Powercolor HD 3850 Xtreme 512 MB

The Card

As mentioned before the cooler is made by Zerotherm, the actual model number is GX820 G.E. One drawback of this type of fan is that the hot air is not exhausted from the case but circulated inside.


Unlike the regular HD 3850, PowerColor has designed their card with a two slot cooler. This should yield lower temperatures and more overclocking potential.


Nothing interesting on the back side of the GPU, move on, nothing to see.


I really like the output configuration that PowerColor is using. One DVI port (which is dual-link capable of course) and one HDMI port which can also do high-res output. Also it should be mentioned that the HDMI port includes audio directly from the GPU chip. If you need to connect an old CRT you can use the included DVI-to-VGA adapter. Even if you need to connect two digital displays you can get an HDMI-to-DVI adapter. Just get the cheapest one, there is no difference in image quality.