ATI Radeon HD 3850 CrossFire Video Card Review

The Test System

The test system was running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with all available Microsoft updates including the hotefixes required for enthusiast video cards to run correctly. NVIDIA Forceware 196.05 beta video card drivers were used on all of the GeForce series graphics cards. ATI CATALYST 7.11 beta drivers were used on the Radeon HD 3850, 2900 XT and HD 2600 XT graphics cards. All results shown in the charts are averages of at least three runs from each game or application used.

The Video Cards:

• XFX GeForce 8800 Ultra XXX Edition 768MB (675MHz/2.3GHz )
• XFX GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB (575MHz/1.8GHz)
• BFG Technologies GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 640MB (580MHz/1.7GHz)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (600MHz/1.8GHz)
• eVGA 8600 GT 256MB (540MHz/1.4GHz)
• ATI Radeon HD 3850 (669MHz/1.658GHz)
• ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT (743MHz/2.0GHz)
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (800MHz/1.1GHz)

All of the video cards were tested on the Intel X38 Express Test platform, which is loaded with the latest and greatest hardware. The Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 ‘Yorkfield’ processor was used for testing as it proved to be the best desktop processor when it comes to game performance. The test system was also loaded with 4GB of memory and water cooled to ensure throttling of the processor or memory wouldn’t cause any issues.

Intel Test Platform
Component	Brand/Model	Live Pricing
Processor	Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650	Click Here
Motherboard	Gigabyte X38DQ6	Click Here
Memory	Corsair PC2-8500 4GB	Click Here
Video Card	XFX GeForce 8800 Ultra	Click Here
Hard Drive	Western Digital SATA 250Gb	Click Here
Cooling	Corsair Nautilus 500	Click Here
Power Supply	Corsair HX620W	Click Here
Operating System	Windows Vista Ultimate	Click Here

Now that we know exactly what the test system is, we can move along to performance numbers.