Non-standard in all the ways: Radeon HD3850 by PowerColor
What is so special about Radeon HD3850 by PowerColor? We would say, not so much to claim for a record but enough to be looked at while choosing a video card. Not only is the novelty equipped with a quality cooling system, memory faster than that on the standard Radeon HD3850, but also with a HDMI port instead of DVI although the latter can be both a plus and a minus.
This new product by PowerColor is shipped in a compact and strong enough box. The front side displays the info about the model, quantity and the type of the installed memory, as well as mentions that there a "professional" cooling system installed.
The reverse side of the box displays the key specifications of Radeon HD3850, e.g. support for DirectX 10.1, PCI-Express 2.0, and CrossFire X.
The package bundle contains all the required items (with no excessive abundance):
- power supply adapter for PCI-Express video cards;
- flexible CrossFire bridge;
- a composite (RCA <-> RCA) cable;
- s-video splitter -> Component out;
- S-Video -> RCA adapter;
- DVI -> D-Sub adapter;
- installation manual;
- CD with drivers (not shown on the photo).
The differences of PowerColor HD3850 from the standard Radeon HD3850 are evident: as a replacement to the standard cooling system made of aluminum there has come an advanced system based on a heat pipe made fully of copper, with one of the DVI connectors has been replaced by a HDMI connector.
The reverse side of the video card is not remarkable for anything.
We see the familiar GPU RV670 and 512 MB of memory assembled of eight Samsung GDDR-3 chips. To the right, in the power supply system of the card, two (grey) throttles are missing. It would be not correct to compare their overall number versus the standard Radeon HD3850 or Radeon HD3870, since the PowerColor HD3850 is based on the PCB of own design, so it's not easy to judge about its pros and cons versus the standard card. We can merely assume that the quality of the power supply in PowerColor HD3850 is a bit worse than in the reference sample.
PowerColor HD3850 uses faster memory chips of 1.0 ns access time instead of 1.1 ns as it should be. Not fantastic, but nice.
The new cooling system has turned larger than the standard and takes up two expansion slots.
The processing quality of the radiator base is up to the mark. The cooling principle is simple and efficient – ends of the heat pipe are fastened to the base, and the heat pipe in its turn is equipped with fins to reject heat. Such structure is effective not only in that it rejects heat from the base, but also in that the radiator has almost no "dead spaces". The fan blows uniformly over all the fins strung on the heat pipe. By the way, the cooling system is made by ZEROtherm.
Cooling efficiency, increased frequencies and overclocking
The quality of cooling was beyond any complaints. The card was warmed up with the game Oblivion with the settings tuned to the maximum. For 11 minutes of warming, the temperature of the core did not exceed 48 C, and after quitting the game it dropped to the former 35 C during less than a minute. As compared to the standard cooling system that allows the card to warm up to 90 C, the progress is evident! The only shortcoming of the new cooling system is the noticeable noise coming from the fan, which is always the same for both 2D and 3D. We found out that the card uses frequencies increased versus the reference sample. For instance, the GPU runs at 715 MHz instead of 670 MHz as it should be, and the memory - at 1800 MHz instead of 1660 MHz. During further overclocking, the video card easily coped with 777 MHz for the GPU and 2100 MHz for the memory, which is a little bit less than the higher Radeon HD3870. As we raised the frequencies, PowerColor HD3850 behaved in absolutely the same way as the formerly reviewed Sapphire HD3870 which hung from time to time in 3D applications.
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