The Sapphire HD3850 was a great looking card that ended up being able to kick some butt for an amazingly small price tag. It was able to stand up to some of the current leaders in the graphics card scene and hold its own. This was proven in 3DMark06 when the HD3850 beat the 8800GTS in the 1680x1050 benchmark. Not only during benchmarks was it able to hold its own, but in real world testing, it was able to prove itself against the 8800GTS in BioShock... where the HD3850 fell short by just a few frame rates, which was very surprising. The cooling option that Sapphire ended up using on this card was a decent choice because it did not take up a lot of room in the case. Not only did the fan look good, it was very quiet. I wish that I were able to monitor the temperatures of the card, however when installing the drivers, I ran into an error with Catalyst Control Center and I could never get it to start up. Other than that setback, I was very impressed by the results of this card because of the it's price tag, features and the scores it put out. All of these things make me give it a thumbs up. Sapphire has sold me on this video card, I was so impressed with how it ran and how well it did against all of the other video cards that it will be replacing my current video card in my system.
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