Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 | bit-tech.net
Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 512MB
Manufacturer:Sapphire
UK Price (as reviewed):£139.98 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed):$239.95 (ex. Tax)
Core Clock: 775MHz
Memory Clock: 2.25GHz
Warranty: Two years (parts and labour)
Just the other week, we had a rather in-depth look at AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics card. We found that—although it’s not quite as fast as Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 GT—AMD’s partners have priced it pretty attractively so that it’s actually very tempting to pocket the difference between the 3870 and the 8800 GT.
Of course, you’ll have to put up with a slightly lower performing product, but at the same time you’ll have a card that supports all of the next-generation features that Microsoft will bring to the table with DirectX 10.1 – something that will arrive with Windows Vista SP1 in the first half of 2008.
We covered the features during our architectural analysis and there are some cool new features and refinements that will help to make game developers’ lives easier. That’s not all though, because the Radeon HD 3800-series also introduces some pretty nifty power saving technologies that we’re hoping we’ll see more of in the future.
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During our technology and architectural review, we promised that we’d be looking at Sapphire’s implementation shortly afterwards, as the company sent us a full-retail package ahead of the launch. That’s what we’re here to do in this article – we’re going to cover the bundle, the retail card and how well it overclocks. So, without further ado, it’s time to get on with the grilling!
Box and Bundle:
It seems like Sapphire’s box design has been around for ages – there have been some minor changes, but the design’s ethos is essentially the same and it comes with a bit of T&A on the box. This is something that seems fairly commonplace in this day and age – whether or not this is a good thing is something that we’ll leave you to decide.
Even despite the T&A, the design is functional and lists all of the key features on the front of the box in easy-to-identify points.
As you can probably see from the photos, Sapphire highlights the fact that the card has 512MB of GDDR4 memory, support for HDMI, HD Audio and PCI-Express 2.0 and a there’s also a copy of 3DMark 06 included in the box for the budding benchmarketeers out there.
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Inside the box, there is a decent selection of accessories that should satisfy even the most needy PC users out there. In terms of connectivity, there is a 6-pin PCI-Express power adapter and converters for TV-Out to Composite, TV-Out to Component, DVI-to-VGA and DVI-to-HDMI.
The DVI-to-HDMI connector also accepts audio too, as every ATI Radeon graphics card since the Radeon HD 2900 XT features built-in support for 5.1 audio over HDMI. To round off the cables and connectors supplied in the box, there is the obligatory CrossFire connector, which will come in handy if you ever buy a second Radeon HD 3870 later down the line.
That’s not all that comes in the box with Sapphire’s Radeon HD 3870 card though, as there is also a good selection of software.
It includes a coupon for The Black Box, CyberLink DVD Suite 5, PowerDVD 7 and the full version of 3DMark 06. You’ll probably be thinking the Valve coupon is useless after the developer cancelled The Black Box, but thankfully that’s not the case because Valve stated publically that the ATI coupons are valid on Steam, as only the retail DVD package was cancelled.
1 — Sapphire Radeon HD 38702 — The Card and Warranty3 — Test Setup4 — Crysis5 — BioShock6 — Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts7 — Enemy Territory: Quake Wars8 — Overclocking & Final Thoughts
First look at the ATI Radeon HD 3870
Yesterday I received a nice surprise in the mail — a box from ATI containing a Radeon HD 3870. Unfortunately, I was in the grips of a nasty bout of stomach flu and not even the prospect of better frames per second couldn’t convince me that it was a good idea to crack open my PC and start messing inside it.
Am I pleased with the switch? Well, so far this emoticon says it all really .
.. :-DToday,
I feel a lot better so the first order of the day was to crack open my quad-core system and remove the 2600 XT and replace it with the 3870. Am I pleased with the switch? Well, so far this emoticon says it all really … 😀
The HD 3870 is a graphics card that has it all — 512MB of GDDR4 memory, DirectX 10.1 support (which means mandatory 32-bit floating point filtering, mandatory 4x anti-aliasing and shader model 4.1), HDMI support, HD support and CrossfireX support. The card’s RV670 GPU boasts 666 million transistors and uses a 55 nm fabrication technology which means more performance per watt for the end user. The core clock runs at 775MHz and the memory clock at 2.25GHz (compare this to the HD 2900 XT where the core ran at 740MHz and the memory at 1.65GHz). The GPU has a math processing rate of 497 gigaFLOPs. All these numbers are blindingly impressive but what really matters is how the card works in the real world!
