ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 Hybrid X2

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450

Successor of the HD 2400 produced in 55nm (therefore with a faster clockspeed) and with DirectX 10.1 support.

The 40 unified shaders count like 8 shaders on Nvidia cards (5-dimensional versus 1-dimensional).

The Avivo HD video support enables the gpu to decode HD videos (MPEG-2, H.264, VC-1).

The performance of the card can be suited for modest casual gamers. Demanding games like Crysis run only with very low details and resolution.

Compared to the desktop HD 3450, the Mobility version has a lower core clock speed and is therefore a bit slower.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870

The AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 is a higher clocked Mobilty Radeon HD 3850 wich is also manufactured in 55 nm and features DirectX 10.1 support. The chip is compareable to the desktop HD 3850 and optimized for less power consumption.

The performance of the graphics card is similar to the 8800M GTS and should therefore be sufficient for DirectX 9 games in medium to high details (see games list beyond).

The RV670 chip has 64 5-dimensional unified shaders with 16 ROPs, 16 TMUs, and 32 TAUs.

The Avivo HD video engine helps the cpu in decoding HD videos (MPEG-2, H.264, VC-1). The HD 3870 houses the UVD+ (Unified Video Decoder) that is capable of decoding MPEG-2, H.265/AVC, and VC-1 nearly fully. The UVD2 in the HD 4000 generation is capable of full bitstream decoding and two video streams can be decoded at once (which UVD+ can not).

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the HD 3870 is similar to the Radeon HD 3850 (nealry similar clock speeds, same core).

The power consumption of the HD 3800 series lies between 35-55 Watt.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 Hybrid X2

Mobility Radeon HD 3470 combinated with the integrated chipset graphics HD3200. The combination leads to a small improvement in the performance (depending on the Crossfire support of the game). The features of the Hybrid X2 combination is identical to a single HD 3470 (DirectX 10.1, Avivo video technology to decode HD videos with the GPU, 55nm process.