Introduction:

GIGABYTE ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB Graphics Card

It's been quite some time since video games out performed the current video cards. Just a few years ago, every video card from the 6800 to the 7900 series could very easily demonstrate their capabilities easily in pretty much every game right up to maximum screen resolutions. You could definitely enjoy games with the highest details.

Recently, you've seen titles like Crysis, Call of Duty 4, and Company of Heroes which all can pick away at your frame rates the higher you go with resolutions. Of the three, Crysis can pretty much clobber any video card around right now. I've seen systems with Quad SLI encounter various issues, mostly due to drivers running in Vista.

So, we know most all current NVidia cards have their work cut out for them, especially when it comes to the more cost effective video cards. But, what about ATI? There's been quite a bit of debate as to whether or not ATI has had enough power to play the latest games. This debate doesn't seem like an efficient use of everyone's time after checking out ATI's latest HD 3870 1GB X2 graphics card. Even though it's their current flagship, it's been easily seeing over 23,000 with the slower HD 3870 512MB versions coming very close as well.

Features Ultra Durable 2

Two of those latest cards has come to us in the form of Gigabyte's ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MB graphics cards, or GV-RX387512H for those currently shopping. NVidia's 8800 series are a very common top end budget gamer card and typically does well in most cases. How does the Gigabyte HD 3870 stack up against the card? And is it a viable solution? Read on for the surprising results.

Specifications:

GV-RX387512H
Powered by Radeon HD 3870 GPU Supports PCI Express 2.0 Microsoft DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.0 support Integrated with the industry's best 512MB GDDR3 memory and 256-bit memory interface Supports CrossFireX™ and Avivo™HD technology Features dual DVI-I / D-sub / HDMI / HDCP HDMI and 5.1 surround audio(by optional adapter)

Specifications

Chipset ATI Radeon HD 3870 Memory 512MB Memory Bus 256 bit Memory Type GDDR3 Card dimension ATX Bus Type PCI-E 2.0 Bus Speed 16 D-SUB Y (By Adapter) TV-OUT Y DVI Port Y (DVI-I) VIVO N Multi View Y

		55nm Technology Faster clocks, double the transistor density of earlier 65 nm technology. 55nm technology helped make HD3800 series products the most advanced GPUs ever highest clocks speeds, incredible feature integration, full performance and precision all the time, and ability to take advantage of future, higher-speed memories.
		Ultra Durable 2 -Designed with Top Quality Highly Efficient Components Using high quality components on graphics cards is the key factor for having a long lasting, stable and reliable product. GIGABYTE is again setting a new standard by using Ferrite Core Chokes, Low RDS (on) MOSFET and Lower ESR Solid Capacitors, providing the stability and reliability from their high-end graphics solution. In addition, GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 2 Edition graphics cards now feature a sophisticated layout topology. This state-of-the-art power design from GIGABYTE delivers the ideal integration of thermal, electric characteristics, digital signals, power circuitry and optimum placement of components for enhanced graphics performance. Ultra Cooling - Low RDS(on) MOSFET Design Low Power Loss - Ferrite Core Choke Design Longer Life - All-Solid Capacitor Design
		Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 The power of DirectX® 10.1 with awesome performance, stunning visual effects, and more dynamic interactivity than ever before.Ensures the best performance and application compatibility for all DirectX® 10.1 applications. Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 games, with stunning 3D graphics and shading effects.
		Shader Model 4.1 Shader Model 4.1 adds support for indexed temporaries which can be quite useful for certain tasks.Regular direct temporary access is preferable is most cases. One reason is that indexed temporaries are hard to optimize. The shader optimizer may not be able to identify optimizations across indexed accesses that could otherwise have been detected. Furthermore, indexed temporaries tend to increase register pressure a lot. An ordinary shader that contains for instance a few dozen variables will seldom consume a few dozen temporaries in the end but is likely to be optimized down to a handful depending on what the shader does. This is because the shader optimizer can easily track all variables and reuse registers. This is typically not possible for indexed temporaries, thus the register pressure of the shader may increase dramatically. This could be detrimental to performance as it reduces the hardware’s ability to hide latencies.
		OpenGL 2.0® Optimizations and Support Ensure top-notch compatibility and performance for all OpenGL 2.0 application.
		Dual-link DVI Dual-link DVI supports any combination of digital and analog display, and independent resolution and refresh rate selection for any two connected displays. Dual Link technology doubles the display bandwidth through a single DVI connection to support ultra-high resolution output and significantly increase productivity.
		ATI CrossFireX Upgrade to even greater 3D performance quickly and easily thanks to plug-and-play ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU technology...more information
		PCI-E 2.0 PCI Express® 2.0 –Now you are ready for the most demanding graphics applications thanks to PCI Express® 2.0 support, which allows up to twice the throughput of current PCI Express® cards. Doubles the bus standard's bandwidth from 2.5 Gbit/s (PCIe 1.1) to 5 Gbit/sec.
		RoHS Compliant As a citizen of the global village, GIGABYTE exert ourselves to be a pioneer in environment care. Give the whole of Earth a promis that our products do not contain any of the restricted substances in concentrations and applications banned by the RoHS Directive, and are capable of being worked on at the higher temperatures required for lead free solder. One Earth and GIGABYTE Cares!
		HDCP Support High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of copy protection technology designed to prevent transmission of non-encrypted high-definition content as it travels across DVI or HDMI digital connections.
		HDMI Ready High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a new interface standard for consumer electronics devices that combines HDCP-protected digital video and audio into a single, consumer-friendly connector.
		Windows Vista™ Enjoy powerful graphics performance, improved stability, and an immersive HD gaming experience for Windows Vista. ATI Catalyst™ software is designed for quick setup of graphics, video, and multiple displays, and automatically configures optimal system settings for lifelike DirectX 10 gaming and the visually stunning Windows Aero™ user interface.
		Display Support *Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz . *Dual-link DVI capability to drive the industry's largest and highest resolution digital flat panel displays up to 2560x1600 at 60 Hz. *Integrated HDTV encoder provides analog TV-output (Component/Composite/S-Video) up to 1080i resolution.... more information
		ATI Avivo HD ATI Avivo HD continues to provide brilliant colors, sharp images, smooth playback of Blu-ray™ and HD DVD content, and now adds enhanced connectivity through DisplayPort™, HDMI with built-in multi-channel digital audio, and on some GPUs, Unified Video Decoding (UVD). UVD is designed to enable a cool and quiet media PC with low GPU and CPU power requirements and playback of full HD 1080p content.

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