Aesthetics wise, it's a pretty nice card to look at. But we'll cover that in our benchmark run of course.
Performance between the two is close to NIL, in fact the 3870 will be slightly faster here and there. A demonic number of transistors are accounted for in the RV670 silicon, 666 Million, slightly less than the 80nm HD 2900 XT at 700 Million transistors. What's quite interesting is that AMD is doing more with less, and in this case I mean transistors. Soon you'll likely spot slightly cheaper GDDR3 versions of the HD 3870 as well with the same core frequency as the GDDR4 card. This GDDR4 memory is clocked at an astounding 1.1 GHz (2250 MHz effective), and the core frequency is set at a pretty dandy 775 MHz. It will feature 256-bit GDDR4 opposed to GDDR3 while using the same RV670 core found on HD 3850.
#Amd radeon hd 3870 size series#
The more "higher-end" Radeon HD 3870 is the slightly faster version of the 3850, it comes with a dual-slot cooler quite similar to the HD 2900 series yet this time offers a pretty silent solution. In the next pages we'll show you the board-partner cards in more detail. Expect the 256MB version to sell for only 150 USD and the 512 MB version form 199 USD which is amazing value for the money considering you have a fully working RV670 GPU on that card. Memory and core frequency will differ per manufacturer here and there as there's still room for faster clocked products. To cut cost the card is back to GDDR3 memory at a 256-bit memory bus. I say at least as some board-partners will very likely release pre-overclocked models of these cards. The 3850 will be running at a 825 MHz memory frequency (1650 MHZ effective), and will have a core frequency of at least 660 MHz. Both cards have an optional 256MB or 512MB onboard GDDR3 memory configuration. The lower-end Radeon HD 3850 will feature a silent single-slot cooler. Pretty brilliant, we'll show you some results later on. Next to that smaller die-size AMD also incorporated ATI Powerplay (known from their mobile products) into the GPU which seems to do wonders in power consumption as it can regulate voltage levels, clock speeds on the fly. The soccer players the transistors and the football the data transmitted. In the case of this silicon, the soccerfield is the RV670, water would be the current flowing through the silicon. And the soccer players would get their football quicker from point A to B as the distance is shorter. Now we cut that football field in half yet have the same amount of players play soccer, this would mean we'd use less water. And instead of kicking the ball we use the water flow to get the ball from point A to B. Let me try to explain in a very laymen explanation: Obviously the 55nm fabrication process is showing it's advantages there as the smaller a die size is the less voltage it requires. There are a number of reasons for the decrease in power consumption. Just a 6-pin connector will be sufficient as the fastest model announced today (HD 3870) uses merely half the Wattage of that 2900 XT at roughly 105 Watt (peak). Do you guys remember that the 2900 cards had two power connectors (one 75W 6-pin & one 150W 8-pin) ? That's completely obsolete. You'll get near same performance as a HD 2900 HD at half the price and secondly, half the power consumption (thus lower wattage).
Let's walk through the more important ones.įor me personally the biggest improvement of the 38xx series GPU is two-fold. The processor is now manufactured at a much smaller 55nm process and entails a significant number of improvements. It does fix a lot of inefficiency issues that ATI faced with R600 (Radeon HD 2900). Make no mistake, both cards make use of exactly the same graphics processor, making that 3850 a very interesting to purchase graphics card (150 USD) Yes, that price is almost creepy isn't ? Back to the dirty tech talk though the new RV670 by all means is not just a die-shrink of R600. RV670 is the codename for the chip under the hood of the HD 3850 & 3870 graphics cards. Inevitably with the next generation variants of the 24 released, expect to see a 3x50 and 3x70, and likely with a few other variants as well. Simple and easy, the higher the number the faster and newer the product shall be.
#Amd radeon hd 3870 size pro#
70 is equivalent to XT, 50 is the new name for Pro The last two digits, xx70 is the Variant.The second number, in this case x8xx, is Family.The first number, 3, denotes the Generation.So let me explain first how you need to look at the new naming schema: Finally naming the way it's meant to be understood, this one makes sense if you think about it for a second. There are no more Pro, XT, XTX, GT extensions in the product names are there? Ah yes my friend. Alright, before we dive into the actual technology I wanted to discuss what you probably already have noticed on the first page.