Sapphire&#039;s non-conventional Radeon HD 3800 cards go head-to-head

Review: Sapphire's non-conventional Radeon HD 3800 cards go head-to-head

Final thoughts

Knowing that the Radeon HD 3800-series is based on the same underlying architecture, discerning value-for-money isn't all that difficult.

Let's take the Sapphire HD 3850 1GiB first. The key differentiation from the reference model is via the use of an extra-large framebuffer that has historically paid dividends as a fast cache when increasing resolution and image-quality settings.

The problem facing the card is that having a larger-than 512MiB framebuffer on a mid-range SKU doesn't make all that much performance sense, no matter how good it looks on the box. Our results show that the card consistently lags behind a stock-clocked HD 3870, even at 1,680x1,050 and 4xAA 16xAF. What really hurts the £120 HD 3850 1GiB card is just how low the price of the regular 3870 has dropped to, right down to £93.

Why would you buy a slower card and pay 30 per cent more for the privilege, especially when its raison d'etre - a bigger framebuffer - isn't realised? Some might argue that its single-slot design and excellent overclocking prowess mitigate some of that pricing, but we're not convinced and find it hard to recommend.

Moving on over to the HD 3870 ULTIMATE, a passively-cooled model that ships at the same frequencies as the default card we've talked about so much, its £120 pricing brings zero-noise cooling to the fore, at the expense of a triple-slot-taking design.

The ULTIMATE will require decent chassis ventilation for perfect stability, we feel, but its defining characteristic is more compelling than the 3850 1GiB's.

It ships with a full-retail bundle, too, and the £27 outlay over and above the regular HD 3870 can be justified on noise and packaging grounds.

As an overall solution for users looking for an ultra-quiet gaming and multimedia PC, the Sapphire HD 3870 ULTIMATE is worthy of an innovation gong. There's more gaming performance to be had from an equivalently-priced NVIDIA card, sure, but the green team cannot yet match ATI's multimedia flexibility.

Bottom line: the Sapphire HD 3850 1GiB's framebuffer comes at too-high a cost, but the HD 3870 ULTIMATE is a good, sensible choice for a near-silent gaming card that will have framerates purring along at 1,680x1,050.

Sapphire HD 3870 ULTIMATE 512

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The Sapphire HD 3870 ULTIMATE 512 is currently available for £120 here.

The Sapphire HD 3850 1GiB is currently available for £120 here.

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HEXUS invites manufacturers to comment on our review's findings. If any of Sapphire representatives wish to do so, their HEXUS Right2Reply will be written here, verbatim.

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i suppose these cards exist because the 4000 series is coming out shortly, and sapphire are trying to get rid of their stock of 3000 series chips.. might be wrong but it sounds logical to me…

as for the ‘silent’ cooling - can sapphire not knock up a larger fan, run it on a fluid bearing and then run at a slower rpm.. it will increase airflow, reduce noise… there looks to be enough room on the pcb to do this, i'm surprised they haven't tried it yet…

1 more suggestion for better cooling - as all cards are mounted on the mobo so these coolers face downwards, can they not flip the pcb the other way around so when the cards mounted the cooler and chips are facing upwards? heat rises, so instead of the heat that isn't dissipated by the tiny fan actually warming the card up some more, then it rises upwards to where the case fan is usually mounted and this fan dissipates it..

just a couple of suggestions for sapphires next uncomventional range… (don't tell nvidia)

stevie lee;1424129
as for the ‘silent’ cooling - can sapphire not knock up a larger fan, run it on a fluid bearing and then run at a slower rpm.. it will increase airflow, reduce noise… there looks to be enough room on the pcb to do this, i'm surprised they haven't tried it yet…

They did make a version with a big heatsink and a large-ish, quiet fan, I have one and I've never seen it hit 60C under full load.:cool:

Asus tried the GPU on the back of the card idea a while back, it was meant to be a pain to engineer with next to no benefit - cheaper and easier to do the same with heatpipes like the 3870 Ultimate has - so it never got anywhere.

Got to say the most annoying thing about these unconventional cards is that they've taken forever to come to market, there doesn't seem like much point to them anymore. Sapphire need to speed that up with the next range.

thanks Main - i should do more research before posting..

as for the card mounting - what i meant was the whole card being mounted the other way up. so what was on the bottom is now on the top and vice-versa.

and i too am annoyed that this range has taken so long to come to market.. i thought sapphire was one of ATI's main partners, they should be a lot quicker.. NVidia's range launches with lots of variants most of them oc'ed so why don't ATI's do the same? now that ATI has caught back up with NVidia there should be no excuse anymore..

To be fair, the number of HD38x0s that come with stock coolers can be counted on 1 hand (so to speak). The irony is that the HD38x0s (HD3870s in particular) are the first AMD cards since the 9800s (as I remember anyway) that actually come with a decent cooler, performance:noise wise, and as such the 3rd-party coolers many, such as Powercolor, are sticking on as a replacement are often seen as worse, as they usually don't vary fan-speed as heat output rises and falls.

as for the card mounting - what i meant was the whole card being mounted the other way up. so what was on the bottom is now on the top and vice-versa.

Review: Sapphire's non-conventional Radeon HD 3800 cards go head-to-head

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