While ATi can stretch out their legs, for their 3-6 months of glory on the video cards sector, with their high-end chip 3870 x2 and the other mainstream products like the 3870 and the 3850. They really did went one step further on filling the gap between the 3870×2 with the 3870 chip, well… it is not new really, its is just adding another GPU in a single die in the video card on the 3850 can just call in the 3850×2. That kind of effort the ATi/AMD can do just double the “brains” of the video card. While the 3850×2 is almost the same of the 3870×2 on features, 1gb of memory, two GPU, the same 512bit interface and GDDR4. While they differ on the clock frequencies of both GPU and the memory about 50MHz down to the 3870×2, another video solution for those who don’t have crossfire enable boards, and wanted everything in one red die.
The ASUS EA3850X2 1GB is one such example for diehard fans who hate configuring or playing around on crossfireX, while ASUS have some alterations of the design, just to add up another fan for the second GPU for separate cooling, while, it doesn’t produce quiet and cooling sensation on the graphic card it is enough to have a difference of about 10 to15*C from the reference design. While the difference with the new 3850X2 with the 3870X2 is that the 3850 has about two DVI ports other than the four. Well, if you try to compare with the NVIDIA competition, this card, the 3850X2, can only compare with the new NVDIA 9800GTX, via performance and the price ratio. The 3850X2 can have the same or almost the same performance with the 3870X2, by just clocking it in the same frequency, with almost $200 difference in price, by just clocking it in the right frequency. But the card can sometimes play favourites in games, take Crysis a NVIDIA backed game, will tend to go with the NVDIA cards, while the Half-life 2 lost coast side with the ATi cards and also most Doom 3 engine games, like Quake Wars Enemy Territory.
All in all, the 3850X2 is a good alternative to the high-end solution of 3870X2, with the price of the 3850X2 coming about $400 over the internet, the new dual ATi card perform at their best at high resolution, when you compare it with NVIDIA 9800GTX and GX2 and some games can sometimes play better neither NVIDIA and ATi, so try to add up the games you like and affect on the decision to the video card, the 3850X2 can play better in Doom 3 games, the 9800GTX can speed up on Crysis, the choose is yours.
