AMD tells partners to focus on 3850 with GDDR3

AMD IS TELLING its graphics card-flogging partners that they should focus on the GDDR3 part - the $150 HD3850 - while GDDR4 part - the dual-slot 3870 - should be used "to complete the offering".

So it seems AMD is going to mostly focus on the 3850, the part that is going to succeed the 2600XT in that price bracket, and is set to absolutely dominate the Geforce 8600GTS and its own previous $150 part, the Radeon 2600XT.

The Radeon 2600XT and Pro will have their prices slashed, sending the boards in a lower price bracket, while the prices of 2400Pro and 2400XT will go into the range between the large packs of crisps and the family packs of detergents. For that, AMD will use more and more of those 55nm parts called RV615 and RV635.

However, it is not understandable to us why AMD, self-proclaimed pioneer of ADP and other performance per watt powerpointeries decided not to push for all the advantages that GDDR4 memory has. GDDR4 offers much better clock/watt capabilities than any other memory type, and good example is infamous Radeon 2900XT.

When we saw Radeon HD 2900XT 1GB, we were surprised to see almost 30W less power consumption than on the 512MB one. If ATI opted for 512MB of GDDR4 memory on its main 2900 board, power savings would be such that there would be no need for the eight-pin connector and ATI could have avoided all the criticism coming from consumers.

But regardless of what AMD is saying to its partners, and what they should say to the end consumer, the fact of the matter is that both parts are really aggressively priced, compete and destroying price/performance ratio of both 8600GTS and 8800GT.

Second wave of cards will include 3850 AGP with 256 and 512MB GDDR3 memory, 3850 with 512MB memory and 3870 with 1GB of GDDR4 memory. Those boards are expected to hit the market just in time for Xmas. µ