Right now things are looking up for AMD. The HD3870 X2 is a great card, performing on a par with similarly priced cards from nVidia. This makes it an excellent choice for enthusiasts who require the ultimate performance at all times.

Equally so, it also puts the card out of reach for gamers who don't want to spend a fortune on their gaming machines. AMD's answer is the HD3850. The card has all the features it's two faster brothers (the HD3870 and the HD3870 X2) offers and only falls behind in performance due to slightly lower GPU speeds and slower memory. But while no features were cut in the process of making the HD3850, its price experienced a significant reduction. The question on everybody's lips is did the performance drop suffer to a similar degree?