Introduction

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...mages/logo.jpg

PowerColor has been using the SCS3 cooling system on a number of products before. When the HD 3870 was released they soon started working on their implementation of a completely passive HD 3870. The final product is a blessing for all media PC owners or users who want to build a quiet PC. All other SCS3 cards use a cooler designed by Arctic Cooling, the HD 3870 SCS3 does not.

The card's clock speeds, memory configuration and PCB design are exactly the same as the AMD reference design. So the only change other than packaging of course is that the SCS3 cooler has been mounted instead of the AMD reference cooler.

<table border="1" class="resulttable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<th></th>
<td>Radeon 
HD 2600 XT</td>
<td>GeForce 
8600 GTS</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 3850 </td>
<td>PowerColor 
HD 3870</td>
<td>GeForce 8800 GTS</td>
<td>GeForce 
8800 GT</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 2900 XT </td>
<td>GeForce 
8800 GTX </td>
<td>GeForce 
8800 Ultra </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Shader units </th>
<td align="right">120</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">320</td>
<td align="right">320</td>
<td align="right">96</td>
<td align="right">112</td>
<td align="right">320</td>
<td align="right">128</td>
<td align="right">128</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>ROPs</th>
<td align="right">4 x2 </td>
<td align="right">8</td>
<td align="right">16</td>
<td align="right">16</td>
<td align="right">20</td>
<td align="right">16</td>
<td align="right">16 x2 </td>
<td align="right">24</td>
<td align="right">24</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>GPU</th>
<td align="right">RV630</td>
<td align="right">G84</td>
<td align="right">RV670</td>
<td align="right">RV670</td>
<td align="right">G80</td>
<td align="right">G92</td>
<td align="right">R600</td>
<td align="right">G80</td>
<td align="right">G80</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Transistors</th>
<td align="right">390M </td>
<td align="right">289M</td>
<td align="right">666M </td>
<td align="right">666M</td>
<td align="right">681M </td>
<td align="right">754M</td>
<td align="right">700M </td>
<td align="right">681M </td>
<td align="right">681M </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Size</th>
<td align="right">256 MB</td>
<td align="right">256 MB </td>
<td align="right">256 MB </td>
<td align="right">512 MB </td>
<td align="right">320 MB 
640 MB </td>
<td align="right">512 MB </td>
<td align="right">512 MB</td>
<td align="right">768 MB</td>
<td align="right">768 MB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Bus Width </th>
<td align="right">128 bit </td>
<td align="right">128 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">320 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">512 bit </td>
<td align="right">384 bit </td>
<td align="right">384 bit </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Core Clock</th>
<td align="right">800 MHz </td>
<td align="right">675 MHz </td>
<td align="right">670 MHz </td>
<td align="right">777 MHz </td>
<td align="right">500 MHz </td>
<td align="right">600 MHz </td>
<td align="right">742 MHz </td>
<td align="right">575 MHz </td>
<td align="right">612 MHz </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Clock</th>
<td align="right">1100 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1000 MHz </td>
<td align="right">828 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1126 MHz </td>
<td align="right">800 MHz </td>
<td align="right">900 MHz </td>
<td align="right">825 MHz </td>
<td align="right">900 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1080 MHz </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Price</th>
<td align="right">$105</td>
<td align="right">$149</td>
<td align="right">$179</td>
<td align="right">$269</td>
<td align="right">$260 
$350</td>
<td align="right">$249</td>
<td align="right">$380</td>
<td align="right">$530</td>
<td align="right">$650</td>
</tr>
</table>

Complete Specifications

666 million transistors on 55nm fabrication process
256-bit GDDR3/GDDR4 memory interface

Ring Bus Memory Controller

Fully distributed design with 512-bit internal ring bus for memory reads and writes

Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 support

Shader Model 4.1
32-bit floating point texture filtering
Indexed cube map arrays
Independent blend modes per render target
Pixel coverage sample masking
Read/write multi-sample surfaces with shaders
Gather4 texture fetching

Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture

320 stream processing units
Dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
Common instruction set and texture unit access supported for all types of shaders
Dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors
128-bit floating point precision for all operations
Command processor for reduced CPU overhead
Shader instruction and constant caches
Up to 80 texture fetches per clock cycle
Up to 128 textures per pixel
Fully associative multi-level texture cache design
DXTC and 3Dc+ texture compression
High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
Fully associative texture Z/stencil cache designs
Double-sided hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
Early Z test, Re-Z, Z Range optimization, and Fast Z Clear
Lossless Z & stencil compression (up to 128:1)
Lossless color compression (up to 8:1)
8 render targets (MRTs) with anti-aliasing support
Physics processing support

