ATI Radeon HD 3870 & 3850: A Return to Competition
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 15, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Obsoleting Products: Radeon HD 3870 vs. 2900 XT
There must be something in the water these days, first NVIDIA makes most of its product line obsolete and now with the Radeon HD 3870 AMD gets rid of any reason to have the 2900 XT.
Our benchmarks show that the cheaper, cooler, quieter Radeon HD 3870 is at worst, the same speed as the poorly received Radeon HD 2900 XT. Granted there are a few areas where the 2900 XT does better, but for the most part it simply can't hold its own against the 3870.
These next two tables summarize things a little better for those of you that are more interested in raw numbers. What you're looking at here is the percentage of 2900 XT performance each one of these cards delivers, first off is the Radeon HD 3870 vs. the 2900 XT:
| 3870: % of Radeon HD 2900 XT Performance | 1280 x 1024 | 1600 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 | 2560 x 1600 |
| Bioshock | 107% | 106% | 107% | 110% |
| Unreal Tournament 3 | 98.8% | 96.2% | 93.3% | 93.8% |
| ET: Quake Wars | 108% | 117% | 118% | 111% |
| Oblivion | 101% | 103% | 101% | 100% |
| Oblivion (4X AA) | 104% | 103% | 105% | 105% |
| Half Life 2: Episode 2 | 100% | 97.7% | 96.3% | 97.8% |
| World in Conflict | 118% | 120% | 115% | 118% |
| Call of Duty 4 | 136% | 130% | 118% | 102% |
| Crysis | 104% | 104% | 103% | - |
| Average | 110% | 110% | 108% | 106% |
On average, the Radeon HD 3870 gives us a 6 - 10% increase in performance over the more expensive, less featured, louder Radeon HD 2900 XT. Not bad for improvement over the course of 6 months.
| 3850: % of Radeon HD 2900 XT Performance | 1280 x 1024 | 1600 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 | 2560 x 1600 |
| Bioshock | 90.7% | 91% | 92.9% | 60.1% |
| Unreal Tournament 3 | 92.1% | 86.1% | 80.8% | 77.2% |
| ET: Quake Wars | 107% | 104% | 99.3% | 81.7% |
| Oblivion | 91.1% | 86.4% | 85.8% | 85.4% |
| Oblivion (4X AA) | 92.5% | 89.3% | 89.1% | 83.5% |
| Half Life 2: Episode 2 | 97.4% | 90% | 87.1% | 86.1% |
| World in Conflict | 109% | 108% | 97.4% | 92.9% |
| Call of Duty 4 | 108% | 93.6% | 88.3% | 75.8% |
| Crysis | 93.7% | 91.4% | 89.7% | - |
| Average | 97.9% | 93.2% | 90.1% | 80.3% |
The Radeon HD 3850 comes close in performance to the 2900 XT, especially at lower resolutions, but at ultra high resolutions it delivers only about 80% of the performance of its older brother.
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Roy2001 - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Well, once I played games with AA enabled, I would never turn it off. I would rather lower the resolution.falacy - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
That's a giant "ME TOO!" for me.my old ATi 9800XT would run 4x AA at 1024x768 in most games and I found that more enjoyable than running 1280x1024 without AA. The 60Hz fliker of the monitor at 1280x1024 played a role in that I am sure, but mostly the trouble with gaming without AA is that objects in the distance tend to shimmer in an unnatural way that seems to pull me out of the moment. So, indeed lower resolution + 4x AA = a better experience than higher resolution that has distracting artifacts.
DrMrLordX - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Alright, thanks. I actually overlooked the AA tests on Oblivion. Silly me.Mostly I was interested in knowing if the 3870 had better results running with 4x AA than the 2900XT. Interestingly enough, the 3870 doesn't seem to lose a lot with 4x AA, especially at high resolutions. The 8800GT is another story.
munky - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
But... I'd like to see more games benchmarked, and with AA preferably.StormRider - Friday, November 16, 2007 - link
Is anyone else bothered by the transistor count of 666 million? Couldn't they have done something so that it was 665 million or 667 million instead?aeternitas - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
lol How stupid. As you go out using this card to obviously kill some sort of opponent, you're bothered by this?Kaleid - Friday, November 23, 2007 - link
Just a number, nothing more to it.