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| Introduction | ||||||
With recent price cuts to current generation Radeon HD 3800 series cards, due to increased competition from new mainstream graphics cards from NVIDIA, there is a large gap in ATI's product stack between the sub-$200 Radeon HD 3870 and the now roughly $400 Radeon HD 3870 X2. Until AMD readies a new batch of GPUs to fill this hole in their product stack, board partners are left to tweak current designs to entice potential consumers.
In order to really get a handle on how the Viper performes we're going to pit it against the aforementioned Sapphire HD 3850 and also compare it to an ATI Radeon HD 3870 for good measure. With the basic architecture remaining the same, we fully expect that the boost in speeds will simply pull the Diamond version up ahead of Sapphire's model. What we're even more interested in seeing is how close we can get to the HD 3870, the price of which has dropped steadily in recent days making it a much more attractive purchase. Finally, we will also throw in some numbers from two of NVIDIA's cards with similar, although slightly higher, price points: the GeForce 8800 GT and an 8800 GTS 512MB from PNY for a full spectrum of analysis.
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| Inspection of the Diamond Viper HD 3850 512MB |
What else would we expect for a Radeon-based card from Diamond but one based on a red circuit board with no other markings except for Diamond's logo printed on the fan and a "D" over one port. The Viper Radeon HD 3850 512MB Overclocked Ruby Edition is not a flashy card by any means, and at first glance looks it actually looks somewhat beefy unlike many of the slimmer, more decorated cards we've become accustomed to seeing.
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| Base System and 3DMark06 Results | ||||||||||||||
HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS: We tested all of the graphics cards used in this article on an MSI P6N Diamond motherboard powered by a 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo E6550 processor and 2GB of low-latency Corsair RAM. The first thing we did when configuring our test systems was enter into the BIOS and set all values to their "optimized" or "performance" default settings. Then we manually configured the memory timings and disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows Vista Ultimate was installed. When the installation was complete we fully updated the OS, and installed the latest DX10 redist and various hotfixes along with the necessary drivers and applications.
In this mid-range round-up of graphics cards, we see that the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 from PNY rules the roost. This card put up the highest scores in both Shader Model tests, and easily claimed the overall 3DMark score as well. The Radeon HD 3870 and Geforce 8800 GT jockeyed for second place with SM 2.0 performance squarely in NVIDIA's corner, yet SM 3.0 testing in ATI's favor. Although we're a bit used to seeing the stock HD 3850 fall behind the others, we were pleased to see that Diamond's overclocked model cut the gap somewhat, winding up only 400 points behind the HD 3870 overall. |
| Half-Life 2: Episode 2 | ||||||
The benchmarking done with the second episode of Half-Life2 was much less favorable to the Radeon HD 3850s and the faster HD 3870 when compared to the GeForce-based cards. Although both equipped with 512MB of RAM, the higher core and memory clock speeds found on Diamond's card really help differentiate it from Sapphire's card, easily surpassing it by 12-14%, which puts in right in line with the 3870. |
| Company of Heroes | ||||||
Company of Heroes ran much faster on the two GeForce 8800 cards, with frame rates nearly a third faster at lower resolutions, although this divide was narrowed down some at 1600x1200. At this resolution, the 8800 GTS 512MB is untouchable, but the lower amount of memory on the 8800 GT seems to hamper its ability to keep up allowing the HD 3870 to come within five frames per second. Diamond's overclocked Viper HD 3850 finds itself placed squarely between the default-clocked Sapphire HD 3850 and the ATI Radeon HD 3870. |
| Enemy Territory: Quake Wars | ||||||
Using the latest Catalyst drivers (version 8.3 as of this article), we saw some improved frame rates in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for the three Radeons, making this benchmark a lot less GeForce friendly than in the past. In fact, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 was outgunning the 8800 GT at both resolutions this go-around. The Diamond Viper HD 3850 did its best to keep up with the HD 3870, but remained 3-4 frames back at each resolution. However, it still maintained a four frame lead over the 8800 GT at 1600x1200, and almost three frames over the rival HD 3850 from Sapphire. |
| Crysis Performance | ||||||
Crysis is such a demanding game that even without any anti-aliasing, we're still only able to break the 30fps barrier with the dual set of GeForce 8800s and the Radeon HD 3870 at the lowest resolution in our testing suite. The Diamond HD 3850 is about three frames behind the HD 3870, yet three frames ahead of the Sapphire card. The frame rates there lead to some easy mathematics: Diamond's card is about 10% slower than the HD 3870 and 10% faster than the competition. |
| Bioshock | ||||||
To say that Bioshock runs better on NVIDIA's based cards is an understatement worthy of a closer look into the numbers. The fastest single-GPU Radeon card out there, the HD 3870, puts up a frame rate of 70fps at 1280x1024, which is 20-25 frames slower than either 8800. Even more troubling, the HD 3870's number is slower than the 8800 GTS 512 at 1600x1200. The HD 3850, as expected, doesn't fare any better dropping down to 54fps at the lower resolution, but scaling well at 1600x1200 by only dropping 4 frames to 49.5fps. Again, Diamond's sample maintains a 4-5 frame advantage over Sapphire with its higher core and memory clock speeds. |
| PT Boats: Knights of the Sea | ||||||
Again, we see some numbers much more favorable to the "green-team", as GeForce cards are typically running nearly a third faster than their Radeon counterparts at either resolution. The Radeon trio is actualy grouped quite close together - 4 frames per second separate the ATI HD 3870 from the Sapphire HD 3850 with the Diamond Viper smack dab in the middle. |
| Overclocking Results | ||||
As we've already mentioned, ATI's original specs for the Radeon HD 3850 called for 256MB of onboard memory with core and memory clock speeds of 670MHz and 830MHz, respectively. The Diamond Viper HD 3850 Ruby Edition comes pre-overclocked with speeds of 725MHz for the GPU and 900MHz memory. That extra boost in speeds give's Diamond's offering a nice increase in performance over reference cards, but that didn't stop us from seeing if we can get any further. Doing so doesn't require anything other that the Catalyst drivers themselves. We clicked on the Overdrive tab in the Catalyst Control Center, and slowly raised the core and memory speeds until we either saw visual artifacts while running a game or benchmark, or noticed any other system instability.
The Diamond Viper HD 3850 comes with an oversized heatsink requiring two slots rather than one. This extra bit of cooling helped us achieve speeds of 760MHz for the GPU, 35MHz over the shipping speed and 90MHz over spec. Memory was also raised to a top speed of 975MHz, an additional 75MHz over the packaged model, and a plus 145MHz overall. We re-ran a couple of gaming benchmarks and compared the frame rates with the original tests:
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| Performance Summary and Conclusion | ||||
Performance Summary: The Viper Radeon HD 3850 512MB Overclocked Ruby Edition performed just how we had expected. WIth its higher than stock GPU and memory clock speeds, the Viper Radeon HD 3850 512MB Overclocked Ruby Edition was able to outpace Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512MB in all of our tests, and it kept pace or finished just behind the more powerful Radeon HD 3870. The Viper Radeon HD 3850 512MB Overclocked Ruby Edition also traded victories with its NVIDIA-based competition, but the GeForce 8800 series cards we tested were clearly faster overall.
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