2007 was full of drama for AMD. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong except the Radeon 3800 series. NVIDIA fails to deliver good price/performance cards at that 150 EUR price segment and when ATI released Radeon 3850 & 3870 the dynamics changed. As we speak NVIDIA is still trying to prepare a card to match this series (8800 GS/9600 GT) but until released the Radeon 3850 & 3870 offer a stack load of performance, compatibility and features at a terrific price. See, performance wise a reference 149 USD Radeon HD 3850 will easily wipe the floor with any card from the entire GeForce 8500/8600 series. With new releases we also often see a couple of new tricks. Today's product will see light of it in the form of DirectX 10.1 support, the new UVD (video de/encoding) engine is now integrated opposed to the 2900 XT which didn't have it. Full PCI-Express 2.0 support, and a die-size based on 55nm to die for. Shortly after the release of the reference Radeon HD 3850/3870 cards, HiS Technology adapted another line of these cards as well and I bet they'll sell really well. In their very successful product line they always release their ICEQ version of their graphics cards.

Today reviewed product is hot, but in a good way. It's a Radeon HD 3850 colored with a blue PCB, a ICEQ3 cooler slapped on top of it and they pre-overclocked it to match the Radeon HD 3870 performance level, all that for roughly 175 EUR.