The Radeon 3850 shouldn't be considered as a novelty and the 3650 adds some credit because it represents a chance for those who want to update their PCs but not their motherboards. If you have a somewhat old computer, it's not likely you'll be willing to spend 139€ on the more expensive of the two, but now you can opt for the other one, which only costs 89€ and should be more than enough for you to feel the difference.

Finding nVidia AGP cards is difficult, to say the least, but AMD continues to offer alternatives to buying something old and paying for it as if it were new (it's perfectly possible that someone might ask of you some 30€ for a GeForce FX5500 with 256MB, for example).

Link: BeHardware.

GeForce 8000 series and 55-nm process are news of the past (as recent as this past may seem) so both AMD and nVidia are looking forward to launch their next-generation high-end graphics processors. They have completed tape-out of the chips and they (the chips) should already be being mass produced by foundry supplier TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.).

With this early roll out, I guess we can say it's back to the six to nine months cycles we were used to see not so long ago. Thats good news for us buyers.

AMD is prepearing RV770, while nVidia works on the GT200, which consists of roughly one billion transistors and 200 unified shader processors. But no DX 10.1 just yet, sorry guys.

Link: X-bit Labs.

Before nVidia gets it's act together with the Geforce 9800 GX2, AMD will be in the lead with the new Radeon HD 3870 X2. And it will accomplish that with a graphics card that, even though it's basically a single board CrossFire solution, isn't longer than a GeForce 8800 GTX (or an Ultra) and costs roughly twice what a single 3870 does.

If you don't play Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, you will be happy to hear that AMD dominates all the other single card configurations. The only thing AMD has to worry about here, is the fact that a SLI set-up with two 8800 GTs looks to be better.

When it comes to power consumption, it eats 56W more than an 8800 GTX (playing Bioshock). This data lacks precision, but it's clear that two cards need more power than one even if they are placed on the same PCB.

You can find plenty of information around the web - here's some of the best:

• Anandtech - ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2: 2 GPUs 1 Card, A Return to the High End
• Tom's Hardware - ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 - Fastest Yet!
• Hot Hardware - R680 Has Landed: ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
• techPowerUp! - HIS Radeon HD 3870 X2 1 GB
• TweakTown - GECUBE Radeon HD 3870 X2 Graphics Card
• DriverHeaven - ATi Radeon HD 3870 X2
• Digit-Life - HIS, MSI, Powerolor (TUL), GeCube RADEON HD 3870 X2 2x512MB PCI-E
• Bjorn3D - HD3870X2
• Hexus ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 - getting back in the game

For those that don't remember, the Radeon HD 3690 (55nm RV670 Pro) is here to substitute the recently introduced HD 3850. According to it's nomenclature, it should find a place between the 3650 and the 3850.

Selling for little more than $100, this card was supposed to perform closer to the 3650 than to the 3850. Specifications are nearly identical to those of the higher rated chip, but with a memory bus that's been reduced to the half (from 256 to 128 bits), there was little hope that it would be much better than the 3650. Hope, they say, is the last thing you should lose.

In this article from the guys at PCPOP we see the new GPU pitted against the 3850 and a couple of nVidia cards in the same price range. The verdict is completely different if you look at 3DMark or pay attention to real games. Synthetic tests say the 3690 is clearly inferior to the 3850, but the only game that sees a similar behavior is Call Of Duty 4. Crysis, Lost Planet, Company Of Heroes, World In Conflict, BioShock, Age Of Empires 3, HL2: Episode Two, UT3, NFS: ProStreet and Quake Wars favour the 3850 too (all of them), and they do it by a healthy margin in some cases, but not as much as to have a great impact on playability.

Considering the price difference, it could be a good buy.

With the RV620, AMD/ATI has finished it's 55nm product line-up. Following the footsteps of the RV670 (aka 3800 series), which came out first, and shortly after the RV635 (3600 series), the 3400's target buyers that are less interested in 3D gaming, and more in price and the options to build an HTPC.

This graphics card has some characteristics that, because of it's limitations when it comes to games, seem rather useless:  DirectX 10.1/ Shader Model 4.1 support, PCI Express 2.0 or CrossFire technology. Others like DisplayPort and PowerPlay (for more efficient energy managment), will, on the other hand, end up being quite interesting.

This chip is very similar to the RV610, and shares many goals with the HD 2400, so let's see how it compares to the "Pro" version. As far as CPU utilization is concerned (during video playback), the new Radeon isn't much of an improvement. Where it does help, is in games, achieving 26.73% more frames per second. You can reduce the difference to 6.31% by increasing core and memory speed on the 2400 Pro, but you could also overclock the 3450 if you wanted, right?.