The only drawback to the HD 3870 compared to the 2900 XT that I can see so far is memory bandwidth.
The 2900 XT offers a 512-bit wide bus while the 3870 only offers a 256-bit bus.
The card is big, much bigger and heavier than the 2600 XT it was replacing, and because it takes up two PCI slots (one for the video outputs and one for the exhaust) I had to reorganize other things I had fitted in the PC to make room for the card. Then I made a silly mistake (I blame the flu and my cold medicine riddled brain for this) and forgot to fit the 6-pin PCI-E power cable. The PC booted up just fine without it but when Windows tried to load the drivers the system started screaming like a banshee, which was enough to remind me what I’d done wrong and stir my headache back into life.
With the power issue figured out it was time for a reboot. Something that I’ve noticed is that at system startup the fan on the card spins at high-speed for about a second and at this point it’s pretty noisy. Fortunately, this isn’t the sign of things to come and the fan falls to a noise level that’s near silent.
This time Windows installed the hardware correctly and things were ready to test.
I’m going to leave benching this card for now because that takes time but I can give you some preliminary results. First off, swapping the 2600 XT for the HD 3870 saw the gaming graphics Windows Experience Index score of the test system go up from 5.5 (which had been 5.4 until the other day when I installed the latest ATI drivers) to 5.9. That itself is impressive.
I’ve also run 3Dmark06 on the system (SM2.0 tests 1 and 2, HDR/SM3.0 tests 1 and 2, and CPU tests 1 and 2) and got a score which beat the 2600 XT by nearly a factor of 2 at 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024.
I’ll post more detailed benchmarks soon but my initial testing indicates that this card comes close to but doesn’t quite reach the performance offered by an nVIDIA 8800GT [UPDATED: Sorry, I meant to say 8800GT and not GTS], but you have to offset that against the fact that the HD 3870 is cheaper than the 8800GT.
If you’re looking to spend around $300 for a card, then the 8800GT is going to be a better bet (as long as you like the nVIDIA drivers, which I don’t), but if you’re looking to spend closer to $200 then you won’t beat the HD 3870. If you’re a gamer looking for a cost-effective way to upgrade your system, I’d add an HD 3870 to my wish list quick!
Retail price for the HD 3870 is somewhere in the region of $220.
Thoughts?
Video card Radeon HD 3870 [in 1 benchmark]
Description
ATI started Radeon HD 3870 sales on November 19, 2007 at a suggested price of $269. This is a desktop video card based on the TeraScale architecture and 55 nm manufacturing process, primarily designed for office use. It has 512 MB of GDDR4 memory at 2.25 GHz, and coupled with a 256-bit interface, this creates a bandwidth of 72.06 Gb / s.
In terms of compatibility, this is a two-slot PCIe 2.0 x16 card. The length of the reference version is 241 mm. An additional 1x 6-pin power cable is required for connection, and the power consumption is 106W.
It provides poor performance in tests and games at the level of
1.43%
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 003
Information about the type (desktop or laptop) and architecture of the Radeon HD 3870, as well as when sales started and cost at the time.
| Performance ranking | 903 | |||
| Value for money | ||||
| Architecture | TeraScale (2005−2013) | |||
| GPU | RV670 | |||
| Type | 9002 2 Desktop | |||
| Release date | November 19, 2007 (15 years ago) 35
| Exit price |
$269 |
|
|
| Current price | $195 (0.7x) | of 168889 (A100 PCIe 80 GB) |
Value for money 9000 5
Performance to price ratio.
The higher the better.