Dynamic Geometry Acceleration

High performance vertex cache
Programmable tessellation unit
Accelerated geometry shader path for geometry amplification
Memory read/write cache for improved stream output performance

Anti-aliasing features

Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)
Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for improved quality
Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
Temporal anti-aliasing
Gamma correct
Super AA (ATI CrossFire™ configurations only)
All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering

Texture filtering features

2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes (up to 128 taps per pixel)
128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
Bicubic filtering
sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
Percentage Closer Filtering (PCF)
Depth & stencil texture (DST) format support
Shared exponent HDR (RGBE 9:9:9:5) texture format support

OpenGL 2.0 support
ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform

Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats
High definition (HD) playback of both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats
Hardware MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX video decode acceleration
Motion compensation and IDCT
ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
Color space conversion
Chroma subsampling format conversion
Horizontal and vertical scaling
Gamma correction
Advanced vector adaptive per-pixel de-interlacing
De-blocking and noise reduction filtering
Detail enhancement
Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
Bad edit correction
Two independent display controllers
Drive two displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls and video overlays for each display
Full 30-bit display processing
Programmable piecewise linear gamma correction, color correction, and color space conversion
Spatial/temporal dithering provides 30-bit color quality on 24-bit and 18-bit displays
High quality pre- and post-scaling engines, with underscan support for all display outputs
Content-adaptive de-flicker filtering for interlaced displays
Fast, glitch-free mode switching
Hardware cursor
Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)2
Each includes a dual-link HDCP encoder with on-chip key storage for high resolution playback of protected content
Two integrated 400 MHz 30-bit RAMDACs
Each supports analog displays connected by VGA at all resolutions up to 2048x15362
DisplayPort output support
Supports 24- and 30-bit displays at all resolutions up to 2560x16002
HDMI output support
Supports all display resolutions up to 1920x1080
Integrated HD audio controller with multi-channel (5.1) AC3 support, enabling a plug-and-play cable-less audio solution
Integrated AMD Xilleon™ HDTV encoder
Provides high quality analog TV output (component/S-video/composite)
Supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions
Underscan and overscan compensation
MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264/AVC encoding and transcoding
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
VGA mode support on all display outputs

ATI PowerPlay™

Advanced power management technology for optimal performance and power savings
Performance-on-Demand
Constantly monitors GPU activity, dynamically adjusting clocks and voltage based on user scenario
Clock and memory speed throttling
Voltage switching
Dynamic clock gating
Central thermal management – on-chip sensor monitors GPU temperature and triggers thermal actions as required

ATI CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology

Scale up rendering performance and image quality with two, three, or four GPUs
Integrated compositing engine
High performance dual channel bridge interconnect

Packaging & Contents

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...age1_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...age2_small.jpg
This is a typical PowerColor box which features a Final Fantasy type character on the front and detailed specifications in multiple languages on the back.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...oam1_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...oam2_small.jpg
Both fin arrays are suspended floating over the card with only the heatpipes holding them in place. To protect the delicate construction from damage during shipping, two foam pads have been inserted between card and cooler. These can easily be removed. A note or sticker "please remove me before use" can not be found, let's hope nobody forgets them.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ents_small.jpg

You will receive:

Graphics card
Instruction Manual + Driver CD
DVI Adapter + HDMI Adapter
TV out cable
PCI-E power cable
iClone 3D software (our sample didn't come with that)

The Card

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ard1_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ard3_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ard4_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ard2_small.jpg
As you can see the massive cooler covers both sides of the card which means it's a three slot design. This makes the card a bad candidate for CrossFire setups or small cases. The hole in the cooler is there to let the guys at the factory screw on the cooler, it is right above the upper two GPU screws.
Also the two heatsinks are held in place only by the heatipes which seems to be a quite durable but not unbreakable construction. I think it is safe to transport the case to and from LAN parties with the cooler installed but you can't drop heavy things on the cooler assembly.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...puts_small.jpg
The card features two DVI outputs which can be used with digital flat panels for resolutions up to 2560x1600. In case you still have an old analog display you can use one of the two included DVI adapters. Of course the card also supports HDMI+HDCP+Audio via the included HDMI adapter.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ront_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...back_small.jpg
Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site.

