ATI Radeon HD 3870
3D Mark 06
3DMark®06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking. A fundamental tool for every company in the PC industry as well as PC users and gamers, 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests. 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today.
The system with the ATI Radeon 3870 was rated to have 9381 3DMarks, where as with the BFG 8800GT OC it was rated at only 8891 3DMarks.
The CPU Score of the two tests were nearly identical, as they should be due to the use of the same exact processor. Under the two graphical tests, the ATI Radeon had a higher performance than the BFG 8800GT OC.
The first part of the graphic test utilizes SM2.0 (SM defined below), this uses mostly basic shading textures. The ATI Radeon 3870HD received 3932 3DMarks while the NVida 8800GT OC received only 3448. As this is over a 10% difference, there might not be a significant difference becuase most newer games use SM3.0 shadings.
On the second half of the test, 3DMark06 rates the performance of Shading Modeling 3.0 and High Dynamic Range (HDR defined below). Both of these are key factor in game play and are utilized in most all games, the SM3.0 helps render the instense shading while the HDR accurately represents the difference from direct sunlight to shadows. On this test, the two card were remarkably close, the ATI Radeon 3870 scored 4389 3DMarks while the BFG Radeon 8800 scored 4270 3DMarks.
HDR (High Dynamic Range) |
High dynamic range rendering (HDRR or HDR Rendering), also known as high dynamic range lighting, is the rendering of 3D computer graphics scenes by using lighting calculations done in a larger dynamic range. Video games and computer generated movies benefit from this as it creates more realistic scenes than with the previous lighting model (referred to as "low dynamic range lighting" or "standard lighting"). Information from Wikipedia. |
SM (Shader Modeling) |
The High Level Shading Language for DirectX implements a series of shader models. Using HLSL, you can create C-like programmable shaders for the Direct3D pipeline. Each shader model builds on the capabilites of the model before it, implementing more functionality with fewer restrictions. Shader model 1 started with DirectX 8 and included assembly level and C-like instructions. This model has many limitations caused by early programmable shader hardware. Shader model 2 and 3 greatly expanded on the number of instructions, and constants shaders could use. They are much more powerful than shader model 1, but still carry some of the existing limitations of the first shader model. Information from MSDN. |
The ATI Radeon 3870 is available from the vendors below at an affordable price: