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ASUS EAH3850 X2 1GB Graphics Card Review

Date Published:
09-04-2008

Written By:
Sludge

Edited By:
Diceman

Provided By:
ASUS

Where to Buy:
Newegg

Discuss Article:
VH Forum link

Pages: 1 2 3

Installation and Testing:

Card Installed	Power Connections
Status LED's on Card	Dual PCI Slot

Since this card measures at 10.5 inches, we already know it's not going to fit into every enclosure on the market. Ideally, you want to have at least 11" of space to give you some wiggle room. Now for the power requirements, on the card are two PCI-E power connections: a 6pin and 8pin. YOU WILL NEED TO USE BOTH PLUGS. If your power supply is equipped with an 8pin PCI-E power cable, then use that; if not, then use two 6pin cables. For the software installation, the included CD wasn't installing the software properly, so I just got the latest and greatest drivers from the ASUS website.

Benchmarking graphics cards is such a tedious job. I have to play several high-end graphics-demanding games. I know... why me? But that is what I have to do to show the end user what they are getting :) All tests have been done in a resolution of 1280x1024, which is max for my 19" LCD monitor. Several different benchmarking programs will be used in testing the ASUS EAH3850 X2 1GB card.

Test Rig:

Abit IP35 Pro Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (3.0GHz)

Crucial 2x1GB Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500 Memory

ASUS EAH3850 X2 1GB graphics card

WD 80GB SATA II HDD

LiteOn DVD-RW

KWI Absolute Power ABT-600CW Power Supply

Results:

GPU-Z:

Graphics Card Information

Sensor Information

ASUS Smart Doctor

FutureMark PCMark Vantage:

ASUS EAH3850 X2 1GB

Gaming Suite

Gaming 1:
GPU gaming 24.56 FPS

Gaming 2:
HDD - gaming 12.94 MB/s

Gaming 3:
CPU gaming 5631.01 Operations/s
Data decompression 683.32 MB/s

Gaming 4:
GPU gaming 19.93 FPS
CPU gaming 7013.32 Operations/s
HDD - gaming 9.69 MB/s

TV and Movies Suite

TV and Movies 1:
Video transcoding - VC-1 to VC-1 1.4 MB/s
Video playback - VC-1 HD DVD with HD content 27.18 FPS

TV and Movies 2:
Video transcoding - VC-1 to VC-1 0.56 MB/s
Video playback - MPEG-2 HDTV 46.57 FPS

TV and Movies 3:
HDD - Windows Media Center 43.63 MB/s

TV and Movies 4:
Video transcoding - VC-1 to WMV9 2.24 MB/s
Video playback - MPEG-2 Blu-ray 23.29 FPS

3DMark06:

Games:

Conclusion:

On startup, the dual fans roar to life and are very noticeable - which concerned me at first, but once the ASUS SmartDoctor kicks on, the fans aren't even noticeable. With the SmartDoctor software, you can adjust the percentage of power you want to go to the fans in relation to the temperature of the GPU. Game play was smooth and crisp. My only real issue was with the installation CD, as I had issues getting the drivers to install properly. So I opted to download the software from the ASUS website, and everything went according to plan. The install was perfect. Actually, I would suggest doing this with any software drivers, since newer versions are commonly released.

The question was, "To dual with single GPU's or dual GPU's." Personally, if you wanted a Crossfire setup, I would suggest choosing the ASUS EAH3850 X2 single card over a two card setup, just for the sheer fact that the bridging has already been done onboard. Plus, with these cards being almost on the budget level of pricing, you can go quad inexpensively. The 3850 GPU has plenty of power to run your games at full resolution and is one of the fastest ATI cards currently on the market. For a mid-range card that is dual GPU, the ASUS EAH3850 X2 would be a very good choice. I would like to thank ASUS for sending this item out for VH to review.

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