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ATI HD 3870: The First 60 Days
By joe | January 21, 2009
HD 3870 After 2 Months of Usage
Over my Christmas vacation, I opened up the case of my Mac Pro to see how well the upgrade of the video card was holding up. The fan sound and card performance were the same as when I first installed it – very quiet and improved performance in Motion and other graphics intensive activities (such as the cool visualizers now available with iTunes). The case fans do get a bit noisy during rendering operations, but it’s still a far cry from hearing that constant sound from the X1900 XT. I have to be honest, I can’t say the performance was a huge leap from my original X1900 XT card. There is some improvement, but the biggest advantage will be the reduced fan noise and cleaning required.
When opening the case, I was pleasantly surprised to see how clean the card was. There was some dust around the card area – about what you would expect within a computer case over this amount of time. This was nothing compared to the way the fins on the X1900 XT would cake up with dust within it’s fins.
Close-up of HD 3870 Fins After 2 Months of Usage
The fan blades were equally impressive in their lack of dust accumulation. I cleared out the little dust that was in there with some compressed air, and put everything back together. The photos shown here are actual shots before any cleaning was performed.
Close-up of HD 3870 Fan After 2 Months of Usage
This should help prolong the life of this card, since it won’t be clogged up with dust frequently. That’s not to say that I won’t still crack open the case and clear out the dust periodically. I’ll just rest a bit easier knowing that it’s not accumulating as much as it was. And best of all, I have better performance with less noise.
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