ATI has retaken the high-end of the graphics card market by storm with the release of the HD3870X2 cards for $450. But the vast majority of video card sales are driven by cards in the under $200 range, as that is affordable to most gamers and the performance of cards in this price range has steadily increased to the point where the $189 card of today nearly performs as well as the $500 card of last year.

ATI launched their HD3xxx series of cards late last year. The main impetus of the new cards was the features DirectX 10.1 and the new 55 nanometer process node. The performance rivaled that of the previous HD2900XT on their HD3870, but ATI decided to make this card available for the price point of under $300. With the launch of the NVIDIA 9600GT, ATI decided to lower the price point of the HD3870 to $189. GIGABYTE has long been known as an excellent video card, motherboard and computer component manufacturer. Their lineup includes video cards from both the ATI and NVIDIA camps with many overclocked versions and special edition cards among them. Today I’m reviewing their HD3870 card, the GV-RX387512H in single and Crossfire modes.