Today we will be looking at a VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 graphics card. As you may be aware, ATI's Radeon HD 3870 board is an enthusiast class DirectX 10.1 gaming video card, with an unified video decoder for improved HD experiences. The primary competitor to the Radeon HD 3870 is NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT graphics card. Our VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 strays from the reference board design of the Radeon HD 3870 in a good way, it sports a more powerful cooler on it, which we will push to the limits in our testing. This is the first video card from VisionTek we have had a chance to check out, so we look forward to see what it can do and what it brings as gaming experience. - NeoSeeker

VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 512MB CrossFire Review

The VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 almost looks like a Radeon HD 2900 XT at first glance, unlike the other Radeon HD 3870's we've seen, the plastic enclosure of the dual slot cooling solution encompasses almost the whole card. A big fan dominates the right portion of the card, big enough to cause a bulge on the top of the card. The fan pushes air through a long aluminum heatsink, which looks roughly twice the size of the reference board heatsink. The heatsink is further assisted by a pair of U-shaped copper heatpipes that run vertically through the heatsinks. This does look better than the reference cooling design.

Judging from the amount of air rushing out the rear of the card when in operation, the cooler does seem effective at pushing hot air where it should be, namely outside of your case. The cooling solution also covers the cards GDDR4 memory well, which is nice to see. Size wise, the VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 is on the big side of things, and compares in length to top-end cards such as the Radeon HD 2900 XT. The clocks of the VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 are a bit above the default speeds. While the standard version is clocked at 777MHz for the core and 2252MHz for the memory, the VisionTek comes at 800/2340MHz.

This video card comes in an averaged sized black box. Prominent information includes the 512MB of GDDR4 memory, HD video and HDMI audio capabilities, and the CrossFireX logo, written over a backdrop of Tabula Rasa characters. The side of the box includes a handy slot identification chart, which may be useful to more casual gamers who are not certain whether they have a PCI Express or AGP slot in their rig. After many trials and tribulations, we managed to get the VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 runnning rock stable with a core clock of 884MHz and a memory clock of 2596MHz which is quite impressive.

The VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 card is a complete solution for contemporary PC gamers. It will deliver strong gaming performance, at a reasonable price. You can expect to be fine in the video card department for sometime if you have a VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 in your system. One of the main questions that may be on your mind is how the Radeon HD 3870 stacks up against the GeForce 8800 GT cards. We'd say the answer is quite well. While the GeForce 8800 GT does seem to overpower the Radeon HD 3870 more often than not in the benchmarks, it often can be found for retailing for a bit less money.

This particular Radeon HD 3870 is an all around solid product. We particularly appreciated the cooling solution on this card, it has one of the best coolers that we have seen first hand from many different examples of the Radeon HD 3870 family. This capable cooler led directly to good experiences in overclocking. All in all, while perhaps lacking just a little extra something that could have maybe pushed this card from great to outstanding, the VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 is a very nice example of the Radeon HD 3870 family, and is recommended.