When it comes to making crazy, out there products, ASUS does not mess around and they have become well-known for their extreme motherboards and graphics cards. Remember the incredibly expensive P5K3 Premium motherboard? That was the motherboard that cost over $1000 US and featured 2GB of DDR3-1333 memory soldered right onto the PCB. Performance wise the design made sense and ASUS was able to provide this memory with a serious amount of cooling.

As interesting as the idea was, financially it did not make sense due to the excessive pricing of DDR3 memory. More recently ASUS was the first manufacturer to deliver a modified version of the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card, providing users with an out there alternative to the standard design. ASUS not only beefed up the cooler, but they also overclocked the card right from the word go, giving Extreme AH3870X2 TOP owners an edge over everyone else.

Recently ATI/AMD kind of did, kind of didn’t, announce that there would be a Radeon HD 3850 X2 to combat the new GeForce 9800 GTX. Actually, it would seem that they have left that decision up to the graphics card manufacturers, giving them the freedom to do what they wish with the Radeon HD 3850. Already ASUS has come up with a few creative ideas, one of which includes a triple GPU card based on three RV670 MXM modules that would be water-cooled.

The more conservative approach was to simply take the existing Radeon HD 3870 X2 design and replace the Radeon HD 3870 GPU’s with Radeon HD 3850 GPU’s, giving us the Radeon HD 3850 X2 and this is precisely what ASUS has done. For those that are wondering why we would want a Radeon HD 3850 X2 the answer is simple enough. The ASUS Radeon HD 3870 X2 costs roughly $400 US, while the ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX costs $340 US. The GeForce 9800 GX2 on the other hand costs a whopping $530 US, pricing it well above the Radeon HD 3870 X2 and GeForce 9800 GTX graphics cards.

Now while the GeForce 9800 GX2 is in most cases much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is also faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX. This means that each of these three graphics cards do slot into their own pricing category quite well, even if the GeForce 9800 GX2 is a little rich. The ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 on the other hand is already available and retailing at $340 US, placing it in direct competition with the GeForce 9800 GTX. So which of the two should you buy?

ASUS has now taken that design and used it to create the new Radeon HD 3850 X2, which we have here today. In terms of physical dimensions the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 measures 26.5cm long, which is again wider than a full ATX motherboard. The card dimensions are however very similar to that of the old GeForce 8800 GTX, so we are not entering unchartered territory, and of course it is the same as the original Radeon HD 3870 X2.

Instead of using the plastic heat shroud, ASUS has gone with a brushed black aluminium housing that features two 65mm fan holes designed to cool both on-board GPUs. Removing the shroud will expose two small arrays of aluminium fins, the second of which has slightly more fins. These fins are each connected to a copper base plate via two sets of heat pipes.

Unfortunately we have found this cooling setup to be no more extreme than the reference design, as we did find it to be a little underpowered at times. Separate from the new cooling design you will notice a large steel plate at the front of the graphics card labelled 'DUAL', which we imagine refers to the dual GPU design.

When moving around to the back plate you will discover that there are just two DVI ports, unlike the ASUS Radeon HD 3870 X2 which featured quad DVI ports. This is a little disappointing, as this was a nice feature of the ASUS Radeon HD 3870 X2, though we suspect that the majority of gamers out their will not miss it. Furthermore we suspect that the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 and ASUS Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards will be quite similar in terms of performance, so ASUS are probably trying to keep a few more exclusive features on their more expensive version.

The ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 comes with 1GB of memory (512MB assigned to each GPU). The default operating specification for this memory is 1656MHz and this is the exact frequency that ASUS has decided to operate their card at. Each GPU has been designed to work at 668MHz and like the memory, these are the default operating specifications for a standard Radeon HD 3850 graphics card.

ASUS is using 1GB GDDR3 .8ns memory from Hynix “HY5RS123235B FP-08” memory which overclocks rather well. We were able to reach 2122MHz with these modules before stability became a problem. The cores on the other hand were limited to 861MHz, which is only 11MHz higher than the already slightly overclocked speeds.

