Xpert Vision ATi HD 3850 PCI-E Graphics Card Review

Official Product Website:  http://www.xpertvision.com/

My old graphics card just wasn’t coming up with the frame rates it used to. I’m becoming increasingly more addicted to games such as Team Fortress 2. My battle-hardened Geforce 6800 was pretty good in most games surprisingly - but there were signs of trouble. In some certain games (my son’s Marvell Ultimate Alliance particularly) the GPU just couldn’t handle the extra shadows, geometry and particles.

So I browsed my local e-tailers for something to put a smile back on my gaming family’s face. I was torn between ATi HD 2900Pro or the mighty new ATi HD 3850. I found a nice cheap 3850 (with 256mb) on Overclockers.co.uk for less than £100 with tax and delivery!

Click the pictures to see higher resolution images.

The Xpert Vision HD3850 box. It’s kind of Terminator-like to say the least.

The contents of the box include PCI-E Graphics card, multi-language quick-start guide, 2 molex –> PCI-E power lead, Tomb Raider Anniversary game disc and driver disc.

The actual PCB looks quite dated, in fairness. This image reveals a standard heat-sink and fan, 6 pin power input. Nothing unusual there. I have to admit I was quite gutted when I didn’t see a lovely red plastic flame exhaust thing. Oh well it was really cheap and it might be quite good. Though if you look closely you’ll see a VGA output, a Dual-Link DVI output and what’s this? A HDMI socket, not a DVI to HDMI adapter - a real proper HDMI socket!

Ok fancy some technical guff? Here’s the specifications while I plug it in and test it.

• Bus interface: PCI Express® 2.0
• Memory Support: 256MB GDDR3
• Memory Interface: 256 bit
• Memory Clock: 1656 MHz (828 MHz x 2)
• Core Clock: 668 MHz
• RAMDACs: 400 MHz
• Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 Shader Model 4.1 support
• Dual-link DVI output supports 2560×1600 resolution display
• Superscalar unified shader architecture
• 320 stream processing units
• 128-bit floating point precision for all operations
• Dynamic Geometry Acceleration
• ATI CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology
• ATI Avivo™ HD video and display technology
• HD audio controller with multi-channel (5.1) AC3 support
• Native HDMI
• Built for Microsoft® Windows Vista™

After playing a couple of games I can comfortably say that this card is probably more than enough power for most gamers. I’ve not had a single gaming, driver, hardware issue with it. It may not have enough video memory to play Crysis at 2560×1600 with full details and Anti-aliasing, but for under £100 it is an amazing buy.

I suspect you could probably run Team Fortress 2 in high definition though -with 4x Anti-aliasing and full 16x Anisotropic filtering. I can’t remember the last time I bought a graphics card for under £100 that was any good. It does actually run Crysis fine with medium and high settings mixed. You can forget Anti-aliasing sadly though. Still looks great though and plays smooth so no real problem in reality.

We also tried NFS: Pro-Street, Unreal Tournament 3, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4, Guild Wars, Counter Strike:Source, Disney Pixar’s Cars, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, Assassin’s Creed, Sonic Riders, Half Life 2 series and they all worked flawlessly. Fast frame rates and Superior image quality. Some game engines really allowed me apply insane amounts of detail with no performance loss at all.

The video power was far superior to my previous Purevideo offering. ATi offer motion picture acceleration on most video files unlike my old nVidia’s Purevideo’s WMV and DVD support. AVI formats like DivX and Xvid through hardware acceleration is noticeably better. No scaling bugs either (nVidia please note this).

The fan is not loud, even under stress. The card only fills one expansion slot, yet the bracket is a double. A little strange - but I suppose it prevents overheating. Just think of it as bit of surplus metal for free!

It drains very little power too. There’s not much heat coming from it either. I guess you can figure it has good overclocking possibilities, right?

I just cannot stress how happy we are with our purchase. We love it here, and it’s getting plenty of use! I just had to share the gossip, otherwise I wouldn’t sleep tonight. Welcome to the goat herd, ATi and Xpert Vision!

