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, 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.

As you can see on the box above, ASUS decided to include the highly-acclaimed RTS game Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. The entire front of the box is designed around this fact, and the front of the box is actually a flap that lifts up to reveal even more CoH info. There's even a handle on the top of the box, so that it's a little easier to carry around and show off to your friends.

When we opened the box, we were happy to see that ASUS packs the box's contents with their safe arrival in mind. Styrofoam surrounds the card, so it will most likely arrive in working condition. The box holds more than just the card, though, of course. ASUS also throws in a driver CD, a software/utility CD, the CoH: Opposing Fronts game (although our copy seems to be missing from the review kit we were sent), an ASUS-branded CD case, a setup guide, a TV-out (component video) cable, a composite to S-video adapter, a power cable, a CrossFire connector bridge, a DVI-to-VGA adapter, and a DVI-to-HDMI adapter. Overall, it's a pretty good bundle.

Closer Look: EAH3850 TOP TOP notch or not so TOP notch?

The ASUS EAH3850 TOP only differs from the ATI reference design in one way: there is a CoH: Opposing Fronts decal on top of the cooler. Everything else appears to be the same as the card we showed you in the launch article. The cooler is comprised of red plastic, including a small red fan, and copper heatsink. Interestingly, ASUS chose to put light blue caps on all of the connectors, to protect them from damage during shipping.

 

Since it is based on the ATI reference design, the EAH3850 TOP is a single-slot card, which is a good thing. You can see in the middle picture below that the back of the card is rather simple. You can see the metal bracket and screws that hold the cooler in place. Another thing worth noting on this card is the two CrossFireX connectors. Want to frag with three or four cards instead of just two? These connectors will let you do just that, although the drivers for 3- and 4-way CrossFire configurations aren't ready just yet.

 

No tour of a card would be complete without a look at the output connectors. The EAH3850 TOP sports two dual-link DVI connectors and an HDTV out connector. When we flip the card around 180 degrees, we find that it also has a 6-pin PCI Express power connector.
 

For testing the ASUS EAH3850 TOP, we used an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz) on an Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI motherboard. We also used 2GB of Corsair DDR2 (TWIN2X1024A-5400UL) RAM and a 120GB Maxtor SATA hard drive. The ASUS EAH3850 TOP was compared to an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 256MB and an ATI Radeon X1950 Pro. Note: Because we are using both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 capable cards, we will not be enabling DX10 effects in the DX10 games in order to provide an apples to apples comparison.

HotHardware Test System Intel C2D Powered

Performance Comparisons with 3DMark06 Details: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/

3DMark06

Futuremark recently launched a brand new version of its popular benchmark, 3DMark06. The new version of the benchmark is updated in a number of ways and now includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests but also Shader Model 3.0 and HDR tests as well. Some of the assets from 3DMark05 have been re-used, but the scenes are now rendered with much more geometric detail, and the shader complexity is vastly increased as well. Max shader length in 3DMark05 was 96 instructions, while 3DMark06 ups the number of instructions to 512. 3DMark06 also employs much more lighting, and there is extensive use of soft shadows. With 3DMark06, Futuremark has also updated how the final score is tabulated. In this latest version of the benchmark, SM 2.0 and HDR / SM3.0 tests are weighted, and the CPU score is factored into the final tally as well.

There are two comparisons that we are going to focus on throughout these test results pages: 1) the ASUS EAH3850 TOP versus the reference Radeon HD 3850, and 2) the ASUS EAH3850 TOP versus the reference GeForce 8800 GT 256MB card.

For the overall score in 3DMark06, the EAH3850 TOP bests all of the cards we tested by a respectable margin. If we look at the individual tests, though, the EAH3850 TOP doesn't quite keep up with the 256MB 8800 GT in the Shader Model 2.0 test, but it wins the Shader Model 3.0 / HDR test by almost 300 points. This is the kind of back and forth we are expecting from the EAH3850 TOP and the 8800 GT 256MB, so let's continue on to see if our expectations are correct.

Performance Comparisons with Company of Heroes Details: http://www.companyofheroesgame.com/

Company of Heroes

Relic Entertainment's World War II era real-time strategy game Company of Heroes was originally released as a DirectX 9 title for Windows, but recent upates to the game have incorporated support for new DirectX 10 features that improve image quality and enhance the game's finer graphical details. The game features a built-in performance test, which which we used to attain the results below. Our Company of Heroes tests were run at resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and all of the game's image-quality related options set to high.

Updated 1/16/2008 (SU)

The overclocked EAH3850 TOP puts up numbers that are slightly higher than the reference Radeon HD 3850. Additionally, the EAH3850 TOP and 8800 GT 256MB perform virtually the same. We didn't find anything surprising about these results.

Performance Comparisons with ET: Quake Wars Details: http://www.enemyterritory.com/

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is based on id's radically enhanced Doom 3 engine and viewed by many as Battlefield 2 meets the Strogg, and then some. In fact, we'd venture to say that id took EA's team-based warfare genre up a notch or two. ET: Quake Wars also marks the introduction of John Carmack's "Megatexture" technology that employs extremely large environment and terrain textures that cover vast areas of maps without the need to repeat and tile many small textures. The beauty of megatexture technology is that each unit only takes up a maximum of 8MB of frame buffer memory. Add to that HDR-like bloom lighting and leading edge shadowing effects and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars looks great, plays well and works high-end graphics cards vigorously. The game was tested with all of its in-game options set to their maximum values with soft particles enabled in addition to 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering.

