*Source: Hothardware (
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/...3450_Arrive/)*
*______________*
When AMD launched the RV670 GPU at the heart of the ATI Radeon HD (
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/..._3450_Arrive/#) 3870 and 3850 series of products, they received quite a bit of fanfare due to the product's competitive prices, strong performance, and more manageable power profiles. One of the main reasons AMD was able to bring the Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 to market with these attributes was because the company had migrated their GPUs to a relatively more advanced 55nm process technology (
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/...3450_Arrive/#). Manufacturing the GPUs at 55nm meant they were more economical to produce, required less power than the previous generation, and could run at higher clock speeds.
More...
Threaded Mode