It would seem that those wanting to spend closer to $300 will be better off buying a GeForce 8800 GT, while the Radeon HD 3870 is targeted at those looking at spending closer to $200. Let's also not forget that so far NVIDIA has failed to supply any 256MB version of the GeForce 8800 GT cards, while AMD is also making immediately available such a model, namely the Radeon HD 3850 graphics card.

If AMD is able to keep supplying the Radeon HD 3870 in large enough quantities, at $220 they are no doubt going to sell a ton of them, even more so with the GeForce 8800 GT running short in supply. With no further cards planned from either NVIDIA or ATI for the remainder of the year, it will also be interesting to see how the CrossFire versus SLI game plays in the coming months and how either company can squeeze some extra performance from current drivers.