Verdict: Quick, powerful and cheap.
Should you have scandalously not read last month's issue, you might be thinking, 'Uh oh, another mid-range ATI card to follow on from the unmitigated disasters of the Radeon X600, X1600, X1650, HD 2600 and the reasonable but hard-to-find HD 2900 Pro.' However, our preview of the HD 3850 last month got us very excited about the newest mid-range Radeon. Performance was good up to 1,680 x 1,050 and we were promised that the price would be less than £120, which means that it's powerful enough for a 22in TFT without beggaring you just before Christmas. Well done ATI! The pre-launch pricing projections proved to be true as well - this Sapphire card, with standard cooling and clocks, costs £107.
At the heart of the HD 3850's success is the tiny manufacturing process ATI has used for the GPU. While Nvidia is sticking to 65nm transistors, ATI has jumped to 55nm and all the inherent goodness that it brings. The more compact transistors make for a physically smaller chip, which means that ATI can fit more chips on one silicon wafer; this cut in manufacturing costs per chip means savings for the consumer. Smaller transistors also require less power to switch and leak less energy. So not only does this card suck far less electricity from your PSU than the power-hungry HD 2900 XT, but it can also be adequately cooled by a small and quiet single-slot cooler. Our test system drew 235W from the mains with the HD 3850 fitted, a good deal less than similarly specified Nvidia cards.
The HD 3850 is 'just' a die-shrink (it's harder than it sounds, as Intel found out when it had to spend ten years developing the technology for the 45nm transistors in Penryn CPUs), so it retains the specs of the HD 2900 XT. There are 320 stream processors in the GPU and 16 ROPs to resolve the results from this massive array, and the entire chip runs at 669MHz. This card uses 256MB of GDDR3 memory running at 829MHz (1.66GHz effective), rather than the 512MB of memory seen on the pre-overclocked PowerColor HD 3850. However, all HD 3850s have a 256-bit memory bus.
The Sapphire retains the reference cooler, while PowerColor has opted to ditch this for a ZEROtherm copper flower. We prefer the reference cooler, however, as we could still overclock the GPU on the Sapphire to PowerColor-like levels, and it has the advantage of being single-slot and quieter. It also makes contact with the RAM, which is reassuring considering the high frequencies that the GDDR3 uses.
The main question is how the HD 3850 performs compared with other GPUs on the market. Let's deal with ATI and Nvidia's official mid-range GPUs first. The £80-odd Radeon HD 2600 XT struggles to play modern games smoothly at 1,024 x 768, while the £120 GeForce 8600 GTS can't cope with games beyond 1,280 x 1,024. Therefore, the HD 3850's competition is the new GeForce 8800 GT, which costs around £175, and ATI's new Radeon HD 3870 at around £150.
Of the three GPUs, the 8800 GT is the most powerful overall, as it can play our three standard test games smoothly at 1,920 x 1,200. At 1,680 x 1,050 - the best you should hope for from the HD 3800-series GPUs - the 8800 GT was faster, with a minimum frame rate of 54fps in F.E.A.R. compared to 28fps from the HD 3850 and 33fps from the HD 3870. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. also provided a victory for the 8800 GT with its minimum of 39fps compared to the HD 3850's 25fps and the HD 3870's 33fps.
While Unreal Tournament 3 was playable at 1,680 x 1.050 with no AA or AF, managing a minimum frame rate of 33fps, Crysis stuttered along with an average of only 17fps in Vista. However, we've yet to see a card that can handle Crysis at maximum detail settings.
Conclusion
Overclocking the Sapphire's GPU to 743MHz and the memory to 922MHz (1.84GHz effective) gave the scores an extra nudge. This overclock is preferable to dropping the AA or AF in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., as it lets you keep the eye candy and still have a playable frame rate.
If the three cards were priced the same, you'd choose the GeForce 8800 GT every time. However, even the cheapest 8800 GT is £160, while the Sapphire costs just £107. Considering that this card can handle modern games at 1,680 x 1,050, it's a far more sensible purchase if you have a 22in or smaller monitor.