A Closer Look

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ler1_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ler2_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ler3_small.jpg
The base that makes contact with the GPU is made from Copper; all other parts are made from Aluminum which makes sense to keep weight and cost down. The thermal paste used is a very solid gum like substance which is extremely difficult to remove if you don't have a solvent cleaner like Arctic Silver Arcticlean. Even with Arcticlean it took me like 10 minutes to clean up the cooler base and GPU core.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ler4_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ler5_small.jpg
The memory is cooled by this metal plate which is nothing more than a heatspreader. This is also the reason that the memory overclock is rather slim even though fast memory chips are used on the card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P.../pin_small.jpg
This plastic pin which holds the voltage regulator heatsink in place is tall enough to provide a little support for one of the two heatsinks.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...fire_small.jpg
This card is compatible with CrossFire and CrossFireX once it is available. But given the three slot design it might be hard fitting four of these cards on one motherboard. What might be possible though is that you use one HD 3870 SCS3 and one reference design card, so there is less space needed but still a noise benefit for you.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...wer1_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...wer2_small.jpg
The power connector is located in the normal location which makes it a bit difficult to work with the power cable. Plugging it in is not too hard; you just have to press the connector in. Removing is more difficult because you have to press down on the connector and there is very little space to squeeze in a finger between heatsink and plug and press down. It can be done though with the card installed but not as easy to do as when the heatsink wouldn't be there or had a little cutout.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...mory_small.jpg
The GDDR4 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4U52324QE-BC08. With 0.8 ns latency (= 1250 MHz) they should have some headroom left for overclocking which is limited by the memory cooling assembly.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P.../gpu_small.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...pads_small.jpg
As GPU the ATI RV670 is used which is made in a 55nm process at TSMC. The small black squares are in place to make sure the cooler can not move and chip the GPU silicon.

Test System

<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="150" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33 GHz (Conroe, 2x 2048 KB Cache)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">Gigabyte P35C-DS3R Intel P35</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 1024MB A.DATA DDR2 1066+ CL4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">WD Raptor 740ADFD 74 GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">OCZ GameXStream 700W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Drivers:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">NVIDIA: 169.04 ATI: Catalyst 7.11 3870 X2 tested with Catalyst 8.1 v8.451.2</td>
</tr>
</table>

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing, No anisotropic filtering. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing, 8x anisotropic filtering. Common resolution for most gamer flatscreens today. A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1600 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing, 16x anisotropic filter. Highest non-widescreen resolution available to a wide range of users. Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2048 x 1536, 4x Anti-aliasing, 16x anisotropic filter. Highest non-widescreen resolution available to any consumer video card. Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Company Of Heroes

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...nyofheroes.jpg
The real-time strategy game Company of Heroes is set during World War II where you take two American companies through several fights all over France to liberate the country from German occupation. Company of Heroes is the first game to use Relic's next-generation engine "Essence Engine" which includes support for HDR lighting, Shader Model 3.0, normal mapping, dynamic lighting and shadows. You are able to zoom in from the tactical view of the battle field to see the individual units fighting. Often you catch yourself admiring the detailed animations of the soldiers while the fight around you is raging. We tested the DX9 version of the game at maximum details.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...h_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Crysis

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ges/crysis.jpg
After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their latest shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, the forums were full of "Can my system run Crysis?" threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like correct physics. For example when you fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over leaving a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are by far the best ever seen in a PC game so far, yet the game still runs well on most computers. We tested the DX9 version with graphics set to "High", which is the highest non-DX10 setting in the game.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...s_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...mages/etqw.jpg
The first-person shooter Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is set in the science-fiction universe of Quake and requires several classes to work together to achieve certain goals on a map. In the campaign mode you gain experience which you can use to buy upgrades for your class. The player gets to pick from five classes of either the Global Defense Force or the Strogg faction. As underlying game engine, the successful id Software Doom 3 engine has been licensed, but several features like MegaTextures have been added, giving the outdoor world a much more detailed appearance. We tested the DX9 version of the game at maximum details.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...w_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Far Cry

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ges/farcry.jpg
Far Cry was released in early 2004 by the new development studio Crytek. It quickly became a massive success because it was one of the first titles to take you in a beautiful 3D outdoor world. Far Cry was one of the most demanding games at its time. Even with today's video cards you can still see big differences in frame rates, especially at the higher resolutions.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...y_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

