The graphics card market is alive and kicking, and the last two years have been quite exciting. The clock frequencies have gone through the roof, more shaders have been implemented, the manufacturing processes have been refined and the power consumption, and thus the heat dissipation, has been going up and down like a sinus wave. At the moment we're heading in the right direction, but just as nVidia is in the middle of launching its shrunk and updated G9x series, AMD has delivered a real kick in the teeth for Greenpeace. No, it's not Radeon HD 2900XT, but the latest incarnation of the Radeon HD 3000 series, Radeon HD 3870 X2, needing two PCIe connectors for enough power.
Update: We've added Diamond Radeon HD 3870 1GB with 512-bit memory bus to the roundup.
Those of you who know AMD's processors, X2 means that it sports two cores, and this is very much true with Radeon HD 3870X2 as well. This single card is AMD's flagship until the launch of the R700 family, and on paper it sure looks good: two RV670 cores connected through Crossfire, with the possibility of adding additional cores, one or two, through CrossFireX.
Well, there are more cards than these, whereof a bunch is based on the G9x architectures, such as GeForce 8800GTS 512MB, GeForce 8800GT and not the least the fresh GeForce 9600GT. Also the older G80 core makes an appearance in the form of GeForce 8800 Ultra. These cards will hardly upset Al Gore and his green friends (8800 Ultra the exception), but the question is how the performance stands up to HD 3870X2, which we assume should be the fastest of the bunch.
Last but certainly not least we have ASUS EN9800GTX/HTDP/512M/A. The card is based on NVIDIA's new GeForce 9800, and for long rumors and early tests have been circulating. Today we have a full review which should give you a good overview of how the card performs with our powerful test system with minimal bottlenecks.
We have some more cards to show you, but you have to turn the page to find out which.
