Radeon HD 3870/3850 Reviews
Tweaktown has posted their in-depth review of the Radeon HD 3870 from ASUS. Their conclusion? They gave the card a 91/100 rating overall and said "It's a good performing graphics card with a lot of great features! Give it a few driver updates and we should have a fantastic performing product with those same great features." The card also recieved the TweakTown Best Features award.
Hardware Canucks reviews the HD 3870 from HIS. They gave the card a 4/5 rating and the Dam Good Value award. In the review, they overclock the card from 777MHz core/2252MHz RAM to an astounding 860MHz core/2748MHz RAM! Wow. The overclocked card beat the 8800GT in many benchmarks and was even right on the tail of the 8800GTX in some games. They were also able (after many hours of tweaking) to get two cards to work in crossfire. Once better drivers are released, two 3870s in crossfire should easily be able to surpass even the 8800GTX.
Elite Bastards reviews the Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme 512MB from PowerColor and gives the card their Elite Innovation award.
Technic3D also reviews PowerColor's Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme. They give the card a 89/100 overall and their Silver and Value Awards. Check it out here if Sie Deutsches sprechen, or here for the translated version.
Hexus reviews the Radeon HD 3870 and puts it head-to-head with NVIDIA's 8800GT. They conclude with this: "Bottom line: AMD Radeon HD 3870 is a fast, fast mid-range card that checks all the feature tick boxes with aplomb. Trouble is, NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GT 512 manages to out-muscle it in the benchmarks, largely because it has a developer-relations team that’s properly funded and is allowed to compete at the highest level." The card recieves the Hexus Gaming Good Value award.
HotHardware aslo reviews the Radeon HD 3870. The pros listed are: Good Performance, Great Power Characteristics, Quiet, and Low MSRPs. The Cons listed are: CrossFire Scaling Issues, and NVIDIA Still Faster Overall.
From the reviews we have seen so far, it looks like the 3870 gives NVIDIA some competition in DirectX 10 games, while the DX9 performance is not as stellar. But then again, even with DX9 performance lower than NVIDIA's 8800GT, at 100+ fps average, the difference is not noticeable anyway. Lets just hope the 3870 X2 (R680) can compete in the enthusiast market or AMD's next generation GPUs are right around the corner. Actually, both would be nice. If AMD can keep the price low and have good driver support for the cards, they may be able to gain back some lost ground in the graphics market.