Asus EAH 3870

AMD has pulled a rabbit out of its hat by transforming the near-debacle that was the R600 architecture into a serious mainstream contender: The Radeon HD 3870.

The new GPU delivers several important features left out of AMD’s previous best effort: the Radeon HD 2900 XT. The most important of these is the inclusion of AMD’s Unified Video Decoder, which offloads all high-definition video decoding chores from the host CPU. The new part supports HDCP on both DVI links, too, so Blu-ray and HD DVD movies can be displayed at the native resolution of a 30-inch panel. There’s also support for new technologies such as PCI Express 2.0, DirectX 10.1, and Shader Model 4.1, although it remains to be seen how important these features will be in the near future. (Nvidia’s new 8800 GT is also PCI Express 2.0 compliant, but it doesn’t support DirectX 10.1.)

Asus’s EAH3870 is the first retail board we’ve examined that uses the 3870 part, and we’re impressed: It’s been a while since we’ve been able to laud anything other than an Nvidia-based videocard with a Kick Ass award. This card is not only powerful, it’s also affordably priced at $260 (and includes the first-rate game Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts).

AMD promises we’ll see other cards based on this GPU selling for $220, but those will likely come with reference-design clocks. In this case, Asus bumped the 3870’s core clock speed to 851MHz and the card’s 512MB of GDDR4 memory to 1.143GHz (from AMD’s reference-design speeds of 775MHz and 1.125GHz, respectively). Asus had just begun shipping these cards and was able to provide us with only one, so check MaximumPC.com for an updated review with CrossFire numbers.

Great job, AMD! Now get back into the lab and build a new GPU that can compete at the high end of the market.