AMD's Radeon 3870 card for the most part has been a hit and a sharp contrast to the plagued 2900 XT. We've seen a number of variations of the Radeon 3850 and 3870 from manufacturers and today we have another take on AMD's popular GPU, Sapphire's Radeon 3870 Toxic.

The 3870 Toxic comes packaged in a sharp box with a CG Iceman like character on the box and looks great. Inside the card is wrapped in a static bag and packaged safely in foam. Taking the card out of the box one sees the immediate difference that Sapphire offers with toxic in a single slot and slim GPU as opposed to the normal dual-slot cooler of the Radeon 3870. It's sleeker with a blue PCB and a heatsink that covers most of the card. Sapphire is dubbing this Vapor-X cooler and Vapour Chamber Technology (VCT). The card does run cool and quiet and it is nice to see a single slot 3870 since Nvidia's competing GPUs are all single slot standard cards. Thanks to this the Toxic 3870 is also overclocked out of the box with 512MB of GDDR4 memory at 1152Mhz (2.3GHz effective) and the GPU running at 800MHz. This brings the core clock 23Mhz above a standard 3870 and 26MHz more for the memory. Two DVI outputs are on the card in addition to video out. As with other high-end Radeon cards it supports CrossfireX technology allowing for multiple combinations of Radeon graphics cards if your motherboard supports it.

Inside the box the card has a lot to offer customers. The hardware bundle includes S-video cable, DVI-to-HDMI adapter, VGA-to-DVI, component cables for video out, Crossfire connector, and uniquely a full HDMI cable. This is a nice addition as more monitors include HDMI and people setup home theater PCs. The software bundle is also spectacular with the full version of 3DMark 2006, PowerDVD and DVD Suite, driver CD, and it also comes with Valve's Black Box. The Black Box features full versions of Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 which is an amazing package.

We'll also do a quick refresh of the RV670 GPU the Radeon 3870 and 3850 are based on. Both are built using a 55nm manufacturing process down from 80nm of the previous generation and the memory bus has been halved from 512-bit to 256-bit with no performance loss. As such the problems of the 2900 XT series are virtually gone with good power consumption and heat levels. ATI's UVD (Unified Video Decoder) is also onboard this time to handle high-definition decoding offloading the workload from the CPU.

Here are the technical specs.

 * 666 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
* PCI Express 2.0 x16 bus interface
* 256-bit GDDR4 memory interface
* Ring Bus Memory Controller
o Fully distributed design with 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads and writes
* Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support
o Shader Model 4.1
o 32-bit floating point texture filtering
o Indexed cube map arrays
o Independent blend modes per render target
o Pixel coverage sample masking
o Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders
o Gather4 texture fetching
* Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture
o 320 stream processing units

* Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
* Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders
* Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
* 128-bit floating point precision for all operations
* Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
* Shader instruction and constant caches
* Up to 80 texture fetches per clock cycle
* Up to 128 textures per pixel
* Fully associative multi-level texture cache design
* DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
* High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
* Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs
* Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
* Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear
* Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1)
* Lossless color compression (up to 8:1)
* 8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support
* Physics processing support

* Dynamic Geometry Acceleration
o High performance vertex cache
o Programmable tessellation unit
o Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
o Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance
* Anti-aliasing features
o Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)
o Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
o Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
o Temporal anti-aliasing
o Gamma correct
o Super AA (ATI CrossFire™ configurations only)
o All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering
* Texture filtering features
o 2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel)
o 128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
o Bicubic filtering
o sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
o Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)
o Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support
o Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support
* OpenGL 2.0 support
* ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform
o Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats

* High definition (HD) playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats
* Hardware MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX video decode acceleration
* Motion compensation and IDCT
* ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
* Color space conversion
* Chroma subsampling format conversion
* Horizontal and vertical scaling
* Gamma correction
* Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
* De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
* Detail enhancement
* Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
* Bad edit correction
* Two independent display controllers
* Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
* Full 30-bit display processing
* Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
* Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
* High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
* Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
* Fast, glitch-free mode switching
* Hardware cursor
* Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
o Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)
o Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content
* Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs
o Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x1536
* HDMI output support
o Supports all display resolutions up to 1920x1080
o Integrated HD audio controller with multi-channel (5.1) AC3 support, enabling a plug-and-play cable-less audio solution
* Integrated AMD Xilleon™ HDTV encoder
o Provides high quality analog TV output (component/S-video/composite)
o Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions
o Underscan and overscan compensation
* MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding
* Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
* VGA mode support on all display outputs

* ATI PowerPlay™
o Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings
o Performance-on-Demand

* Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario
* Clock and memory speed throttling
* Voltage switching
* Dynamic clock gating
* Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required

* ATI CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology
o Scale up rendering performance and image quality with two, three, or four GPUs
o Integrated compositing engine
o High performance dual channel bridge interconnect

1. Dual channel interconnect is not required for ATI CrossFire, and may not be included in all product configurations
2. Some custom resolutions require user configuration
3. HDCP support for playback of protected content requires connection to a HDCP capable display

System Requirement:

* PCI Express based PC is required with one X16 lane graphic slot available on the motherboard.
* 1GB or greater system memory for better performance.
* 450Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express power connector recommended.
* For ATI CrossfireX: 550 watt power supply or greater with two 6-pin connectors.
* Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products.
* Installation software requires CD-ROM drive.
* DVD playback requires DVD driver.
* Blu-ray/HD DVD playback requires Blu-ray/HD-DVD drive and playback software.
* For a complete ATI CrossFireX™ system, a second ATI Radeon™ HD 3870 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per board are required.

