AMD Radeon HD 3800 Series. Tests of the "low-end" HD3850
Date: 04.12.2007
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Radeon HD3850 offers a compact cooling system and takes up one standard PCI slot. The card is equipped with two Dual-Link DVI connectors and each supports resolutions up to 2560?1600 dots. The video card that arrived at our test lab is an engineering sample, so it was not equipped with a box or accessories, - only a DVI/HDMI adapter was put in the package bundle.
The cooler hides most part of the PCB, but we can note something already now. The needle-shaped radiator to the right is meant to cool the power components of the power supply subsystem. Inside the cooler housing, from the side of the needle-shaped radiator there are no notches, since it is cooled in the passive mode. However, for Radeon HD3850 and its modest appetites in terms of power consumption that is quite sufficient. The central part of the radiator contains a great number of cooling fins. Since the cooler is made in the single-slot design, the heated up air is not brought outside the video card but is expelled towards the DVI connectors, that is from right to left or upwards.
On the reverse side of the PCB, there are numerous fine components, but there aren't memory chips, there is even no pad for them.
Let me explain why. It turns out that all the eight memory chips are on the front side of the PCB and are positioned at an angle around the GPU. Evidently, this design was chosen because of the striving towards unification of the HD3850/70 series products and the reduction in their prime cost. Since both the video cards are based on the same GPU, the desire of engineers at AMD to use a single PCB for both the products looks logical. The positioning of memory chips on the same side of the PCB allows for their effective cooling using a regular cooler, and the increase in the video memory capacity can be attained through use of memory chips of greater density. As was already stated, the power consumption of Radeon HD3850/70 is relatively small, so the power supply subsystem of the card looks rather modest.
The nominal cooler for HD3850 looks pretty simple. The radiator appears to be a solid metal piece and, contrary to the usual, it does not have a central part for the GPU. Nor there are heat pipes either. The memory chips and the power components of the power supply system are cooled with thermal spacers. As was found out later, the radiator despite its color is made of an aluminum alloy (I anyway did scratch it). As regards the impeller, it is absolutely noiseless in the nominal mode since the rotational speed is very small. The noise turns more immense if the fan speed is set at a level about 50% of the maximum.
The core of the video processor RV670 stands out with its moderate dimensions despite the impressive number of transistors. The fine process technology makes itself felt. The nominal and recommended GPU operating frequency on HD3850 equals 670 MHz. The chip was made on the 39th week of year 2007 (in August).
The overall capacity of the video memory on board HD3850 is 256 MB. Used are eight GDDR3 chips made by Samsung. The access time is 1.1 ns, which is equivalent to the nominal frequency 1800 MHz DDR. However, the nominal operating frequency of the video memory is lower and equals 1660 MHz DDR. As you see, there is a good margin for overclocking, especially if the memory like that is capable operating easily at 2000 MHz DDR. And now we'll find out how the performance of HD3850 and its overclocking capability meet our expectations.
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