Mainstream users can also get a slice of the action from the Asus EAH3850 ... Play all the latest DX10 games without hurting your pocket.

INTRODUCTION 

AMD/ATI had a terrible year in 2007. I bet you, they're really glad it's over. Now, they can concentrate their efforts in 2008, and it looks like it's going be OK so far. Only time will tell ... we'll see what they in store for us over the next 6 months. The Tri-Core Phenoms which will be released later this year looks promising, and it'll be competing directly with Intel's Core 2 Duos. What's even more interesting is the new Radeon HD3870 x 2. This graphics card basically has 2 RV670 GPUs on the same PCB, and will feature 1Gb of GDDR4 ram. Sounds very tasty!

OK, now let's focus back to our review. Towards the end of last year, ATI released their much delayed GPUs ... the RV670 range. They named the high-end version ... Radeon HD3870, which uses the RV670XT GPU, boasts 55nm technology and DX10.1 support. The mainstream version was called the Radeon HD3850, which uses the RV670 Pro GPU, with a lower clock speed for both GPU and memory.

With everyone talking about the Geforce 8800GT (G92) and the Radeon HD3870, people have almost forgotten the existance of mid-range cards. And this is where the Radeon HD3850 comes in. It's really aimed at the mainstream market, and offers a very good price/performance ratio. Preliminary tests shows that the Radeon HD3850 outperforming the Geforce 8600GTS and the older 8800GTS (G80). If this is true, ATI might stand the chance of dominating this very profitable mainstream market.

With a big brand name like Asus, it's important for both Nvidia and ATI to work closely together. It gives their them access to Asus's massive user base. So, you often see both Nvidia and ATI based graphic cards in their product range. Last month we reviewed their EN8800GT which used Nvidia's G92 GPU. It produced very good results in our tests. But ATI is fighting back, offering their RV670 GPUs at a very low price. This means that the overall cost of producing a Radeon based graphics cards are much more cheaper ... and lower production costs means more profit for Asus.

Asus has two versions of the EAH3850. One is a standard version at default clock speeds. And in this review we will be taking a look at their other version ... the Asus EAH3850 TOP (Top Overclocking Performance) graphics card. It utilises an overclocked RV670 Pro GPU from ATI, which Asus claims to be 8% faster than generic Radeon HD3850. It also features 256Mb DDR3 ram and supports  DX10.1. It's aimed at the mainstream market, and should appeal to a lot users including gamers and some power users. The GPU is clocked at 730Mhz (standard is 670Mhz) with the memory at 1900Mhz (standard is 1660Mhz). We're not expecting mind-blowing results, but we expect it to perform better than a Geforce 8600GTS. It should however, be able to handle most DX10 games at high resolutions with high details enabled.

We'll be installing this card on our test rig, which uses an Abit IX38 QuadGT Deluxe motherboard, Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor and OCZ DDR2-1066 2Gb Kit. It will be interesting to see what kind of performance we'll get, when compared against it's bigger brother ... the Radeon HD3870, and of course Nvidia's Geforce 8800GT.

OK, let's not waste any more time and take a closer look at the Asus EAH3850 DDR3, and see how well it play some DX10 games...