Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Hmmm, from what I remember the HD3850 was competitive with the 8800GS and close to the 9600GT. The 3870 was faster than both of those, and not too far behind an 8800GT.
I'm not sure "wiped the floor" is an accurate description.
I linked benches, saying the 9600GT wipes the floor is fairly accurate. The 3850 isn't competitive at all, the 3870 loses almost ever single bench. But hey, they 3870 uses more power and runs hotter and it costs the same. I guess if you want a red pcb really, really badly then the 3870 is a good choice. Other then that, I would say I am a bit confused why anyone would want one over a 9600GT.
I saw the benchmarks....
First of all the 3850/3870 saw some big performance gains with later drivers, Catalyst 8.7 and newer. The Nvidia cards saw marginal performance gains in later versions.
I have two 9600GT's, and a HD 3850. I compare them on my computers on the games that I play. Of course, all of my video cards are overclocked. One of the 9600GT's struggled to run 675/1750/1625 stable (Palit), the other (PNY) hit 710/1800/2025. The HD 3850 hit 825/2200 and was definately faster overall. I'm sure I could hand pick a game or two were it was beaten by the 9600GT, but that's just an Nvidia vs ATI driver/architecture thing. Trust me, overall the HD 3850 was noticeably faster.
The benchmarks you find probably won't tell you that the 9600GSO is a bit faster too when overclocking is considered. Heck, I had a 8800GS 320MB @ 650/1500/2000 that was just about the same speed as the overclocked 9600GT at medium resolutions.
But I guess old school tech is considered obsolete and find a benchmark out there that confirms it and everybody here believes the G80 sucks. I have all these cards and just uses what works best, don't care who makes it. Just have fun pushing relatively cheap hardware to the max and gaming with it.
Maybe you get different results or read about them somewhere, but I am just posting what I have seen first hand, no biased opinions, period.
By the way the power draw between a 9600GT and HD 3850 are almost dead even.
As far as noise goes the stock cooler on my Asus HD 3850 was quieter than either 9600GT.
It was the exact same cooler that is on both of my Asus 9600GSO's and they are quieter too.
Not saying that I don't like the 9600GT, my 17 year old daughter is using the faster PNY in her main rig and loves it.
One final point. I have noticed some people have an affinity for defending their hardware because they purchased it, and how it has to be proven the best. As a matter of fact, I guess I'll just say that philosophy seems to be rampant here at Anandtech as well as other forums. But in this case I bought all of the above mentioned cards and have no preference or motivation to make one seem better than the other.
You're allowed to have your opinion and if you believe it is correct, that's OK.
On the other hand please allow me the same courtesy.