Board Analysis

The 3870 and 3850

As we mentioned on the previous page, AMD will be offering two RV670 boards at launch: the Radeon HD 3870 and the Radeon HD 3850. We’ll talk about the Radeon HD 3870 first…

The Radeon HD 3870 card

Previously codenamed “Gladiator”, as you can see in the images, AMD’s Radeon HD 3870 is a dual-slot graphics card. Keep in mind that this is the basic board design AMD will be using on their own Radeon HD 3870 cards, board partners are free to make their own modifications to the cooling, or other aspects of the board design.

Top of the 3870 card

Opposite angle of the 3870 card

Hot air exits out the back plate

In fact for this launch AMD will be providing much more leeway at launch. We’ve been told that board partners like ASUS will be producing their own single-slot Radeon HD 3870 cards. AMD decided to go with a dual-slot cooler on their own board in order to deliver maximum cooling and the lowest thermals without having to resort to exotic cooling features like heat pipes.

AMD has come up with a brand new cooler to keep the Radeon HD 3870 cool. A large copper heatsink rests above the GPU, while a second heatsink cools the board’s memory modules and power circuitry. The card’s fan has also been improved over the Radeon HD 2900 XT and runs much quieter than its predecessor – thankfully noise levels are now comparable to NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GT/GTX cards, even under load.

The card’s fan will occasionally crank up to higher levels when it’s really being taxed (i.e. overclocking), but once the temps go down the fan’s RPMs will settle down to more reasonable levels. We think most enthusiasts will be quite pleased with the stock heatsink/fan cooling unit.



All RV670 cards continue to offer two dual-link DVI connectors and supports HDCP. AMD will also continue to bundle the board with two HDMI adapters which are capable of carrying both audio and video; a pass through cable isn’t needed to run audio.

Radeon HD 3850 card

Radeon HD 3850 is CrossFire X ready

Dual-link DVIs

2 3850 cards connected for Crossfire

Radeon HD 3850 Card

Previously codenamed “Revival”, AMD’s Radeon HD 3850 is meant to service the $150-$200 market. As such, the card ships with lower clock speeds and therefore AMD relies on a single-slot cooler on their own reference board design. Again though, AMD’s board partners are completely free to make their own adjustments to the reference board design and cooling.

In fact, we’ve already received PowerColor’s high-end Radeon HD 3850 offering, which ships with a dual-slot heatsink/fan unit for improved cooling performance:

The PowerColor 3850 (bottom) and ATI reference board

Powercolor Radeon 3850

DVI and HDMI on back plate

You can also see in our shots of the PowerColor board that it offers HDMI directly on the back plane of the graphics card in addition to DVI.