Mum’s the word

Product: PowerColor HD 3870 SCS3 512MB GDDR4

Website: www.powercolor.com

Price: €199

AS REQUESTED BY the ATI overmind, AIB partners have been building their own unique aftermarket solutions for the run-of-the-mill HD 3870. In this case we have PowerColor’s attempt to create a totally silent HD 3870, without compromising performance – the HD 3870 SCS3 512MB GDDR4. SCS3 stands for Silent Cooling System 3, as you can imagine, and that’s what it’s all about.

The most remarkable feature of the card is the massive metal cooling array, with heatpipes creeping from under the ‘sink and lengthwise fins that cover the greater part of the card’s surface. It’s heavy and it isn’t even copper – we can only assume if this’d been full copper, it’d been too heavy for comfort. Underneath there are pretty standard features going on, with the HD3870’s standard everything.

The unusually large cooling system will eat up not one but three slots: one for the card, one above and one below. You should keep that in mind if you ever consider Crossfiring the beast (if that’d be at all possible). Just to get an idea about the card, it runs the whole length of your Intel X38 mobo back to front, and even pushes aside the first SATA connector on the board. Be careful, real careful.

Our own testbed was an Intel QX9770+Scythe Mugen, 2GB DDR Crucial Ballistix 1066MHz, 250GB Maxtor SATA-2 HDD and the Intel DX38BT motherboard running Windoze Vista 64-bit.

Installation of the card, SATA connector aside, was really just a plug’n’play matter, as we weren’t trying to attempt any tricks on this card. The first thing we did after installing the card was a stress test and a heat measurement. We left it in a pretty long loop in 3DMark06 and after a couple of hours (give or take a minute) we read the temps off the card. The card maxxed out at 59 celsius. We must confess we were expecting a bit more than that. The fins were merely “warm” to the touch, easily gropeable. So we had a go at overclocking the card a bit. From the standard 775/1126, OverDrive auto-tuned to 864/1233 (+89/+107) which wasn’t too shabby... remember, it’s passively cooled, we weren’t expecting much at all. I think ATI’s 55nm process does play a good part in keeping the cards cool...

Getting down to benchmarking it we got a lot of mixed signals from the card. Running the card in 3DMark’06 got us what you’d expect for a 3870.

World in Conflict gave the card quite a beating. This is RTS at its graphical best, but remember while an FPS will demand a high constant framerate, RTS’ can actually go a bit lower, as action needn’t be smooth all the time.

Call of Juarez - DX10 Benchmark and Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance gave us quite a headache. We couldn’t get the benchmark to finish either. We had several issues with both the shipped driver and the latest Catalysts. Both invariably generated the dreaded “Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered” error, which doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience... at all. We know there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the origins of this error, but so far we can only finger the Catalysts – ‘cos our “old” 8600GT and a brand new 9600GT run without glitches on Vista. The odd part is that running the games themselves, outside benchmarking mode, didn’t block the driver.

PowerColor is known for being an “upgrader’s” brand, as the bundles are usually anorectic and you buy it for the instant framerate gratification. In this case we think they’ve got the right formula for an HTPC rig, although the graphics output is a standard DVI+DVI+Composite, you’ll have to get a separate plug for HDMI.

This passively cooled HD 3870 is a great match-up for an HTPC, if you can fit the card inside... with a micro-ATX board we imagine it’ll be lengthier than the motherboard itself – otherwise, it’ll do wonders to quiet down your PC. Apart from that the big no-no continues to be the imperfect drivers. Like Nebojsa said in his silent 9600GT review its performance is a match to Nvidia’s mainstream, so it might just come down to picking the right card at the right price. This one’s going for under €200.

The Good: HTPC delight, decent pricing.

The Bad: WYSIWYG. Big, massive actually. Takes up a lot of space.

The Ugly: That damn “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered”

Bartender's Verdict: