ATI Radeon HD 3870 and 3850: 55nm RV670
Test Setup and 3DMark06
HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS: We tested all of the graphics cards used in this article on either an EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard (NVIDIA GPUs) or an Asus P5E3 Deluxe (ATI GPUs) powered by a Core 2 Extreme QX6850 quad-core processor and 2GB of low-latency Corsair RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test systems was enter their respective BIOSes 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.
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Video Cards - Memory - Audio - Hard Drive - |
Hardware Used: |
OS - DirectX - Video Drivers - Synthetic (DX) - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - DirectX - OpenGL - |
Relevant Software: Windows Vista Ultimate DirectX 10 NVIDIA Forceware v169.09 ATI Catalyst BETA v8.43 Benchmarks Used: 3DMark06 v1.0.2 Company of Heros - DX10 Crysis - DX10 Half Life 2: Episode 2* Enemy Territory: Quake Wars* * - Custom Test (HH Exclusive demo) |
Performance Comparisons with 3DMark06 v1.0.2
Details: www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06
3DMark06 3DMark06 is the most recent addition to the 3DMark franchise. This version differs from 3Dmark05 in a number of ways, and includes not only Shader Model 2.0 tests, but 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 that number 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.
According to 3DMark06, the new Radeon HD 3870 performs about on par with the 2900 XT and just behind the relatively new GeForce 8800 GT. And as expected, the Radeon HD 3850 finishes just behind the higher-clocked HD 3870.
The performance trend doesn't change all that much when running the new Radeons in dual-card CrossFire configurations. Here, the new Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 cards scale very well and put up scores well ahead of their NVIDIA-based competition. If you look at the individual results, however, you'll notice their lead comes mostly from a dominant performance in the SM 2.0 tests and not the more taxing SM 3.0 / HDR tests.
