Home  Reviews HD3870, HD3850 review - Is RV670 the new mid-class DX 10?
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HD3870, HD3850 review - Is RV670 the new mid-class DX 10? |
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Written by Димитър Динчев a.k.a. Veseliq
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Monday, 04 February 2008 |
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After the AMD's screw-ups through the past year, HD3800 was supposed to be AMD's saviour in the middle-high range of video cards. Did it succeed? Let's find out.
Background
Since acquiring ATI, AMD are not flourishing. The company is in it's deepest crisis through the few past years, loosing shares in the processor market as well as in the video card market. Their stock fell so low, that at the present moment the company is worth less than the amount they payed to acquire ATI two years ago (6 billion dollars). AMD's reaction to DirectX 10 was sluggish - Vista came out, NVIDIA was ready with their dx10 generation of cards, even though not much of DirectX 10 games were available at the time. The top models of ATI were behind in performance in any measurable way compared to the new GeForce series, not just from the marketing point of view concerning DirectX 10 support. NVIDIA hold on the market for 6 months their 8800GTX and the answer of AMD, in the form of 2900XT in May 2007 was not worth the effort for the gamers – it could hardly be called "upgrade".
As usual NVIDIA didn't stop to observe the 6 month cycle and October/November saw the time for their new core – G92 and respectively the GeForce 8800 cards based on it... That was the perfect opportunity for AMD to present a good alternative and grab a share of the gamers which were ready to upgrade. So the new Radeon HD3870 was to be released in the end of November, AMD went strutting about with few probably manipulated results in 3DMark06, from which the card seemed faster. At the time our team was keeping you informed and HERE you can see some of these benchmark previews: http://www.modreactor.com/News/RV670-vs-G92-Battle-Heats-Up.html. So the competition was rushed into pushing out GeForce 8800GT at the end of October, for it to make enough sales before the direct competition was inevitable. Before we check if their plans succeeded, let's see what exactly is the new ATI video card series, from the technical point of view.
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