Link: ExpReview.

The GeForce 9600 GT should be the first card from the 9000 series to surface (right away) and it's time to get some 3DMark numbers on it. Using a quite powerful Core 2 QX9650 on an Asus Maximus Formula X38, we obtain something very akin to what the 8800GS can muster. These results are good news for you, because it was known that the 8800GS wouldn't last. It's this new graphics card that has to fill this market sector.

The 9600 works at 650/1625/1800MHz (core/shader/memory) and it's G94-300 based (not G92). If 3DMark doesn't cut it for you, here you will find a lot more: from technical specifications comparisons (between 9600GT, 8800GS, 8600GTS and Radeon HD 3850), to fully detailed chip surface measurements. Of course, the game list for the benchmarks is long, and not only includes 3DMark 2006 Ver. 110, but: Call Of Juarez, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, BIOSHOCK, Company Of Heroes Ver. 1.70, Crysis, Need For Speed: ProStreet, F.E.A.R, Unreal Tournamant 3 Demo and Colin McRace: DIRT.

In this case, "only" a QX6800 on a Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 with two gigabytes of memory and Windows Vista (for DirectX 10 support) form the system setup.

Link: ExpReview.

The mainstream graphics cards market is really heating up, with both nVidia's 9600GT and AMD/ATI's RV635 promising more frames at a lower price point.

It looks like the 8600GT will have a more than worthy successor but, can we say the same for the HD2600? Compared to the equally clocked version (the 2600XT), the answer may be "no". Even with a reduction in the fabrication process from 65 to 55nm, the new GPU gives very little in the performance area to justify the raise in power consumption.

Leaving aside the results for the HD 3670 256MB in Half Life 2 Episode 2 @ 1600x1200 without AA, which should be more driver related than anything else, the frame rates are very close to label the new product as a success. Power consumption could also be explained by the chip being an engineering sample, we leave the conclusions up to you before further results are published.

Link: ExpReview.

Nvidia took advantage of CES to officially announce, yet again, their next step in SLI technology. I guess that makes for a formal engagement, but no wedding date folks. They plan for an entire family of GPUs and compatible chipsets to be made available this year, starting with the nForce 780a SLI, nForce 750a SLI and nForce 730a for AMD processors (expected right away), then the 8200 series with DirectX 10 support and, in Q2, products for the Intel platform.

The people at Bit-tech talked to nVidia representatives about some of their products for 2008, Hybrid SLI in particular. What they found out is that, by summer, all nVidia based motherboards (be they for Intel or AMD processors) will incorporate a GPU. With one of those boards, a Geforce graphics card and Windows Vista, you will be able to use both HybridPower and GeForce Boost.

HybridPower, requires the monitor to be plugged in to the motherboard's VGA output and puts a question mark on multi-monitor configurations. At the same time, all the bandwith PCI-Express 2.0 provides will be welcome to move all the information on the frame buffer to and from main system memory. Regarding GeForce Boost, nVidia said they won't be implementing it on high end graphics cards anytime soon (you don't want your almighty 8800 trailing behind because of that IGP snail) but it will work with graphics cards already on sale like the 8500 GT and the 8400 GS (HybridPower won't, though).

Link: X-bit labs.

If you thought that the GeForce 7950 GX2 was big, think again, because the 9800 GX2 makes it look like a RAM module. Even though the 8800 has been shrunk to 65nm, this SLI-on-a-card sandwiched configuration turns out to be even more massive than anything before.

The card will have 1 GB of memory and will basically be two-in-one: two printed circuit boards, two graphics processing units, 512 MB of memory for each GPU and two DVI outputs. You really must see the pictures, because (out of context) it looks more suited as a brick in a wall than a top of the line PC component.

Link: HardOCP.

The Radeon HD 3850 was too good a graphics card in it's price range for nVidia not to give an answer to. The 8800GS gets to be that answer and (despite it's name) the substitute to the 8600GT in the ever so important market of the mainstream GPUs. It's a very similar situation to the one we faced when the 7900GS came out, it's direct competitor was the 7600GT and the next generation was just around the corner. Now, nVidia repeats the move by launching a card that will get replaced when the 9600GT starts being sold just a few weeks from now.

What you have here is basically a 8800GT with almost every spec turned down. The only characteristic that doesn't get axed is the memory bus at 192 bits. Core and memory frequency will be around those of the 8800GT (600/1800 MHz).

Only three games and 3DMark are tested, but against the slower version of the 8800GS (575/1700 MHz), the performance card from nVidia only edges the new offering by 26.97%. That's not much, looking at the price difference.

Link: Expreview.