Asus EAH3870 DDR4
Asus do not skimp on the box and as usual we receive one of their products in a huge container. There is plenty of information present which we always like to see and we are left with no doubt on which game is bundled with this card. It is the excellent DirectX 10 title, Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts. Also included with the card are extras including a DVI>HDMI connector and CrossFire bridge. The only other item of note is a handy CD wallet.
As with many other cards from Asus this model features a heatsink sticker branded with artwork taken from the bundled game. We also see an addition which is becoming standard for this manufacturer, blue protective caps on the outputs and some internal connectors. While not essential it will keep the unused outputs dust free and is a nice touch. This card uses a dual slot cooler which is near silent in desktop use and barely audible in a case when powering games, a massive improvement over the last few generations of ATI cards. Underneath the red plastic fan and cooler is a large copper heatsink which cools both memory and GPU. It is a solid block rather than heatpipe design but works well. The memory used on this card is DDR4 and the chips are 0.83ns manufactured by Samsung.
Two dual-link DVIs are present on this card and using the bundled connector it is possible to output a HDCP compliant audio (5.1) and video stream via HDMI to the display or amplifier of your choice.
Edit: 28/11/07
Shortly after the publication of this review Asus informed us that they will also be producing a factory overclocked version of the 3870. This card will be titled the EAH3870 TOP and has all of the same features/components as the standard model.
Clockspeeds are as follows:
Card |
Core |
Memory |
STANDARD |
777 |
1.126 ghz |
TOP |
851 |
1.142 ghz |
The TOP edition will retail for approx £20 more than the standard card but comes with a warranty which covers the enhanced clockspeeds.
We were able to test the TOP edition briefly and can report that the framerates do increase by a noticeable amount. In Oblivion average frames per second increased by three and in Call of Duty 4 maximum frames per second increased by around five. When compared to the standard Asus 3870 these increases added to a warranty which covers the overclocking make the TOP edition a tempting purchase.