At first, it looks like the 8800 GT 256MB is going to show up the EAH3850 TOP, but once anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are turned on and the resolution is bumped up, that isn't the case. The 1600x1200 4x AA / 8x AF numbers are the most impressive, with the EAH3850 TOP thrashing the 8800 GT 256MB by nearly 18 frames per second.

Performance Comparisons with Half-Life 2: Episode 2 Details: http://www.half-life2.com/

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Thanks to the dedication of hardcore PC gamers and a huge mod community, the original Half-Life became one of the most successful first person shooters of all time. And thanks to an updated game engine, gorgeous visual, and intelligent weapon and level design, Half-Life 2 became just as popular. Episode 2 offers a number of visual enhancements, including better looking transparent texture anti-aliasing. These tests were run at resolutions of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering enabled concurrently. Color correction and HDR rendering were also enabled in the game engine as well. We used a custom recorded timedemo file to benchmark all cards in this test.

The EAH3850 TOP's boosted clocks don't help it much against the reference HD 3850 until 4x AA, 8x AF and HDR are turned on. Plus, that is the only time the 256MB 8800 GT is even close to keeping up with the EAH3850 TOP.

Performance Comparisons with Crysis Details: http://www.ea.com/crysis

Crysis

If you're at all into enthusiast computing, the highly anticipated single player demo of the hot, new FPS smash-hit Crysis, should require no introduction. Crytek's game engine visuals are easily the most impressive real-time 3D renderings we've seen on a computer screen to date. The engine employs some of the latest techniques in 3D rendering, like Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Subsurface Scattering, Motion Blur and Depth-of-Field effects, as well as some of the most impressive use of Shader technology we've seen yet. In short, for those of you that want to skip the technical jib-jab, Crysis is HOT. We ran the SP demo with all of the game's visual options set to 'High' to put a significant load on the graphics cards being tested.

This test was definitely torturous for our cards. We didn't even turn anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering on since our initial scores were so low. Anyway, the EAH3850 TOP definitely took the crown here. Its higher clock speeds helped it best the HD 3850 by a nice margin, and the 8800 GT 256MB didn't even come close to competing, which really surprised us (and led us to re-testing the 8800 GT a handful of times).

Overclocking the EAH3850 TOP Going beyond the stock settings...

Although the EAH3850 TOP is already overclocked, we took some time to see how much more we could squeeze out of this card. Recall that the EAH3850 TOP's core comes clocked at 730 MHz while the memory runs at 950 MHz (1.9 GHz DDR), and a reference HD 3850 runs at 670 MHz and 830 MHz (1.66 GHz DDR), respectively. Using Overdrive and some trial and error, we were able to push the EAH3850 TOP to 775 MHz for the core and 1050 MHz (2.1 GHz DDR) for the memory. As usual, we have to state that your mileage may vary.

Our overclock didn't result in much of a performance gain in many of the tests, but the second chart below shows a nice gain of 4 FPS in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 at a resolution of 1600x1200 with AA and AF disabled.

Performance Summary: We were pleasantly surprised by the ASUS EAH3850 TOP. We expected it to perform about on par with the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, but that wasn't the case. Thanks to its boosted clocks, the EAH3850 TOP outshined both the 8800 GT 256MB and the reference HD 3850, especially when the cards were running at high resolutions.

We are not sure why ASUS uses such big boxes for its cards, but we are consistently happy with their bundles, and the EAH3850 TOP package is no exception. Not only does ASUS throw in plenty of adapters and cables, but the company also includes Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, a great game that can definitely help you show off what your new card has to offer. For those of you wanting a good gaming card for your home theater PC, take a close look at the EAH3850 TOP, which offers HDMI output with built-in multi-channel 5.1 suround sound over the DVI-to-HDMI adapter.

A quick look around the web reveals that the regular ASUS EAH3850 can be yours for around $180-200. We weren't able to find the overclocked TOP version that we reviewed here, however, which means we are uncertain about current retail availability. Regardless if we are talking about the EAH3850 TOP or just the regular EAH3850, the bundle appears to be the same, which means both offer good value overall. For those of you uncomfortable with overclocking, but still want a boost in performance over the reference HD 3850, hopefully ASUS makes the TOP model more readily available soon.

While we found the ASUS EAH3850 TOP to be impressive and easy to recommend, we were definitely disappointed when we couldn't find it at any of the major online resellers at the time of this writing. Would we recommend the regular EAH3850? Yes, we probably would, but we'd still prefer the TOP model assuming it doesn't cost much more than the reference model.
 
 

•  Excellent mid-range performance •  Not too loud •  HDMI Output with built-in multi-channel 5.1 surround audio over DVI-HDMI adapter •  DirectX 10 support •  Good game included	•  Is the huge box necessary? •  Availability of this model is questionable