SPCR

In the past, Gigabyte has just rebranded Zalman VF-700 AlCu coolers on their cards, and it looks like it's the same here. The cooler and fan are identical to the Zalman, the only difference being the 2-pin power connector as opposed to the 3-pin connector that comes with the VF-700. Don't know about how fast the card runs, but the fan should be able to be controlled via software and should have the same noise/cooling characteristics as the retail VF-700 AlCu

According to The Inq, the new DAAMIT cards (HD3850 & HD3870) may be relatively quiet:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... ally-quiet

Again...from the inquirer:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... focus-3850

If the power consumption is close enough to the x1950pro, I may actually have to pick up one of these 3850's! More performance for less than I paid, within the same power envelope would be amazing.

It also looks interesting to me... As I've given up on my !"#%$=%) X1950 Pro and HR-03, I'd get rid of the 1950 and use the heatsink on a 3850 as soon as the prices become reasonable.

Guys check this out

http://translate.google.com/translate?u ... n&ie=UTF-8

Here are the most important slides:





Good news!! Looks like they're both ~100 W cards when gaming and half that when you're not gaming! Now we just need some heatsinks and fans to suit.

Ugh... 100W is a LOT. No 3850 for me, then And that's already wattage that requires a HR-03+ and a fan, or heavy ducting.

seems like ATI/AMD is keeping very tight lipped about all this. Only letting a small amount of people see it overseas. You'd think they would be whooping it up.

Matija wrote:Ugh... 100W is a LOT. No 3850 for me, then And that's already wattage that requires a HR-03+ and a fan, or heavy ducting.

What else would you use? I don't know of any gaming card that comes near in terms of performance that isn't 150 W...

I really hope the power levels are lower, hopefully they made an overestimate. As for the Powerplay, adjustable Voltages!!!!!! Does this mean we might finally be able to manually undervolt the video card through software!?! bout damn time.

lloydo wrote:

Matija wrote:Ugh... 100W is a LOT. No 3850 for me, then And that's already wattage that requires a HR-03+ and a fan, or heavy ducting.

What else would you use? I don't know of any gaming card that comes near in terms of performance that isn't 150 W...

The tidbits of available info hint towards the 3850 being a better card than 2600XT and worse than a 2900. The 2600 is roughly comparable to the 1950 in some cases, and slower in others, so I guess the 3850 would be between a 1950 and 8800GTS.

As much as my 1950 irritates me, the 3850 with this power envelope doesn't seem like a worthy replacement. And if it's indeed around 100W, then it's going to have pretty bad performance-per-watt - the 1950 is 65W max.

The interesting part, however, is that the 3850 and the 3870 have similar power draws... The former uses GDDR3, the latter uses GDDR4, and I guess the difference in memory amounts to 30-40W. If someone manages to pull out a 3850 with GDDR4, then its power consumption should approach that of the 1950. That's nice, but unless there are significant performance gains over the 1950, it's not enough to warrant a replacement. For someone with an older card, it's going to be a great choice. Just not for me.

Found an interesting thread on a Chinese (?) forum:

http://we.pcinlife.com/thread-844605-1-1.html

Those are AMD's benchmark results, so I'm not sure if they can be trusted The results seem interesting, but I cannot put them into perspective, as I have no idea what would be the scores for 8800 cards.

tehfire wrote:About the HD3850, I'm kinda worried about the cooler. Since it makes less heat, something tells me they're gonna put a cheaper cooler on it. Happens all the time. If anybody knows how loud the new 8800GT cooler is I'm curious.

Man, it's so sad that we're so happy about a card that makes *only* 108W of heat. Nice improvement, but that's still about twice as much as my CPU!!!

And this card is multitude of times more powerfull (in STREAM) then your CPU.

Matija wrote:As much as my 1950 irritates me, the 3850 with this power envelope doesn't seem like a worthy replacement. And if it's indeed around 100W, then it's going to have pretty bad performance-per-watt - the 1950 is 65W max.

Thanks for your reply, I didn't realise the 1950 was such a low-power card. Does it run really cool then?

But yes, in terms of an upgrade for people with older cards, if I can find an ASUS A8R32 motherboard then I will buy a 3850 before Christmas. Should be a welcome change from my 6800 GT.

lloydo wrote:

Matija wrote:As much as my 1950 irritates me, the 3850 with this power envelope doesn't seem like a worthy replacement. And if it's indeed around 100W, then it's going to have pretty bad performance-per-watt - the 1950 is 65W max.

Thanks for your reply, I didn't realise the 1950 was such a low-power card. Does it run really cool then?