FEAR

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...mages/fear.jpg
The first person shooter F.E.A.R, developed by Monolith Game Studios, was released in Fall 2005 and has a great 3D engine that uses a large number of shading and shadow effects to accurately model the game world. In addition to that it features a realistic physics engine that lets you interact with many objects in the game world. The game was voted game of the year by several publications.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...r_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Prey

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...mages/prey.jpg
Prey is based on a highly modified 3D engine made by id Software. This first person shooter brought a completely new way of gaming to the genre. In many levels you find yourself walking upside down or on the walls. This adds a completely new aspect to the gaming experience in this genre.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...y_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Quake 4

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ges/quake4.jpg
The Quake titles are among the most successful first person games. Developed by id Software, the famous game studio that brought you DOOM, you find yourself in a scifi world that is full of aliens and shocking effects. The main focus of the game is the single player story line. Quake 4 puts you on the home planet of the Strogg. In a number of missions you and your fellow marines will encounter all sorts of enemies, including some really huge aliens.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...4_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...intercell3.jpg
The Splinter Cell Series is endorsed by popular book author Tom Clancy. In the 2005 title Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory you play the NSA agent Sam Fisher who has to use stealth and finesse to make his way through a number of levels mainly set in eastern Asia. The game is based on a modified Unreal 2 engine with support for HDR, normal mapping, parallax mapping and soft shadows. A patch added Shader Model 2.0 support for ATI in addition to the Shader Model 3.0 support which was already part of the original shipping game.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...t_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...es/stalker.jpg
Before its release in 2007, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was one of the most hyped games of the last years. This RPG/FPS hybrid game is set a few years in the future, after a nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The release of radiation causes strange things like mutations in the nearby area. You take the role of a Stalker who seeks fame and riches in the contaminated area around Chernobyl. The game engine features all the latest buzzwords like HDR, bullet physics, skeletal animation, soft shadows and weather effects. Stalker's vast outside world is richly modeled, you can interact with a large number of objects in the game thanks to the physics engine.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...r_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Supreme Commander

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...ges/supcom.jpg
If you hear people talk about a real-time strategy game with "massive numbers of units fighting" you can be sure they are talking about Supreme Commander. The unofficial successor to the Total Annihilation Series completely redefined some aspects of the RTS genre. In Supreme Commander you can zoom out so far that you can see the whole map on your screen and units are just little blips. This is much needed in fights when several hundred units go at each other. Supreme Commander is also one of the most demanding RTS games with support for up to four CPU cores - a dual-core system with high-end graphics is recommended for optimum game play.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...m_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Unreal Tournament 3

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...images/ut3.jpg
The fourth game in Epic's highly successful Unreal Tournament Series is simply called Unreal Tournament 3. It is based on the all-new Unreal 3 engine which is a major step forward from the previous engine. The game principle is centered about an arena style gameplay where several contestants try to reach a certain kill count or capture a flag for example. As you would expect from a new 2007 title, the graphics are top notch, with large and detailed textures. One major drawback of the way the engine is designed is that there is no support for Anti-Aliasing. While video card vendors like ATI have found ways to force this in their drivers we did all our testing with AA disabled in DX9 at maximum settings.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...3_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

X3

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P.../images/x3.jpg
X3 is a space combat/trading simulation game with beautiful graphics. The game world is gigantic and there is always something new to see. Even though the user interface is not that great, the title has found many fans that love to explore the rich content. When you are flying in your spaceship you are sometimes tempted to just stop the action to take a look at the highly detailed ships and planets.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...3_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

3DMark03

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...s/3dmark03.jpg
Futuremark Corporation is the number one player in the world of synthetic benchmarking. The 3DMark series is the most popular test suite for video card testing and is used by gamers, overclockers and manufacturers alike to determine how fast their hardware is. Even though it is a few years old, 3DMark03 can easily stress today's video cards.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...3_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

3DMark05

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...s/3dmark05.jpg
Another benchmark from Futuremark is 3DMark05 which comes with four completely new game tests that make massive use of shaders and lighting effects. 3DMark05 is a great test for modern video card architectures - in some tests you are often close to the 30 fps mark, below which your games will feel sluggish.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...5_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

3DMark06

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...s/3dmark06.jpg
Even though it's based on Futuremark's 3DMark05, the new 3DMark06 adds new tests for Shader Model 3.0 and HDR rendering. It is also the first 3DMark to incorporate a CPU score into the final 3DMark score. All tests have received an overhaul, for example in the Canyon Flight test you can now see beautiful sun glare effects with the help of High Dynamic Range rendering.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...6_1024_768.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1280_1024.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._1600_1200.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P..._2048_1536.gif

Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs.