No April Fool's, Tuesday marked the launch of the GeForce 9800 GTX and it was a long time coming. You have to go all the way back to early November 2006 for the very first DirectX 10 cards launched, Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS. Who knew at the time that it would be so long until these cards true follow ups some seventeen months later. But at last it has arrived and while it won't have the earth shattering effect the GeForce 8800 GTX had it is quite a worthy competitor.

As you might expect Nvidia's 9800 GTX has a lot in common with all the recent cards they've released in that it is based off the G92 core that the 8800 GT, 8800 GTS 512MB, and more recent 9600 GT all share. To sum it up quickly the major difference between this and the G80 core the previous generation of DX10 cards were based on is the die shrink to 65nm to cut down on die size, costs, and power consumption. It features 128 shaders with a default clockspeed of 675MHz for the core and 1.69GHz for the shaders with a 2.2GHz memory clockspeed with 512MB of RAM using a 256-bit memory bus. This might seem a little odd to some people who know the GeForce 8800 GTX specs as that card featured 768MB of RAM with a 384-bit memory interface, so higher in regards to the GeForce 9800 GTX. That said there were more than likely some efficiency issues in regards to texture management which have been resolved with better drivers and revised hardware but it still seems on paper to be one of the few times a newer product has lower specs than the previous generation. ATI also did this with their Radeon 3870 moving from a 512-bit memory interface to 256-bit and that card was much faster than the 2900 XT. The stream processor number holds steady at 128 though the clock speed is 100MHz faster than the default of the GeForce 8800 GTX which was 575MHz compared to 675MHz.

The card is also significantly lighter in weight than the 8800 GTX due to the heatsink not being one huge piece of aluminum though it is still two slots and quite large. The card is covered in a dark, shiny, black shroud that upon first notice the first thing to pop into my head was Darth Vader's Helmet. These cards are also cooler running than the 8800 GTX but still put off quite a bit of heat from their exhaust vent.

Unfortunately even though the 9800 GTX should consume less power with the die shrink and smaller memory interface it still requires two six-pin PCI-Express plugs to function and of course if you go SLI you'll need four. Something you don't want to forget if you do plan to go that route.

We also have one of the very first overclocked 9800 GTX cards from Foxconn which runs at 780MHz for the core speed and 2.36GHz for the memory. We'll give a more in-depth review of that card later on as we're short on time. Our other card is an Asus EN9800 GTX which runs at stock speeds as well and we'll combine the two for SLI scores.

One other unique feature of the 9800 GTX is the dual golden fingers that rest at the top of the cards which is shared only by the GeForce 8800 GTX, 8800 GTX Ultra. Unfortunately it seems if you want to try triple SLI cash will have to be no issue as only their highest-end cards feature it. This is somewhat disappointing as we're very curious how triple 9600 GT or 8800 GT cards might perform.

Both of our Asus and Foxconn cards featured somewhat similar bundles though a few different perks. They both included an HDTV dongle, DVI-to VGA adapters, and two molex to six pin PCI-Express power adapter. Fairly standard, however Asus included a new leather bound CD wallet and Foxconn included their usually back-up software so interesting twists from both of them. No games were included but those can be hit or miss and if it is one you already have or don't want the benefit is lacking. The Asus leather CD wallet is an upgrade from ones we've seen previously from them so we included a picture of it. Both Foxconn and Asus also included overclocking utilities that we'll go into more in-depth in their own reviews.

Let's move onto our system specs and benchmarks including our new 30" LCD screen.

While we have yet to see a true follow up to the GeForce 8800 GTX Nvidia have released the G92 the GPU that should be the leader in it's follow up already in the GeForce 8800 GT and the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB. Today we're looking at one of these, the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB XFX Alpha Dog Edition.

The first GeForce 8800 GTS cards had 96 stream processors and 320MB or 640MB of memory depending on the card. The new G92 based GTS cards all have 512MB of memory and all have 128 stream processors, 32 more than the previous GTS cards. Other benefits include PCI-Express 2.0 support, PureVideo HD engine support. The reference clock speed is 650MHz for the core and 1.94GHz for the memory. This should also prove to be a significant step up from the GeForce 8800 GT. 400W power supply is what Nvidia lists as a minimum to use the card but this will vary depending on the quality of your power supply. A single six pin PCI-Express power connector is used for power.

Physically the card is about the same length as a GeForce 8800 GT but features a dual slot cooler instead of the single slot of the GT. Also in a new twist the fan at the end of the card is angled inwards to allow for better cooling. The card is a familar Nvidia green PCB.

As the GeForce 8800 GTS is based off the G92 core it has all the benefits of that including the most important, being built upon a 65nm manufacturing process. This should reduces power consumption significantly, heat, and overall cost to manufacture which hopefully will be passed onto the consumer. Currently a GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB can be found for a very cheap price of $250.

Included in the bundle is the full retail version of Relic's excellent real-time strategy game, Company of Heroes. The hardware bundle is fairly standard with a two DVI-to-VGA adapters, s-video cable, and an HDTV dongle. An XFX "Do Not Disturb" door hanger is also included.

Here are specs from XFX.

Memory Clock
1.944 GHz
Dual Link DVI - Supporting digital output up to 2560x1600
Yes (Dual)
Clock rate
678 MHz
Chipset
GeForce 8800 GTS
Memory
512 MB
Bus Type
PCI-E
Memory Type
DDR3
Memory Bus
256-bit
Highlighted Features
RoHS , Dual DVI Out , HDTV ready , HDCP Ready , SLI ready , TV Out , Vista

Let's move onto our test system and benchmarks.