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
Out with the Old, in with the Mid-Range
We did this comparison in our 8800 GT review and decided to port the numbers over here too. To make the comparison a little more dramatic, we're pitting the lowly Radeon HD 3850 against the some of the previous kings of the hill: the GeForce 7950 GT and the Radeon X1950 XTX.
At only $179, the Radeon HD 3850 manages to outperform both cards. You might view Bioshock as an exception but keep in mind that the X1950 XTX is running the DX9 codepath while the Radeon HD 3850 is running a more GPU-intensive DX10 path, the new midrange card still wins.
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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.