ATI Radeon HD 3870 & 3850: A Return to Competition
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 15, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Obsoleting Products: Radeon HD 3870 vs. 2900 XT
There must be something in the water these days, first NVIDIA makes most of its product line obsolete and now with the Radeon HD 3870 AMD gets rid of any reason to have the 2900 XT.
Our benchmarks show that the cheaper, cooler, quieter Radeon HD 3870 is at worst, the same speed as the poorly received Radeon HD 2900 XT. Granted there are a few areas where the 2900 XT does better, but for the most part it simply can't hold its own against the 3870.
These next two tables summarize things a little better for those of you that are more interested in raw numbers. What you're looking at here is the percentage of 2900 XT performance each one of these cards delivers, first off is the Radeon HD 3870 vs. the 2900 XT:
| 3870: % of Radeon HD 2900 XT Performance | 1280 x 1024 | 1600 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 | 2560 x 1600 |
| Bioshock | 107% | 106% | 107% | 110% |
| Unreal Tournament 3 | 98.8% | 96.2% | 93.3% | 93.8% |
| ET: Quake Wars | 108% | 117% | 118% | 111% |
| Oblivion | 101% | 103% | 101% | 100% |
| Oblivion (4X AA) | 104% | 103% | 105% | 105% |
| Half Life 2: Episode 2 | 100% | 97.7% | 96.3% | 97.8% |
| World in Conflict | 118% | 120% | 115% | 118% |
| Call of Duty 4 | 136% | 130% | 118% | 102% |
| Crysis | 104% | 104% | 103% | - |
| Average | 110% | 110% | 108% | 106% |
On average, the Radeon HD 3870 gives us a 6 - 10% increase in performance over the more expensive, less featured, louder Radeon HD 2900 XT. Not bad for improvement over the course of 6 months.
| 3850: % of Radeon HD 2900 XT Performance | 1280 x 1024 | 1600 x 1200 | 1920 x 1200 | 2560 x 1600 |
| Bioshock | 90.7% | 91% | 92.9% | 60.1% |
| Unreal Tournament 3 | 92.1% | 86.1% | 80.8% | 77.2% |
| ET: Quake Wars | 107% | 104% | 99.3% | 81.7% |
| Oblivion | 91.1% | 86.4% | 85.8% | 85.4% |
| Oblivion (4X AA) | 92.5% | 89.3% | 89.1% | 83.5% |
| Half Life 2: Episode 2 | 97.4% | 90% | 87.1% | 86.1% |
| World in Conflict | 109% | 108% | 97.4% | 92.9% |
| Call of Duty 4 | 108% | 93.6% | 88.3% | 75.8% |
| Crysis | 93.7% | 91.4% | 89.7% | - |
| Average | 97.9% | 93.2% | 90.1% | 80.3% |
The Radeon HD 3850 comes close in performance to the 2900 XT, especially at lower resolutions, but at ultra high resolutions it delivers only about 80% of the performance of its older brother.
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bbqchickenrobot - Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - link
But - now new Catalyst drivers have been released - so an updated benchmark needs to be completed as the drivers provide better support for the hardware and thus, better performance.
Also, you used a non-AMD MoBo and Chipset... if you went with XFire + AMD 790 chipset + Phenom X3/X4 processor (Spider platform) you would have seen a better performance as well. There are other benchmarks that are/were done with these components (spider) and the results weren't nearly as mediocre. Just a little tip...
Adamseye - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - link
I cant see how every review I have read differs from your charts, the 2900 xt can't be faster then the 3850.I mean I spent a month researching cards and the winner was the 3850 overclocking it to 3870 speeds. To think that AMD spent all that time to make a new 2900xt and name it the 3850-70, is just foolsih. from the benchmarks you provided only an idiot would buy the new gen cards for 60-100 buxks more when the 2900xt is on par. Could you please explain to me how this happened? I feel like ordering a 3850 was a waste of money because the old 2900 is better anyway.aznboi123 - Saturday, February 2, 2008 - link
Welll dang that bothers me...666...>,<spaa33 - Monday, December 3, 2007 - link
It looked to me that the biggest complaint on the HD Video Decode article was that the 2600/2900 options did not provide an off switch for the Noise Reduction. Did you notice if this option appeared to be present in the newer drivers of this card (3850)?Regards,
Dan
emilyek - Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - link
So AMDTI is still getting stomped by year old hardware?That's what I read.
jpierce55 - Saturday, November 24, 2007 - link
This is really a good review, some others are very Nvidia biased. I would like to see you do an update with the new drivers in the near future if possible.gochichi - Friday, November 23, 2007 - link
Anand,First Nvidia with its 8800GT... I clearly recall seing those at about $200, now they're $300 or more. At least these may come bundled with a game... they also "hold the crown".
Now the HD 3870 has gone up to $269.99 (at newegg) and availability is every bit as bad as the 8800GT.
This review assumes that AMD/ATI was going to deliver in volume, at a fixed price and they haven't delivered either. It would be really nice if you could slap their wrists... as individual consumers we are being tossed about and we don't have the "pull" to do anything other than "take it".
Shouldn't AMD be accountable to deliver on their promises?
SmoulikNezbeda - Thursday, November 22, 2007 - link
Dear Anand,I would like to ask you what exactly results in individual games represents. Are those average FPS, or something like (min + max + ave)/3 FPS. On one czech website there were similar results to what was presented here, but they were showing (min + max + ave)/3 FPS, which is a complete nonsense as this would be advantageous for cards which have more volatile results. In case when they were comparing average fps the radeon had the same results as GT card. Also I would like to ask you whether you have used the same demo for both cards or you were playing a game and therefore testing a game in different situations?
Thanks in advance
Petr
SmoulikNezbeda - Thursday, November 22, 2007 - link
Dear Anand,I would like to ask you what exactly results in individual games represents. Are those average FPS, or something like (min + max + ave)/3 FPS. On one czech website there were similar results to what was presented here, but they were showing (min + max + ave)/3 FPS, which is a complete nonsense as this would be advantageous for cards which have more volatile results. In case when they were comparing average fps the radeon had the same results as GT card. Also I would like to ask you whether you have used the same demo for both cards or you were playing a game and therefore testing a game in different situations?
Thanks in advance
Petr
Sectoid - Sunday, November 18, 2007 - link
If I'm not mistaken the 8800GT is DX10 only right? Is DX10.1 so insignificant as to not count to the favor of the 3800's over the GT's? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend AMD; I just want to know if it's a good idea to sell my 8800GTS 320mb still at a good price now(I live in Brazil and they're still pricey here) and buy a 3870 or a 8800GT with 512mb. I recently bought a 22" monitor and the GTS is somewhat disappointing at 1600x1050. Nah, it's just that crappy game world in conflict. It runs similar to crysis demo at max! I have to play at medium and the textures are really crappy for a high-end pc 8-month old :(Who knows, maybe I'm already CPU or memory bound with a core 2 duo 6400@24xxMhz and dual ocz platinum 2 1gb 800mhz(2gb total)...
Thanks in advance for any more input on the qualities of DX10.1 :)