Diamond Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition Video Card

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

Diamond Multimedia has done a great job with the Diamond Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition graphics card. It is clear that the additional memory helps out in the six games and two synthetic benchmarks that we tried it out on for this review. The improved dual-slot cooling solution doesn’t look good (it’s down right fugly to be honest), but it does the job and dropped the load temperatures by 39% which is awesome! The only downside to this is that the card now takes up two slots, but for most desktop systems this should not be an issue. Having temperature decreases like that are rare, so kudos to Diamond for stepping up the plate and doing something about the heat!

When it comes to pricing the standard Diamond Radeon HD 3850 256MB video card will set you back $169.99, which is not bad for a mainstream graphics card that can play all the current game titles with decent quality settings and resolutions. The Diamond Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition graphics card costs $189.99, but there is a $10 rebate on the card until Jan 22, 2008. This makes the final cost on the Diamond Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition graphics card to end up being $179.99. For just $10 more than the Diamond Radeon HD 3850 256MB you get twice as much memory, better cooling and more gaming performance. Talk about a good bargain! If you are looking at a Radeon HD 3850 as an option for your next build then give this card a good one over as it is one killer Radeon HD 3850 series card!

Legit Bottom Line: The Diamond Multimedia Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition graphics card is a great video card that offers more memory, improved cooling and a custom PCB that puts it in a class of its own!