Recently AMD has released their new RV670 GPU which is used on their Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 cards. For unknown reasons AMD could not get us a sample for the launch, neither for the following weeks so far. Even though their responsible promised to get us samples nothing happened. Thank you GeCube for a quick and reliable sample delivery. The RV670 GPU is based on the RV610 and RV630 architecture, but features much better performance. It is built on a 55nm process with 666 million transistors with a 256-bit memory interface. As a novelty this chip brings DirectX 10.1 support and can benefit from the improved features of PCI Express 2.0. - techPowerUp!

GeCube Radeon HD 3850 512MB X-Turbo Card Review

While both features are not important today they are a clear commitment from AMD that they are looking at future technologies and will make use of them as soon as possible. GeCube has taken the Radeon HD 3850 reference design and improved it for additional overclocking. Instead of a one slot cooling solution a more powerful dual slot cooler is used. The improved cooling performance allows the card to run at higher clocks, in our case 700MHz core and 1700MHz memory. Compared to the AMD reference design this is a nice overclock which yields some extra free performance, and comes with 512MB memory.

GeCube ships their card in a massive package which is also a stand-up design. So compared to most other cards on shop shelves, these cards will stick out and draw attention. On the back you have a list of product features in several languages. What we miss here is an information about the actual clocks of this product. The sticker on the front says OC Edition, but it doesn't state the overclock anywhere on the package. GeCube uses a custom cooler on their X-Turbo edition card which looks very nice and fits the ATI color theme. Even the transparent plastic has the right looks.

Unlike the regular Radeon HD 3850, GeCube has decided to make their card a two slot design which allows a bigger cooler for lower temperatures and improved overclocking. The cooler is dominated by a large copper base with attached heatpipes. From there the heat is moved away quickly to a large array of fins with air flowing over them. The design of the cooler will exhaust the hot air outside of the case. A second heatsink is located near the back of the card. It is simply a chunk of metal which cools the voltage regulation circuitry. And you can use this card in CrossFire with any other Radeon HD 3850.

GeCube is selling their Radeon HD 3850 X-Turbo edition for $209 which is a premium of $30 above the price of a reference design card with 256MB memory. It seems that AMD is back in the game. Even though their Radeon HD 3800 series can not beat NVIDIA's high-end offerings, the cards come at a much more affordable price point and deliver rock solid performance. For home theatre PC users who want to use HDMI and audio, AMD's cards are the only on the market that also deliver high quality audio straight from the GPU. GeCube has done a formidable job releasing a product that is better than AMD's reference cards.

The added memory and higher clocks were able to make a difference in most of our benchmarks, especially the added 256MB help a lot when running at high resolutions. If this is worth a $30 premium depends on the settings you are going to use that card at. Unfortunately our sample did not allow much more overclocking beyond GeCube's clock rates but this could also be a limitation of the sample we had.