Features
Radeon HD 3870’s general performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. They indirectly speak of Radeon HD 3870’s performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Number of stream processors | 320 | of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT) | ||
| Core clock | 777 MHz | of 2610 (Radeon RX 6500 XT) | ||
| Number of transistors | of 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile)) | |||
| Process | 55nm | of 4 (GeForce RTX 4080) DP) | 106 W | out of 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem) |
| Texturing speed | 12.43 | out of 969. 9 (h200 SXM5 96 GB) |
||
| Floating point performance | 497.3 gflops | of 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo) |
Compatibility and dimensions
Information on Radeon HD 3870 compatibility with other computer components. Useful for example when choosing the configuration of a future computer or to upgrade an existing one. For desktop video cards, these are the interface and connection bus (compatibility with the motherboard), the physical dimensions of the video card (compatibility with the motherboard and case), additional power connectors (compatibility with the power supply).
| Interface | PCIe 2.0 x16 | |
| Length | 900 22 241 mm | |
| Thickness | 2 slots | |
| Additional connectors power supply | 1x 6-pin |
RAM
Parameters of the memory installed on Radeon HD 3870 — type, size, bus, frequency and bandwidth.
For video cards built into the processor that do not have their own memory, a shared part of the RAM is used.
| Memory type | GDDR4 | |
| Maximum memory | 9002 2512 MB | out of 128 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory bus width | 256 bit | of 8192 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory frequency | 2252 MHz | 9 0022 out of 22400 (GeForce RTX 4080) |
| Memory bandwidth | 72.06 Gb/s | of 3276 (Aldebaran) |
Video outputs
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 3870. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference video cards, since for laptop ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model.
| Video connectors | 2x DVI, 1x S-Video |
API support
APIs supported by Radeon HD 3870, including their versions.
| DirectX | 10.1 (10_1) | |
| Shader model | ||
| OpenGL | 3.3 | from 4.6 (GeForce GTX 1080 (mobile)) |
| OpenCL | N/A | |
| Vulkan | N/A |
Benchmark tests
These are the results of Radeon HD 3870 rendering performance tests in non-gaming benchmarks. The overall score is set from 0 to 100, where 100 corresponds to the fastest video card at the moment.
Overall benchmark performance
This is our overall performance rating. We regularly improve our algorithms, but if you find any inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in the comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
ATI HD 3870
1.43
Passmark
This is a very common benchmark included in the Passmark PerformanceTest package.
He gives the card a thorough evaluation, running four separate tests for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11, and 12 (the latter being done at 4K resolution whenever possible), and a few more tests using DirectCompute.
Benchmark coverage: 25%
ATI HD 3870
559
Radeon HD 3870 in games
FPS in popular games on the Radeon HD 3870, as well as compliance with system requirements. Remember that the official requirements of the developers do not always match the data of real tests.
Relative capacity
Radeon HD 3870 overall performance compared to its nearest desktop competitor.
AMD Radeon HD 6610M
101.4
NVIDIA GeForce 820A
100
AMD Radeon HD 6570
100
ATI Radeon HD 3870
100
NVIDIA GF117
99.3
AMD Radeon HD 8670D
97.
2
NVIDIA GeForce 615
97.2
Competitor from NVIDIA
We believe that the nearest equivalent to Radeon HD 3870 from NVIDIA is GeForce 820A, which is approximately equal in speed and lower by 1 position in our rating.
GeForce 820A
Compare
Here are some of NVIDIA’s closest competitors to the Radeon HD 3870:
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512
106.29
NVIDIA GeForce GT 820M
103.5
NVIDIA GeForce 820A
100
ATI Radeon HD 3870
100
NVIDIA GF117
99.3
NVIDIA GeForce 615
97.2
NVIDIA GeForce GT 240
93.71
Other video cards
Here we recommend several video cards that are more or less similar in performance to the reviewed one.
GeForce 8800 GTS 512
Compare
GeForce 8800 GTX
90 020 Compare
GeForce 9800 GTX+
Compare
GeForce 8800 GT
Compare
GeForce GTS 250
Compare
Radeon HD
2900 PRO
Recommended processors
According to our statistics, these processors are most often used with the Radeon HD 3870.
Core 2
Duo E8400
5.8%
Core 2
Quad Q6600
5.8%
Athlon II
X4 640
4%
Athlon II
X2 250
2.8%
Athlon 64
X2 6000+
2%
Core 2
Duo E7500
2%
Core 2
Duo E8600
1.