How powerful a power supply will I need for Radeon hd 3850 256 and how much of a bottleneck will a pentium d be? Should I just go for the 1950pro?
Well the 3 series from ATi arent out yet, but by judging from the leaked benchmarks, the card is on par, if not a little below a 8800GT. In that case, a 500watt will run it fine... Make sure you get a PSU from a good brand though. If you have a prebuilt computer then chances are that the PSU will fail at say.. 430watts instead of the rated 500 it's supposted to be putting out.
You should Not go with the 1950pro. Make sure you at least have a 450W power supply. 500W would be perfect. Why not spend the extra money on the HD3870? That way you can get GDDR4 and 512mb of video memory. I feel sorry for anybody who rushed out an bought a 8800GT when for this cheap price you can get just as good of performance, SM 4.1, and DX10.1
I thought it was not going to come out until the 19th of November, but it appears that places such as Newegg are already selling it.
It appears it won't be on sale in the UK for a short while, but you americans should already be able to buy it. The 3850 isn't as powerful as the 8800GT, but the 3870 is, and with DX10.1 it's a better buy. I'd recommend the Corsair HX 520W PSU or similar for it. They're not cheap, but they're well built. Your average budget 500W unit WILL NOT suffice.
What kinda percentage bottleneck should I expect on a pent d 2.8. Will it be any better then a 1950pro with a cpu holding me back as such.
With a Pentium D 2.8, you probably will see a major difference on graphical intensive games. However, for a few recent titles that are very CPU intensive, the CPU will be holding you back.
Wow it really is as powerful as the 8800GT? I read some reviews and they all said that it is a great buy but still not on par with the 8800GT. I am talking about the expensive version BTW with the 512MB memory.
Overall, the 8800GT beats the 3870, but not by a huge margin. Examples: Test Drive Unlimited: 8800GT 10% faster Supreme Commander: 8800GT 17% faster Age of Empires 3: 8800GT 20% faster Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion: 8800GT 20% faster Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl: 8800GT 12% faster World in Conflict: 8800GT 13% faster Unreal Tournament 3: 8800GT 11% faster Crysis: 8800GT 21% faster Call of Duty 4: 8800GT 8% faster However, these results have to be taken with a pinch of salt, since the HD3870 exhibited a far higher image quality in Crysis (of all games) than the 8800GT, so what price are you actually paying? 10-20% frame rate dip for better image quality doesn't sound too bad to me, especially when you consider the lower price point and stock noise level of the card. Power draw is about the same. 8800GTX £295 Total performance: 375.5 8800GT £175 Total performance: 333.9 2900XT £240 Total performance: 293.4 HD3870 £155 Total performance: 290.2 8800GTS 640MB £220 Total performance: 282.1 8800GTS 320MB £195 Total performance: 243.6 HD3850 £115 Total performance: 211.3 8600GTS £100 Total performance: bottom (most tests not run)
I was going to ask you the same question. It's worth mentioning that all that lot I recently posted was about the HD3870XT, not the HD3850Pro.
The HD3850 Pro is the low end card which sits above the 8600GTS but below the 8800GTS. In ATI terms, Pro comes underneath XT. It's just an indication of performance. The HD3870XT beats the 8800GTS but is beaten by the HD2900XT, 8800GT and 8800GTX.
Would you care to see my OpenOffice Calc spreadhseet I made to come to those conclusions? Overall, that's the rank my friend.
I know that's because it is a big difference in framerates on those three games. I'm just quoting tomshardware. Also lol at the Open Office thing. Haha you just had to say it!