But yes, in terms of an upgrade for people with older cards, if I can find an ASUS A8R32 motherboard then I will buy a 3850 before Christmas. Should be a welcome change from my 6800 GT.

it really is a "low" power card. VRM issues aside( sorry matija), it's easy to cool passively, and luckily, even though mine is an early revision, it works flawlessly in passive mode with an HR-03 in the "wrapped around" configuration. I was really hoping the 3850 would be around the same power draw, but i guess myself and Matija were getting ahead of ourselves.

How about dual 3870 GPUs???

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... on-hd-3870

Some 3870 benchies, info on temps as well, seems to run very cool:

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=202510

Matija wrote:As much as my 1950 irritates me, the 3850 with this power envelope doesn't seem like a worthy replacement. And if it's indeed around 100W, then it's going to have pretty bad performance-per-watt - the 1950 is 65W max.

Man you have to be crazy to think that this new chip is going to be less efficient than their old larger process chips. Whatever new features they've added won't add up to making it less efficient, no way sir!

The whole reason it is faster is because it is cooler, and it is cooler because it uses less power, and it uses less power because it is smaller. THAT is how semiconductors work.

All else being equal, this chip will perform better or be cooler. From the look of it, "a LOT better" and "a LOT cooler" are both options here because of how it can scale down to a uniquely low power mode.

HD 3850 / 3870 would be worthy replacement for my HD 2900 Pro... or then I go 8800 GT line ^^

But its really nice to see that power consumption is reduced a lot compeared HD 2900 series.

Thanks for your reply, I didn't realise the 1950 was such a low-power card. Does it run really cool then?

Just to clarify, it's the X1950pro that's good pretty reasonable power draw.
It's built on 80nm process, has 580MHz clock (ATi spec) and 36 pipes (or whatever they are) The X1950XT and XTX are 90nm, 48 pipe and 648/675MHz (I think) The larger manufacturing process size, along with more pipes and higher clock speeds (with higher voltage requirements) leads to 50-100% increase in watts. This takes them from "easy to cool quietly" to "work at it to cool quietly". My X1950 pro has VF-900 with 80x25mm fan swapped and cools the GPU 60-70°C under load with the fan ~1000rpm, that's pretty quiet.
If you look at the recent review of the VF-1000 you see the VF-900 struggles to cool the XTX, even at full speed >2000rpm, which is not quiet.
Regards, Seb

tehfire wrote:About the HD3850, I'm kinda worried about the cooler. Since it makes less heat, something tells me they're gonna put a cheaper cooler on it. Happens all the time. If anybody knows how loud the new 8800GT cooler is I'm curious.

Man, it's so sad that we're so happy about a card that makes *only* 108W of heat. Nice improvement, but that's still about twice as much as my CPU!!!

no one on here should use a stock cooler unless it is passive

Found this:

http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/38701.htm

Ugh, I smell non-stock cooling problems... See the little heatsink on the right that covers two groups of four small chips, probably VRMs? It gets direct airflow from the fan. Going passive with this might be very troublesome...

drjunk wrote: The hd3850 is supposed to be 105w which is less than half the power of the hd2900xt. I think its going head to head with the 8800gt.

the HD 3870 will be slightly slower than 8800 GT at $200 price point; the HD 3850 will be slower than the 8800 GT and cost $150.

Matija wrote:Ugh, I smell non-stock cooling problems... See the little heatsink on the right that covers two groups of four small chips, probably VRMs? It gets direct airflow from the fan. Going passive with this might be very troublesome...

I read somewere about a full passive 3850 from Sapphire, loaded with 512MB of ram, dunno if ddr3 or ddr4. Someone had more infos?

jmke wrote:

drjunk wrote: The hd3850 is supposed to be 105w which is less than half the power of the hd2900xt. I think its going head to head with the 8800gt.

the HD 3870 will be slightly slower than 8800 GT at $200 price point; the HD 3850 will be slower than the 8800 GT and cost $150.

Yes your right...i was also wrong about the hd 3850 power consumption which is below 100w. Its the hd 3870 thats 105w, and is up against the 8800gt.

I guess thats what happends when scanning the net for info so early before launch...

drjunk wrote:http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?44274

no surprises there, the HD 3850 is in another league... for $150 it's not an bad deal, but that depends on how much it will trail the $200 8800 GT 512mb; and if it is a match for the $150-$175 8800 256Mb

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=703

The 8800GT completely and utterly slaughters the HD3870, perfomance-wise.

edit:

Do note that they're using Catalyst 7.9 drivers. I would expect new drivers to make a difference, but with the huge performance gap, I think they'll only go so far. Hopefully I'm completely wrong, though.

Great power efficiency!!!


Idle17 watts
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=703&p=7


Idle 28w~
Load 120w~
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... 85&page=44