Product Listing

PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme 512MB

By Vincent Chang - 15 Nov 2007

The PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme 512MB GDDR4

The PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme 512MB GDDR4

We'll be looking at the Radeon HD 3850 through a special edition from PowerColor. Featuring a third party cooler from ZEROtherm, the PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme aims to live up to its name. While the standard Radeon HD 3850 is expected to have 256MB of DDR3 memory, this overclocked edition naturally had to be different and in this case, and that means doubling the amount of memory to 512MB. It also features increased core and memory clocks - to 720MHz and 1800MHz DDR respectively.

We didn't get a Radeon HD 3870 but an overclocked Radeon HD 3850 is nonetheless interesting.

PowerColor went with a ZEROtherm VGA cooler that is not so kind on our ears. The standard version from ATI has a slim single slot cooler.

Compared to the 670MHz and the 775MHz core of the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870, the PowerColor is somewhere in the middle. Given that both use the same GPU, the difference then boils down to the clock speeds and the fact that the Radeon HD 3870 utilizes the more costly and 'power efficient' GDDR4 instead of GDDR3. Physically, the presence of the two-slot ZEROtherm cooler is probably the most distinctive feature of the PowerColor. Not only that, the noise on this cooler is also significantly more audible than its competitors.

The PowerColor has 512MB of GDDR3 memory and uses 1.0ns chips from Samsung. There are also two CrossFire connectors, ready for any future CrossFireX ventures.

The new Catalyst Control Center includes a CPU utilization indicator. Note that the core clock shown here is not the default of the PowerColor, which is in fact at 720MHz.

Additionally, PowerColor has replaced one of the two DVI outputs with a HDMI output, so there's no need for ATI's special DVI-to-HDMI dongle if you are only using a single HDMI output. There isn't such a dongle included in the package either even if you wanted to try dual HDMI, though there is a CrossFire bridge for those who looking forward to dabbling with ATI's upcoming CrossFireX. The rest of the contents in our box are quite typical and listed below. Unfortunately for some consumers, there are no games included, even for this Xtreme version.

  • DVI-to-VGA adapter
  • 9-pin mini-DIN to Component dongle
  • 6-pin Molex power connector
  • Composite extension cable
  • CrossFire bridge
  • Driver CD
  • Installation guide


Test Setup

Our graphics test system was configured with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 processor (2.66GHz) on an Intel D975XBX 'Bad Axe' motherboard. There were two sticks of 1GB DDR2-800 HyperX memory from Kingston and we also used a Seagate 7200.7 SATA hard drive, on which was installed Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 and DirectX 9.0c.

Since the Radeon HD 3850 is the less powerful variant of the two new members of the HD 3800 series and prices start from US$150 (an optimistic figure we believe), we decided to include some of the existing mid-range options, like the Radeon HD 2600 XT and the GeForce 8600 GTS. In light of the performance gains that we saw in the GeForce 8800 GT, we also included some higher end cards like the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB and also the original R600. Also, since the GeForce 8800 GT has made such an impact since its debut, we have included it in these benchmarks. To be fair, the Radeon HD 3870 should be the rightful comparison against the GeForce 8800 GT, but as we have not yet received it, we thought it would be interesting to see how the overclocked PowerColor would fare instead.

Here are the cards included in the benchmarks, with their driver versions:

  • PowerColor Radeon HD 3850 Xtreme 512MB GDDR4 (Catalyst driver ver 8.43)
  • ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB GDDR4 (Catalyst 7.6)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB (ForceWare 158.19)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB (ForceWare 158.19)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (ForceWare 167.37)
  • ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB GDDR4 (Catalyst driver ver 8.37)


The following benchmarks were tested:

  • Futuremark 3DMark06 (ver. 102)
  • F.E.A.R
  • Supreme Commander
  • Company of Heroes (ver 1.3)
  • Unreal Tournament 3 Beta Demo
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