3DMarks per $

"Best Bang For The Buck" list and other info:

http://www.yougamers.com/hardware/stats/3dmark06/priceandperformance/

I already guessed that the HD3850 could be a nice card, if just the peak consumption wouldn't be so high. The 8600GT really is a nice card for casual 3d stuff. If only Apple would have used the card with the new iMacs.

Your assumption is wrong. Read the reviews. This is not the HD2900 models, but a new 55nm revised card that consumes less than even the new 8800GT. Also it overclocks very well. The 3870 is the same except is uses DDR4 memory and dual slot cooling, which is very silent (unheard of from ATI).

http://sg.vr-zone.com/articles/AMD_Radeon_HD3850_and_HD3870_-_AMD%27s_salvation%3F/5392-15.html

Well, according to the reviews peaks go up to slightly over 100Watt but it's pretty fine in idle mode, something about 15Watt if i remember correctly - from a different review than yours.

The power consumption is fine.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQxOSw4LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==


Your figure doesn't seem right.

No the power consumption is too high for what i'm looking for but still better than a lot of the other desktop chips...

This was a fine review...

-> http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151

And in a review in a magazine they wrote 15Watt for idle mode...