News AMD announces Radeon HD 3800 series

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/11..._3800_series/1

AMD has this morning announced the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series of graphics cards. We've got the details here and there'll be much more to follow in our architectural review.

[Andy Mc]

But will it have decent Linux drivers? This is the main factor that stops me from buying an ATI/AMD card after trying in vain to get my old 9600 to work on Linux.

[Strages]

Is it me or do these cards seem specc'd to offer way more performance than is being hinted at? £140+VAT is what, ~$230USD? That just seems like a pittance for these spec's.... those stream processors must be horribly inefficient for it to take 320 at 775MHz to compete with the 8800GT's 112.

[Firehed]

£140 is about $290, though when you figure in the ROB conversion, the $230 mark sounds about right. Glad to see they're finally starting to remember the days of GPUs not costing half a grand and that chopping a bit off the price will boost sales tremendously. Lower profit per sale is easily outdone by higher sales. Win/win.

[DrFreeze]

Originally Posted by Strages

Is it me or do these cards seem specc'd to offer way more performance than is being hinted at? £140+VAT is what, ~$230USD? That just seems like a pittance for these spec's.... those stream processors must be horribly inefficient for it to take 320 at 775MHz to compete with the 8800GT's 112.

welcome to half a year ago (with the 2900xt vs the GTX)

the main reasons Nv can keep up with less shaders:
- Nv runs it shaders async to the rest of the core, i believe 1,45 GHz shaderclock vs 575 coreclock for a 8800GTX
- Nv has 128 full shaders ALUs, capable of all the needed opps
- Ati has 64 "5 shader" mini processors, which consist of one complex alu (kinda like the NV ones), and four simple ALUs (which can only do a very few simple shader opps). These mini procs are then also limited in that a single proc can only work on one render at a time, so no re-using those spare 2-3 simple alus that are sitting idle right now.

And then there is the fact that Ati uses some of it shaders to process AA, which means that when using AA, the shaders take a rather large hit.

Ati chose an interesting architecture, which probably is part related to their "many shaders, little ROPs" architecture on r580, But i tend to think that Nvidia chose the better path. Ati theoretically has more shader power (but due to the clock difference only 25-30%), but those 5-shader bundles provide a huge amount of restrictions putting the brakes on performance

[chrisb2e9]

so, i'm slightly confused. maybe due to the fact that its almost 1am. the 3800, is > 2900?
and the 8800 is > 2900, so is the 3800 = 8800 or does it look like one is better than the other?

[tranc3]

from the looks of this im getting the hint that the Radeon HD 3800 beats 8800gtx?

[iwog]

Originally Posted by Firehed

£140 is about $290, though when you figure in the ROB conversion, the $230 mark sounds about right. Glad to see they're finally starting to remember the days of GPUs not costing half a grand and that chopping a bit off the price will boost sales tremendously. Lower profit per sale is easily outdone by higher sales. Win/win.

Only if demand is elastic, which for graphics cards as a whole i doubt it is. If you loose less sale as a % then the % increase in price (inelastic) it makes more sense to charge a higher price for more revenue. But it would be nice to see prices return to a more normal level

[HugoB]

Originally Posted by tranc3

from the looks of this im getting the hint that the Radeon HD 3800 beats 8800gtx?

For the love of all that is holy NO.

[Shadow_101]

Originally Posted by tranc3

from the looks of this im getting the hint that the Radeon HD 3800 beats 8800gtx?

nope. TweakTown Review ASUS HD 3870

[frontline]

will be interesting to see how how 2 x 3870s in crossfire mode compare to 2 x 8800GTs in sli or 1 x 8800GTX. The temperature and noise tests seem to show a massive improvement which would make this a viable option.

[[USRF]Obiwan]

I (and i guess everybody else) wants to know if it is as fast as the 8800GTX or (less optimistic..) the 8800GT. I dont care much for anything fancy that this card will have unless it is on par or faster the the current king.

[Silver Shamrock]

Originally Posted by [USRF]Obiwan

I (and i guess everybody else) wants to know if it is as fast as the 8800GTX or (less optimistic..) the 8800GT. I dont care much for anything fancy that this card will have unless it is on par or faster the the current king.

Look a few posts above for your answer.

It's faster than the 2900xt, is cheaper, uses less power and has a quiet cooler. I'm seriously interested in one of these especially at that price. I may well even make use of my crossfire board and get a couple once i see some crossfire reviews.

[mrplow]

Sounds like my kinda card.
Fast-ish and cheap-ish.

So where can I get one cheapest?


edit: hmm 115 and 155 at ebuyer (not in stock yet though)

[Darkedge]

okay so buying the 2900 was a mistake. bugger.

[mrplow]

Originally Posted by Darkedge

okay so buying the 2900 was a mistake. bugger.

It's always the way in this game... there's never a 'right time' to buy the top-end stuff because there's always the brand new top-end stuff just around the corner.

[Silver Shamrock]

Yeah Ati did the same thing not long ago with the x1800. Within a month or so the x1900 were released making the x1800 cards a big waste of money. It's a gamble sometimes.

[Redbeaver]

Originally Posted by Shadow_101

nope. TweakTown Review ASUS HD 3870

whoa... u should check the Dx10 games........ CoJ i kno its ATI darkchild, but CoH its speedier than GT too... yes i kno, it aint a GTX, but still give some credit to the red guys

[Goty]

Originally Posted by Andy Mc

But will it have decent Linux drivers? This is the main factor that stops me from buying an ATI/AMD card after trying in vain to get my old 9600 to work on Linux.

ATI is definitely working on it, releasing fglrx updates every month, adding AIGLX support and the like. Supposedly the OpenGL performance is great, but there are a few memory leaks and the 2D performance sucks under compiz and/or beryl.

[trig]

for those in the us, newegg has them showing in stock...both versions...but both reviews i've seen show much less performance than the 8800gt...i know i know, drivers, right? yeah...amd spewed that same garbage when the 2900xt released. even if the drivers are immature, they arent going to get you a 30% improvement when they're fixed. i keep rooting for them, but they keep under-performing. hopefully tim has some different results than what i have seen so far