One could say that AMD finally got bored with dragging its offer and decided to finally do some decent work with the new models. Here we have a completely new card, destined to impress both the press and the market. The market situation seems to get better and better as far as end-users are concerned. When we first received the GeForce 8600 and Radeon HD 2600 cards, the basic criticism was drawn to the 128-bit bus, which we thought was too narrow and made a distinction between the mid-range and upper-range cards too obvious. Taking a look at the situation one month ago, the difference in price between the GeForce 8600 GTS and the GeForce 8800 GTS was an entire €90. - InsideHW

AMD and PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 Board Review

The RV670 GPU is really an impressive piece of work and that is something that must be stated at the very beginning. The architecture plans were based on the experiences with the R600, with significant new changes. First of all, the chip was manufactured in the 55nm process, the first GPU manufactured in such tiny lithography. This made it possible for 666 million transistors to be placed on a surface less than half the previous size. This is truly something to be proud of, and we feel we must congratulate AMD on this, since doubling the density on the die in one generation time is an immense success.

This automatically means that the RV670 will consume very little power. Other characteristics are similar to those on the R600. First of all, the number of stream processors is the same, so 320 and the same goes for the TMU number. Since the chip is smaller and consumes drastically less power, the thermal characteristics are much better, so the clocks were increased as well. As far as heating is concerned, we believe that many a user will hail the fact that the cooling profile on the Radeon HD 3850 is a single slot solution. The models based on the RV670 will be the Radeon HD 3850 and the Radeon HD 3870.

The stronger of the two has higher clock values and a different type of memory, that is all there is to. Both cards have a 256-bit bus, and the Radeon HD 3870 uses GDDR4 memory set to 2.4GHz. The GPU speed is 775MHz. As these are quite extreme values, the advancement AMD has made is clear. Also, the RV670 is the first GPU to support DirectX 10.1, but we will probably be waiting a while before this proves its value, as hardware manufacturers are way ahead of software companies, primarily game developers. The new generation of AMD cards also brings support for PCI Express 2.0 and CrossFireX technology.

And now, the card which expressly arrived from PowerColor and surprised us upon first sight. Although the PCB design is similar to the referent one, changes were noticeable. First of all, there is the big ZEROtherm cooler which makes the card a very attractive piece of hardware. This model has 512MB of memory, which should bring a notable difference in performance of the latest array of games, should you wish to set them to higher graphics settings. The GPU is working at 700MHz sharp, and the memory at 2.0GHz. The packaging is nicely designed, but don't expect any special additional software.

This card is significantly faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS, at times even twice as fast, so the only possible salvation for the GeForce 8600 GTS is a price drop. This is the only way to avoid comparisons between the two. Having in mind the availability and low price of CrossFire ready motherboards, creating a superb gaming configuration with CrossFire has never been easier. A couple of these cards and a good CPU are the winning formula for a long and fruitful gaming. AMD made an extremely good GPU. We finally got what we were asking for, a 256-bit bus, decent performance and a more than acceptable price.