Performance:

Price Rating:

Features:

Pros
Xpert Vision HD3850 is a really Über-great value and well built graphic’s card.
You get a top title game (Yes, even if it’s Tomb Raider and not Orange Box).
You get native HDMI support which is quite nice to see.
It’s great for home theater. Quiet cooling.
 

Cons
It’s not really very pretty. Maybe think twice if you have a chassis with a window.
People might think you own a Radeon 9800Pro.
256mb of GDDR3 is fast, but may not be enough for future games. 512mb versions are available though.

“It’s cheap & very cheerful.”

GG Xpert Vision for a good budget product.
GG Overclockers.co.uk for the excellent service, as always.

It’s Been A While…

Ok. I admit it. I haven’t posted in a while. I really should have lots to share - but I don’t.

I’ve been quite busy setting up a new project and it’s taking way too much of my time. Any free time I’ve had has been spent with family or playing the amazing Team Fortress 2.

I did get to watch a good movie the other night, though (and NO, I don’t mean Run Fatboy Run). We rented 30 Days of Night, starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George and a Vampire who looks like one of the Pet Shop Boys. I’m quite a sucker for Vampire movies -but this one is one of the best yet. The movie is based on a three-issue miniseries of horror comics. The comics written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith. I must confess I’ve never seen the comics before -but I’m quite tempted to track them down.

The movie’s plot is quite simple. It’s Alaska. Three-quarters of the town are leaving because it’s the time of year when the sun disappears for thirty days. 30 days of night? Sounds like a perfect Vampire holiday…..

Great movie. If you haven’t seen it then why not give it a go?

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Vacancy

Last night there was still plenty of Liebfraumilch Rheinhessen left to drink. We summoned the herd and popped a dvd on.

The chosen movie for the night was Vacancy starring Kate Beckinsale, Luke Wilson and Frank Whaley. The film starts of with a couple in a car, breaking down in the middle of nowhere and needing a room for the night. When they finally get somewhere to get some shut-eye, sinister goings on begin to say the least…..

Well I don’t usually go for this type of movie myself, but it really was quite good. I felt strong feelings of suspense and uneasiness from the outset of the film. The plot wasn’t too much different from the Hostel series, but included a far more sinister atmosphere. The movie doesn’t build up to plain old gore-fest like Hostel either. Instead the film dwells on what might happen or what could happen. Saying all that, I still prefer Hostel. All in all a good movie, but don’t watch it if you’re planning a long drive. 6/10

Liebfraumilch Rheinhessen is a really nice drink

Well it has been a very nice night for me. I know you’re not really interested but I’ll tell you all about it anyway.

Firstly it’s been a while since the She-goat and I have spent any quality time together. We ordered a Chinese, rented a movie and of course stocked up on wine and fruit and nut chocolate.

The chinese wasn’t that bad. It tasted as monosodiumglutimate should, but the pork ribs were a little crappy. The best thing was the egg fried rice, which they ruined by spraying it with watered-down gravy which was a real shame. 比分四可能十

The movie wasn’t that much better either. We rented Outlaw starring Sean Bean, Danny Dyer and Bob Hoskins. Not the best movie I’ve seen it has to be said. What? Now I’m supposed to believe that Moff from Human Traffic is some sort of vigilante like the A-Team? The film was dark and was apparently filmed by a cameraman had parkinsons disease. I’d have to say 4/10 for this one, sorry Moff.

The chocolate was a total hit, but the real star was the wine. I don’t drink very often, so when I do drink it tends to hit me hard. Liebfraumilch Rheinhessen is the nicest white I’ve had for a long while. To the best of my ability I can translate it to “loving lady’s milk”. Seems like it’s a cheap export wine, so it looks like the Germans are hogging all the better stuff. Ich gebe diesem Wein die Kerbe von sieben aus möglichen 10 heraus.

 Oh well I suppose I better sleep it off.