Sapphire AMD Radeon HD3850

9.0

Format PC

Price £130

Manufacturer

Contact http://www.sapphiretech.com

1 Comments

We couldn't get hold of the top end HD3870 before going to press, but this is its almost identical sibling: exactly the same architecture, including AMD's HD video processing engine - just slightly lower clock speeds.

The 3800 series is a genuine comeback for AMD. By shrinking the process size for production and tweaking the chip a little, they've managed to dispense with the dual slot cooler and the enormous power requirement to produce a sleek card that you'll barely know is there.

With the launch of their newest motherboards, the FX790s, AMD are going to make it possible to rig four of their 3800 series cards together in Crossfire X. An intriguing thought for those of us who thought two graphics cards were more than enough, but a clear indication that GPUs are going the way of CPUs: more physical processors, rather than more complicated ones.

When it comes to games, the HD3850 is quite a way off the performance of the overclocked 8800GT opposite, but it is much cheaper. The HD3850 and the stock 8800GT are much closer in terms of price and performance.

Does it have enough grunt to be a worthwhile buy, or will you be upgrading again in six months? Certainly for £130 it does - just look at how deftly it handles Crysis. Performance falls off quite rapidly once anti-aliasing is applied, however.

The good news is that on a 20 or 22-inch LCD you'll be gaming in native resolution without spending a fortune - albeit at slightly lower detail levels.

PC Gamer