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.

Let's Get It Out of the Way: Radeon HD 3870 vs. GeForce 8800 GT Mid-Range Battle: Radeon HD 3850 vs. GeForce 8600 GTS
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  • Agent11 - Sunday, November 18, 2007 - link

    I was very disappointed with the use of a p35 chipset to compare crossfire to SLI.

    You use a motherboard with 16x by 16x pcie lanes for SLI but use one with 16x by 4x for crossfire... And then make a point of crossfire not scaling as well!

    Ask any bencher, it does matter.
  • SmoulikNezbeda - Sunday, November 18, 2007 - link

    Hi,

    I would like to know what numbers in graphs really represents. Are those average FPS or something like (min + max + ave)/3 FPS?

    Thanks
  • Agent11 - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link

    If it isn't average then theres a problem.
  • wecv - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link

    Hello, I am from the future.
    We now have 2GB GPUs with GDDR5 as entry level, 4GB-8GB GPUs for midrange with GDDR5 and 8GB GDDR5/GDDR5X/HBM2 or 11GB GDDR5X for High-end and enthusiast!

    You may go and live back in the past.
  • TheOtherRizzo - Saturday, November 17, 2007 - link

    What would you need a frame buffer of 512 MB for? That's enough room for about 80 1080p images. Sounds to me like someone at ATI is stuck in 1994 when framebuffers were the only memory on a graphics card...
  • wecv - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link

    Hello, I am from the future.
    We now have 2GB GPUs with GDDR5 as entry level, 4GB-8GB GPUs for midrange with GDDR5 and 8GB GDDR5/GDDR5X/HBM2 or 11GB GDDR5X for High-end and enthusiast!

    You may go and live back in the past.
  • ZipFreed - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link

    Lol, this comment is awesome and cracked me up. I am reading these older GPU reviews researching something and have been thinking similar sentiments to myself as I go.

    Glad you necro'd this.
  • 0roo0roo - Saturday, November 17, 2007 - link

    the convoluted naming systems of gpus garrantees pretty much only geeks in the know will make good purchasing decisions. this matters to the health of the pc game industry, i'm sure many have been turned off by the experience of going to their local store and buying a card within their budget and little other useful information and getting a lousy experience. i'm sure retailers actually benifit from the confusion since they can charge more and just hope the customer just bases their decision on their price range.
  • Shark Tek - Saturday, November 17, 2007 - link

    Finally GPU manufacturers are thinking right. Instead of making oven like heaters power hogs GPUs they're trying to make things right like Intel and AMD are doing with their CPU lines with less heat and power consumption.

    Lets see the upcoming generations how they will perform. ;)
  • araczynski - Friday, November 16, 2007 - link

    I'm assuming this is a mid line card with better stuff coming out?

    otherwise I don't see the point of getting anything other than an 8800gt, prices are too close to give up top of the line for merely 60 or so bucks, or better yet, waiting a few more months till the 8900's roll out.

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