Conclusion

Given that the XXX edition 8800 GT is more expensive than the 3870 (£30 between it and the Asus) it might seem a little strange to compare it with the cheaper 3870, but more on that shortly. If we study the XFX card we have an 8800 GT which far exceeds the stock model in every one of our tests. It does so while maintaining near silence and because of this it is hard to fault the product.

On the other hand, when we compare it to cards from various manufacturers we have to alter our opinion because there are faster 8800 GTs available and at least one which costs the same as the XFX, there are also similarly clocked models which do not cost as much and come with more free games. The MSI NX8800GTT2D512E for example is £176 (£6 more expensive than the Asus 3870) has two bundled games (Colin McRae Dirt and Lord Of the Rings Online) and has similar clocks.

The clock speed changes would make the MSI card about 1-2fps slower than the XXX model in most of our tests and really does offer more value for money as an overall purchase. As a result this makes the XXX model much harder to justify for your hard earned money.

Where XFX do offer something a little different to other manufacturers is in the area of support. After registering on the XFX website their system allows questions to be forwarded to a technician who will respond to you individually (Monday to Friday). We submitted a question on Sunday at 11.30am UK time and the response came though at 11am on Monday. This is a reasonable turnaround however not as good as BFG who offer 24/7 support and replied to our message sent on Sunday within 4 hours. There will also be an option to chat live with a support person, in theory that provides XFX with industry leading support however when we tested this process we felt the responses from the technician were disappointing. The previous page has more information on this.

What do these awards mean?

The Radeon 3870 is a success and a disappointment at the same time. On one level we have a card which fixes a number of issues we had with the 2900 XT. This product is much quieter, has full high definition video acceleration and draws less power. It is also slightly smaller in PCB length. There are also a few specification enhancements such as using PCI Express 2.0 and DirectX 10.1 support and it retains the excellent feature of HDMI audio and video out.

Performance also exceeds the 2900 XT in most areas but only by a few frames per second at most and more importantly the 3870 falls behind the 8800 GT in all tests. Given the overclocking potential our sample had it would have been nice to see ATI really "go for it" with this card and clock it at 840 MHz with memory much closer to its limit too. Both could be achieved without changing components and in most cases this increase in speeds would have allowed the card to surpass the performance of a reference 8800 GT.

Of the two cards we tested today the Sapphire is cheaper  by about £20 and has a bundle more aimed at media use with the inclusion of PowerDVD 7. Asus have opted for the inclusion of Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts, but essentially the hardware is identical. The choice on which to buy probably comes down to those two areas and what you as an individual value more. (£20 and PowerDVD or a "free" game).

Before we finish we must mention two points. At this time CrossFire on the 3870 using compatible AFR is a mess. When it works the results are excellent (Call of Duty 4) but when it does not work, which is most often the case, we experience crashing, visual issues and decreased performance. As we stated on the CrossFire page ATI have assured us that these issues will be resolved in the next driver and we shall monitor this to ensure it is the case, quite honestly going on past history we doubt anything will change in the near future. We can also hope that at the same time they remove all the spurious extras from their driver install as it is becoming ludicrously bloated and convoluted.

AMD's slant on compatible hardware is that they are releasing the 3870 as part of the Spider Platform, this consists of the Phenom processors, 790 series motherboards and the 3800 series GPU’s. AMD have informed us that using these three parts together as a complete system will increase the performance of the 3800 series. Over the coming weeks we will be looking at the complete platform and it will be interesting to see the results. We find it rather optimistic on AMD's part that they will be releasing hardware faster or even comparible to the Q9650 and DDR3 used in our test bed for this article.

Summary:

The 3870 would have benefited greatly from being released a few months ago as it would have been the mainstream card to get. As a result of launching after the 8800 GT it is hard to recommend. For HD-DVD and Blu-Ray the Radeon features exceptional performance but in gaming the GT is the better performer every time.

What do these awards mean?

XFX 8800 GT XXX £199.99 inc vat.
Asus 3870 Card £170.36 inc Vat
Sapphire 3870 Card £158.61 inc Vat.