<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="150" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33 GHz (Conroe, 2x 2048 KB Cache)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">Gigabyte P35C-DS3R Intel P35</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">2x 1024MB A.DATA DDR2 1066+ CL4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">WD Raptor 740ADFD 74 GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">OCZ GameXStream 700W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows XP SP2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Drivers:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">NVIDIA: 169.04 ATI: Catalyst 7.11</td>
</tr>
</table>

In order to characterize a video card's power consumption, the whole system's mains power draw was measured. This means that these numbers include CPU, Memory, HDD, Video card and PSU inefficiency.

The three result values are as following:

Idle: Windows sitting at the desktop (1024x768 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed.
Average: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Average of all readings (two per second) while the test was rendering (no title screen).
Peak: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Highest single reading

Power consumption is essentially the same as on the reference design HD 3870. Only the fan power draw is missing since the card is fanless.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...power_idle.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...er_average.gif

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...power_peak.gif

Fan Noise

Since there is no fan, and the card is only cooled passively, there is no noise at all. This makes the card the perfect choice for a quiet Media PC if you have the space for it.

Performance Summary

To create this graph we took all performance results of all benchmarks and all resolutions, threw them together and calculated the relative performance of each card, compared to our review sample.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...es/perfrel.gif

Performance per Watt

This graph was created by taking the relative performance numbers and putting them in contrast to the average power consumption results. To offset power consumption of the rest of the system we subtracted 50W from the average consumption.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...s/perfwatt.gif

Performance per Dollar

If you are looking for the best bang for the buck, then you will love this graph. We looked up the current USD price of each card on the online shop Newegg and used it and the relative performance numbers to calculate the Performance per Dollar Index.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...perfdollar.gif

Overclocking

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of ATITool, AMD GPU Clock Tool and our benchmarking suite.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...es/gpuz_oc.gif

The final overclocks of our card are 837 MHz Core (8 % overclock) and 1161 MHz Memory (3 % overclock). Personally I did not expect any overclock at all from a passively cooled card. Especially the GPU overclock is very nice and shows that there is some cooling potential left in this card. The memory overclock is limited by the memory cooling construction which is just a sheet of metal acting as heatspreader. We did not use any fan blowing on the cooler for our testing. With a fan or excellent airflow in the case you can probably get higher overclocks.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...mages/temp.gif
When I first saw those temperatures I couldn't believe them to be true for this completely fanless card. Measuring the surfaces with a thermometer confirmed the numbers though; the heatsinks get just warm even during load. We tested with the system in a case, fully closed, only fans are in the PSU and the CPU cooler, no case fans.
What is kinda funny is that the AMD reference design which uses an active cooler reaches load temperatures of 90°C and the fanless cooler of the SCS3 card runs much cooler and quieter than that.

Value and Conclusion

<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>

PowerColor is offering their HD 3870 SCS3 Edition Card for a price of $269, which is about $20 more than a regular HD 3870 reference card.

</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>

No fan noise
Passive cooling
HDMI+HDCP+Audio
Fair price
Some overclocking headroom left
Low temperatures
PCI-Express 2.0 support
Fast 0.8 ns memory chips

</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>

Three slot cooling design
Probably too big for CrossFire
Memory cooling limits overclocks
Cooler seems to be a bit flimsy

</td></tr>
<tr><th>9.5</th>
<td>When I first heard about PowerColor creating a completely passive HD 3870 card I expected a card that was running extremely hot and needing excellent airflow in the case for proper operation. But apparently the SCS3 design of PowerColor does a great job _reducing_ the card temperatures compared to the reference design. Yes, you read right. The passive cooler's temperatures are actually lower than the reference design temperatures with a fan. We could even do some mild overclocking on our sample. 
Being completely noiseless and offering HDMI+Audio this card is an excellent candidate for use in a Media PC system that stands in your living room. Only the three slot design might limit the use since it will probably not fit your small form factor case. I also think it will be difficult finding a motherboard that has enough space for a CrossFire setup of these cards. But maybe your board has space for one HD 3870 SCS3 and one reference design HD 3870. This will still allow for a quiet solution and CrossFire. 
With a price premium of only $20 over the reference design this card is really a no-brainer when you are looking for a HD 3870 card. The only exception being if you are really on a tight budget, don't care about noise or are going the CrossFire route.
</td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/editorschoice.gif</td></tr>
</table>