Computer Advances

Written by Andreas G 21 March 2008 21:55

In the East you can find a card called Radeon HD 3690. Unlike the other cards of the Radeon HD 3600 series, 3690 is based on the RV670 core, but the memory bus has been cut in half, to 128-bit and it has only 256MB of memory. Other than that they are identical to the regular RV670-based cards. But Radeon HD 3690 is not an official card by AMD and the naming was something partners came up with. Industry sources has now told HKEPC that AMD will launch an identical card next month, but it will instead name it Radeon HD 3830.
The card is suppose to go up against the GeForce 9600GT, which we find a bit amusing as Radeon HD 3850 is several tens of dollars cheaper and 3870 costs pretty much the same, and they both perform quite similar to 9600GT.
However, overclocked versions with more memory might be able to do better, something sources have been saying should arrive shortly after the launch. MSRP will be in the $120 range, the same as GeForce 9600GT.
Without a doubt, this is a way for AMD to dump more RV670 chips onto the market. We can imagine that the fabs have been pumping out chips at high fields for some time now and that AMD is now trying to figure out the best ways to hurt NVIDIA and get rid of excess stock at the same time.