*Review: HotHardware (
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/...aphics_Card/)*
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Back in November 2007, AMD launched the 55nm ATI RV670 GPU. With this launch, we were introduced to two new ATI video cards, the Radeon HD 3870 and 3850. If you read our launch article (
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/...nm%5FRV6 70/), then you already know that the RV670 is a derivative of the R600, which powers the Radeon HD 2900 XT. Our initial experience with AMD's new cards was pretty positive. The Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 offer good performance at nice MSRPs with impressive power characteristics. After launch articles, though, everyone anxiously waits for the retail board reviews.
This article will be our first look at a full retail board based on the new RV670 GPU. The card we have up on the review block today is the ASUS EAH3850 TOP (full model number: EAH3850/G/HTDI/256M). As you've probably already realized, this is a Radeon HD 3850 card, as such it sports 256MB of GDDR3 memory and DirectX 10.1 support.
To see how this retail version of a Radeon HD 3850 performs, we're going to pit it against a variety of cards, including a Radeon X1950 Pro, GeForce 8600 GT and a 256MB 8800 GT. It should be interesting to see where ASUS' EAH3850 falls in this pack in our benchmarks. Before we get to those, though, let's take a look at the specifications and features of the EAH3850.
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