Hardware - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (3.00GHz) LGA775 - x2 Kingston HyperX 2GB PC3-13000 Module(s) - Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - ASUS GeForce 9800 GX2 (1GB) - VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 (1GB) - ASUS Radeon HD 3870 X2 (1GB) - ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX (512MB) - ASUS GeForce 8800 GTS (512MB) - ASUS GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB) - Inno3D GeForce 8800 GT (512MB) - ASUS P5E3 Premium (Intel X48) Software - Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) - Intel System Driver 9.0.0.1 - Nvidia Forceware 174.74 - Nvidia Forceware 169.44 - ATI Catalyst 8.4

Typically Nvidia based graphics cards do much better in Crysis, as is the case when comparing the new ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 to the GeForce 9800 GTX. In fact the Radeon HD 3850 X2 delivers roughly the same amount of performance as the GeForce 8800 GTX in Crysis and although it was slower than the 9800 GTX, this is still quite impressive. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is only able to just deliver performance that is comparable to the 9800 GTX.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is much kinder to the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2, allowing it to comfortably defeat the GeForce 9800 GTX, even with 4xAA/16xAF enabled. In fact, with 4xAA/16xAF enabled the Radeon HD 3850 X2 was just 1fps slower at 1920x1200 when compared to the GeForce 9800 GX2.

The ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 compares very well to the GeForce 9800 GTX in Supreme Commander, offering 41% more performance at 1920x1200 with AA disabled. Again the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is only slightly slower than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 and the GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards, which is of course very impressive. Turning on the 8xAA quality setting does give the GeForce 9800 GX2 a significant advantage, though the Radeon HD 3850 X2 does remain 27% faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX at 1920x1200.

The ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 continues to stack up well against the GeForce 9800 GTX, as it delivers 16% more performance at 1920x1200. However turning on 4xAA/16xAF did see a rapid decline in performance, placing the Radeon HD 3850 X2 slightly behind the GeForce 9800 GTX by just 1fps at 1920x1200.

The ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 does not fair to badly in World in Conflict, at least with the AA/AF quality settings disabled. Here it is just 1fps slower than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 at 1920x1200, while it does trail by quite a bit more at 1680x1050 and 1440x900. Nevertheless the performance is comparable to that of the Radeon HD 3870 X2. However when we turn 4xAA/16xAF on the Radeon HD 3850 X2 crumbles, delivering less performance than a GeForce 8800 GT graphics card.

The overclock made the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 an impressive 15% faster at 1920x1200 in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which almost put it on par with the Radeon HD 3870 X2. Furthermore this made the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 significantly faster than not only the GeForce 9800 GTX, but also the 9800 GX2.

Again the performance increase is impressive, as the overclocked ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 delivered 16.5% more performance at 1920x1200. This again placed the Radeon HD 3850 X2 very close to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 in terms of performance, while giving it a significant performance advantage over the GeForce 9800 GTX.

The power consumption levels of the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 are quite high, though this was to be expected given that this is a dual GPU solution. That said, at idle the Radeon HD 3850 X2 actually used slightly less power than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and significantly less than the GeForce 9800 GX2. However when under load the Radeon HD 3850 X2 did use 15% more power when compared to the GeForce 9800 GTX, while using 6% less than the 9800 GX2.

The operating temperature of the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 was also very remarkable, reaching just 60 degrees when under full load. The VisionTek Radeon HD 3870 X2 is also very impressive, though this graphics card does also feature a high performance after market cooling solution. As you can see, the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 runs considerably cooler than the GeForce 9800 GTX, particularly when at idle.

Therefore, while the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 is more expensive, it is also a great deal more convenient. Furthermore it can also provide existing Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 owners with a powerful upgrade solution when combining the Radeon HD 3850 X2 with either graphics card using CrossfireX. Also keep in mind that although the ASUS GeForce 9800 GTX is currently retailing for around $340 US, there are a number of versions that are priced just under $300 US. This means that in order for the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 to become a hot seller, it will need to drop closer to $300 US.

Pricing aside for now, as the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 is already in quite a good position, let’s talk about overclocking. Overclocking this dual-GPU graphics card went incredibly well, as we were able to overclock the core by 27% and the memory by 28%, which allowed for Radeon HD 3870 X2 like performance. Once overclocked the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 was significantly faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX, delivering 27% more performance at 1920x1200 in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and 16% more performance in Unreal Tournament 3.

One aspect of the ASUS Radeon HD 3850 X2 that we were keen to investigate was stability, as we had a number of problems involving stability with the original ASUS Radeon HD 3870 X2. Although the majority of these stability problems turned out to be driver related, we were interested to see how the Catalyst 8.4 drivers handled the Radeon HD 3850 X2. Thankfully there is nothing to report, as the Radeon HD 3850 X2 never missed a beat and worked just like a single-GPU Radeon HD 3850 would.

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Reviewed By Steven Walton