News AMD Radeon HD 3850 & HD 3870 spotted in the wild

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/11..._in_the_wild/1

AMD's next-gen Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 graphics cards are already on pre-order at prices that hope to spoil Nvidia's 8800 GT party.

[Polarl33t]

Thats a pretty swift removal from the website! guessing they didn't want anyone to see, whoops!!

[b1g-d0g]

I have 2 3870`s in my basket got in there before it whent aol.

[Zurechial]

Benchmarks elsewhere (won't link anything, out of courtesy to Bit-tech) suggest that the 8800GT is 1 or 2 fps faster than the HD3870 in the Crysis timedemo, and around 100 points faster in 3dMark SM3.0 tests except when increasing AA to 8x, where the HD3870 wins by a similar margin.

Image quality appears to be pretty much the same between the two, so it looks to be a price war all the way.


In simple terms: This is bloody good news for us consumers, no matter what side of the ATIMD/nV fence we sit on.

[DXR_13KE]

PRICE WAR!!!!!

[yakyb]

x-fire generally scales better and x38 >>>better than 680i

looks like a couple of these would be great please

oh and 7.11 should give a nice bump to :-)

[fwalm]

AMD fights back more to the point, yepe, now why the hell did I go and buy an 8600.

[cjmUK]

Sounds like a good ploy from Overclockers - let this slip, claim the headlines, and have people checking back frequently for updates...

If the 8800GTs were in stock I would have already bought one. If these ATI cards are comparable, maybe I'll reconsider...

[frontline]

If the hints at their performance are true, it will be good to get some genuine choice back into the graphics card scene and hopefully more game developers will actively support crossfire. Can only be good for prices too as retailers are charging a premium on the 8800GT at the moment.

[SlickGnome]

Unless they have resolved the compatability issues I've seen with the ATI cards I'm going to Pickup the 8800GT for my new rig at the end of the year. I work at a Big Box retailer in the states and we see back a TON of ATI cards because of issues installing drivers or even just getting them detected correctly (granted half those people don't know the difference between a DVI Connector and a power switch) but we don't see any where near that in returns on the nvidia cards. Case in point, one of our sales associates (used to work with us in PC repair so he knows his stuff) is a HUGE ATI fanboy and he just swapped out a dead card for another ATI and after 4 hours of bashing his head on the wall trying to get it up and running he returned it and I talked him into the Nvidia equivilant. Score one for team NV!!

[BadHead]

Does it support DirectX10.1, though. Some reports seem to say it does, but does it really? I wouldn't buy one unless I know for definite that they do, otherwise you'll end up with a card that'll be one generation behind in only a few months. Remember, Directx 10 card aren't meant to be fully compatible with DirectX 10.1 cards.

[oasked]

Originally Posted by BadHead

Does it support DirectX10.1, though. Some reports seem to say it does, but does it really? I wouldn't buy one unless I know for definite that they do, otherwise you'll end up with a card that'll be one generation behind in only a few months. Remember, Directx 10 card aren't meant to be fully compatible with DirectX 10.1 cards.

The HD3800 series supports DX10.1. The 8800GT doesn't.

[Akava]

I am a massive ATI fan, and if it wasn't for the stock problems I would already have a GT, now the question is, how long will i have to wait till I can get my hands on one. Bearing in mind i have already waited a few weeks to buy my new rig due to waiting for the GT...

Anyone have any info?


EDIT: Looks like a release date of the 19th of this month for the US, just 3 days after I can possibly get my hands on a GT, any idea when the UK release date is?

[Nature]

The support of DX10.1 is less important than the preformance of the actual card. The 8500gt DDR2 card supports dx10 yet could not play a single dx10 title aptly.

[Mankz]

Wantage.

[dognosh]

Originally Posted by oasked

The HD3800 series supports DX10.1. The 8800GT doesn't.

All DirectX 10 compatible cards will support 10.1 , but they won't be able to take advantage of all it's features(and 10.1 is only a small jump from 10)

[Paradigm Shifter]

I'll take two 1GB cards, please.

[Akava]

I really want one, but unless i can find anywhere thats selling them in the next 2 days looks like ill be going GT... if only for a little while

[OleJ]

Thanks. And so I head on out to get an 8800GT. ATI drivers suck. Never ever going down that road.

[Gravemind123]

Originally Posted by OleJ

Thanks. And so I head on out to get an 8800GT. ATI drivers suck. Never ever going down that road.

Everyone says this, but the only major driver issues in Windows I've ever ran into were with nVidia chipset drivers causing my WindowsXP install to BSOD on boot. The only Windows graphics driver issue I've had is getting a TV to run at a different resolution then my monitor using whatever nVidia driver I had at the time. Windows could not find the TV, but the nVidia control panel could, but would only let me run span or clone, so the resolution needed to be the same.

Although in Linux the story is different, hopefully the spec release of R500 and R600 cards will generate better Linux drivers for ATI. Although since I only do gaming in Windows, so my main system tends to just have Windows on it, as I game a lot and restarting to switch the OS is a pain. On a secondary computer/non-gaming system I would try for an nVidia card to get Compiz or similar effects working on it.