We had a look at the GeCube Radeon HD 3850 the other week in CrossFire form to see how it went up against the new G92 based GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. We promised we would have a closer look at the card in its single form along with checking out the package. Well, GeCube have got a new cooler for their overclocked cards, and with some nice clock speeds to boot. So what we have from GeCube isn't just a reference design, but a more customized version with improved cooling and clock speeds. And, yes that should deliver better gaming performance all together. What we will do is have a look at the package and card before we get stuck into the benchmarks. - TweakTown

GeCube Radeon HD 3850 X-Turbo Video Card Review

GeCube are using a bigger than normal box this time, while not ASUS big, it's clearly bigger than boxes that we see from companies like Palit or MSI. It also stands on another angle which is something a bit different. Ultimately it doesn't matter which way it stands, but as long as the front is informative then that's the main thing. We have all the standard information on the front of the box, the brand at the top while the model across the bottom. We can also see ATI logo, the CrossFireX logo along with a Windows Vista logo. We see mention of PCI Express 2.0 along with 512MB of GDDR3 memory.

The two major stand-outs on the front of the box are the shield in the top left corner that shows the card is an OC Edition along with a picture just below that showing the new fan which GeCube label the X-Turbo III. Turning the box over we have some more in depth details of the card and what the core can offer, along with some main features and contact information. We also have some awards running across the bottom of the card. Getting inside the box we have a simple Radeon HD 3800 series manual and a CD that just comes with the driver for a number of operating systems, but no games present.

Getting the package out the way and moving onto the card the first thing you notice is the huge cooler. A cooler like this is generally saved for the Radeon HD 3870 but GeCube thought they would go all out and add a larger cooler onto the lower specified Radeon HD 3850. The cooler really manages to take up majority of the card, we can see some copper heat pipes running across the bottom of the card along with the copper heatsink that sits over the core. We can also see the copper base coming out the bottom. The cooler is pretty serious and should be significantly quieter and cooler than the standard single slot cooling.

Moving around the card we have a pretty standard affair, the back of the card has a single PCI Express connector located just below the fan and heading around to the top of the card we can see our CrossFire connectors. The card is of course overclocked and comes in with a 725MHz core and a 1900MHz efective clock on the 512MB of GDDR3 memory. This is up from the standard 670/1600MHz found on stock clocked cards. Compared to the ASUS TOP version there isn't much at all between the two cards, both share the same 1900MHz clock speed on the memory while the TOP offering comes in with a slightly higher 730MHz core.

GeCube made quite the name for themselves back in the Radeon 9600 XT era, and it seems like they have stuck with a working formula. They've done a good job with the Radeon HD 3850. It performs well out of the box, is generally pretty quiet and seems to offer a pretty good bang for buck. There isn't much more you could ask for. We also had a closer look at CrossFire performance today, and you can see that it doesn't really offer huge gains. The single card setup on the other hand manages to hold its own very well and really comes close to the GeForce 8800 GT at some points.

Considering it's priced a fair bit better and there are no stock issues it offers a pretty good performance to price ratio. All in all GeCube have done a good job with the Radeon HD 3850 and the X-Turbo III cooler is a step up from the stock single slot design we're use too seeing. If it had a game bundle it would probably be the perfect card, though it just oozes performance and quality so we're still not complaining.