As you saw in the benchmarks, the Radeon HD 3870 delivers performance that is equal or better than AMD's flagship Radeon HD 2900 XT GPU in most cases. This is quite an accomplishment considering that the board is equipped with a narrower 256-bit memory interface. Clearly it appears R600 wasn't taking full advantage of its 512-bit wide interface. We've been told that the 3870 pulls even further away from the 2900 XT in DX10 apps, but due to time constraints we weren't able to test this out. We'll have a follow-up article testing AMD and NVIDIA's latest graphics offerings exclusively in DX10 apps in the coming weeks.
You also no doubt noticed that the Radeon HD 3870 wasn't able to outperform its closest competitor, the GeForce 8800 GT. NVIDIA really hit a homerun with this product and it's clearly the faster GPU overall, which is why AMD chose to undercut the 8800 GT in price: it may not be faster than the 8800 GT, but some gamers may appreciate its lower price tag. If you're the type who craves performance though, the GeForce 8800 GT clearly outclasses the Radeon HD 3870 at this point. Radeon HD 3870 also runs considerably quieter than its predecessor, the 2900 XT, and consumes significantly less power. We'll be curious to see if board partners who elect to employ single-slot coolers on their Radeon HD 3870 cards are able to deliver a card that delivers low noise levels similar to ATI's reference cooling unit.
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