AMD HD3800 pricing shock follows down-clock call

AMD HOSTED a bunch of NDA press briefings last week in Munich, Milano, London. Since the INQ is traditionally not invited to NDA bashes, we were left out in the cold.

This is what AMD has in store, as far as graphics is concerned.

Phenom pricing details were disclosed earlier by no other than AMD's master distributor, an ASBIS spin-off called ISA Hardware. The 790FX is not interesting since it is already selling in stores.

The interesting part is Daamit's answer to Nvidia's GeForce 8800GT and revamped GTS, the Radeons HD 3850, 3870 and 3870 X2 (R680).

The R680 is the only part planned for next year (January), but we would not be surprised if it appears as a Yuletide present to the hardware community.

The HD 3850 will exist primarily as a 256MB part, while the 3870 will bring 512MB to the table. Some 3850 parts may come with 512MB and some 3870 parts with 1GB of memory -for 20 and 50 USD/EUR above current asking price.

Pricing for both launch parts is very aggressive, and AMD claims it is all due to 55nm process working like a clockwork and achieving excellent yields. Radeon HD 3850 should retail for between $149 to 179 (USD), while 3870 should be between 200 to 230. This is brilliant pricing, going way below 8800GT.

The real truth is that AMD started running into clocking walls (with a selected heatsink-fan combo) and again decided to crash the prices instead of gunning for a better cooling setup that will enable those 800 MHz+ clocks we saw earlier in development.

AMD is touting DirectX 10.1, UVD and PowerPlay checkbox features as key features for selling the RV670 chips.

It remains to be seen why AMD clocked down the parts, so that performance parity with 8800GT is established. Whoever is on Nvidia's or Intel's payrole inside AMD, we have to congratulate that person on a job well done.

This is what will sell as Radeon HD 3850:

• 55nm RV670PRO GPU at 668 MHz (why not 666?)
• 256MB GDDR3 memory at 828 MHz DDR (1.66 GT(/s)
• 10.69 GPixel/s fillrate
• 52.99 GB/s memory bandwidth
• 320 Unified Stream Processors
• 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing support
• ATI Avivo HD
• ATI PowerPlay power saving technology
• Game Physics processing capability (this belongs to fairy tale land, but you know – marketing...)
• HDMI support

As far as higher performing part, the 3870 is considered, specs are following:

• 55nm RV670XT GPU clocked to 775 MHz
• 512MB GDDR4 memory clocked at 1.2 GHz DDR (2.4 GT/s)
• 12.40 GPixel/s fill-rate
• 76.80 GB/s memory bandwidth
• 320 Unified Stream Processors
• 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing support
• 55nm process
• ATI Avivo HD
• ATI PowerPlay power saving technology
• Game Physics processing capability
• HDMI support

These will go on sale on November 19th or a little bit earlier. µ