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there has come an advanced system based on a heat pipe made fully of copper, with one of the DVI connectors has been replaced by a HDMI connector.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.

Benchmarking and conclusions

We ran tests of the video card using the already familiar test bench of the following configuration:

For PowerColor HD3850 and Radeon HD3870 we used the most current Catalyst 7.11 versions, and for GeForce 8800GT – ForceWare 169.02. We start traditionally from the 3DMark suites:

PowerColor HD3850 and Radeon HD3870 are approximately on par, lagging a bit behind GeForce 8800GT. Now let's look at the results of gaming tests which we ran using 4x FSAA and 16x AF.

At Call of Duty 4, PowerColor HD3850 and Radeon HD3870 are approximately in par, and as the resolutions go up they go outside the line of the minimum acceptable FPS. Also, we can't help noticing a substantial superiority of GeForce 8800GT which stays unattainable for the pair of Radeon cards.

At Crysis, the situation is similar. PowerColor HD3850 and Radeon HD3870 go almost equally, with GeForce 8800GT taking a lead.

At Need for Speed Carbon, the situation for PowerColor HD3850 and Radeon HD3870 is more favorable than in the previous gaming tests. Despite the leadership of GeForce 8800GT, Radeon video cards provide an acceptable speed in all the modes.

At Need for Speed Pro Street Racing, PowerColor HD3850 and Radeon HD3870 demonstrate about the same speeds and, like in the previous tests, they both lag behind GeForce 8800GT.

At Oblivion, we again see a similarity of results for PowerColor HD3850 and Radeon HD3870, with the leadership again taken by GeForce 8800GT.

At Prey, the situation is changing. At 1024x768, GeForce 8800GT takes a lead, but in the more demanding modes the HD3850 and Radeon HD3870 are almost close at the heels. The situation is caused by the narrow (according to the modern standards - 256 bit) memory bus width, since the game Prey is demanding for the memory bandwidth.

Final Words

The new product by PowerColor has proved quite interesting due to the quality cooling system that provides twice as low heating of the graphic processor and uses much faster memory, which allowed the developers at PowerColor to raise the frequencies of the cards from the standard 670/1660 MHz to 715/1800 MHz. Certainly, the mentioned improvements have favored to the overclocking capability as well, which allows it so approach closely to the more expensive Radeon HD3870. The disputable point is the HDMI port unsoldered instead of the customary DVI. If you plan to plug in a TV-set with an HDMI port to the video card, then such a replacement will make the process simpler and release you from having to use an adapter. But if you intend to use a second monitor with the DVI or D-Sub monitor, then the PowerColor HD3850 is not your choice.

Pros:

• efficient cooling system;
• faster memory chips;
• increased frequencies.

Cons:

• noisy cooling system.

Specific features:

• an HDMI port unsoldered instead of the DVI;
• PCB of in-house design.