When the GeForce 8800 GT was released many of us shook our heads with this was a major body blow to AMD/ATi.  As we all quickly learned, while the 8800 GT is a phenomenal card it is now, on an almost unprecedented scale, on back order with street prices rising as much as a $100 in true supply and demand fashion.  Using myself to better illustrate this point; I ordered a pair of 8800 GTs in November as a Christmas gift.  Not only have the card not arrived as of this writing but the most recent estimated ship date is now late January! 

As if they smelled blood in the water, ATi has released a pair of cards in response to the 8800 GT; the Radeon HD3850 and Radeon HD3870.  The HD3850 is offered in 256MB and 512MB memory configurations with pricing at $175 and $200 respectively.  The HD3870 is available with 512MB of GDDR4 memory and at a street price of $250.  Two things are abundantly clear.  First off, the ATi solution is now priced at least $80 under the 8800 GT and more importantly, it is available now, as in it is in stock on store shelves right now.

Just because something is available and priced less doesn't necessarily make it good.  The fine people at HIS have sent over their 512MB HD3850 card in their near famous factory overclocked "Turbo" configuration.  Speaking of HIS's Turbo, their factory overclock has undergone some revision.  The HIS factory overclock is now offered in two models; "Turbo" and "TurboX" with the later being 'X' for Xtreme.  They claim that this overclocked TurboX 512MB card outperforms the stock HD3870.  That's quite a claim that we plan to put to the test today.  Let's begin with the spec sheet and then get a little hands on with the HIS Radeon HD3850 IceQ3 Turbo X.

Specifications

• Graphics Engine: ATi Radeon HD3850 (RV670)

• Interface: PCI-Express

• Engine Clock: 735MHz

• Memory Clock: 1960MHz

• Memory Type/Size: GDDR3/512MB

• Memory Interface: 256-bit

• Pixel Pipelines: 320 Stream Processing Units (unified)

• Vertex Engines:  320 Stream Processing Units (unified)

• Max Resolution: 2560x1600

• VGA Output: Yes with adapter

• TV-Out: No

• DVI: Two ports

• VGA: Yes with adapter

• HDMI: Yes with adapter

• Native Crossfire support

What you get

Opening up the package we find a few nice extras thrown in.  In addition to the card, HIS includes cables and adapters to take advantage of this 'high definition' ready card to include a DVI to HDMI adapter, a DVI to VGA adapter, and an S-Video component adapter.  You also get a Crossfire bridge cable if you choose to double your pleasure with two cards in Crossfire mode.  An instruction manual, driver/utility CD and a very trendy screwdriver tool.  This screwdriver has several different tips under its cap, a built in level and LED light.  This last item immediately went into the breast pocket of my shirt.

        

NEXT

Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - The Card
Pg 3 - Benchmarks
Pg 4 - Benchmarks
Pg 5 - Image Quality / Overclocking / Conclusion