Asustek Reportedly Working on ATI Radeon HD 3850 X2

Taiwanese manufacturer Asustek is reportedly working on a new edition of ATI Radeon HD 3850, that will come with two graphics cores. Following the immediate success of the company's Radeon 3870 X2 dual-GPU behemoth, the Taiwanese manufacturer will pitch the new offering at the performance-mainstream graphics enthusiasts.

According to tech website VR-Zone, the company plans to introduce its own design based on AMD's Radeon HD 3870 chip. The initial hardware specifications are rumored to pack two Radeon HD 3850 graphics processing units with 512MB of memory each.

More than that, Asus will clock its graphics core at a stock speed of 668MHz, to keep up with the graphics manufacturer's specifications, while the onboard GDDR3 graphics memory will be clocked at a stock speed of 1658MHz.

The card will come with 2 DVI-out and 1 TV-out video connectors, although we would have expected to see some nice high-definition ports, either HDMI or DisplayPort connectors. However, Asustek plans to ship the units with DVI-to-HDMI connectors, that would deliver multi-channel 5.1 surround audio over the same cable.

The new product, called Asus EAH3850 X2 1GB may be another example of Asustek's engineering skills, yet its success on the market is still questionable, given the harsh competition and the dramatic price slash we have reported earlier.

The same rumors claim that Asustek plans to ship its new dual-chip offering for an estimative retail price of $350, a price that is dangerously close to Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB and GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB graphics cards offerings.

AMD's Radeon HD 3850 graphics core is clocked lower than the ATI Radeon HD 3870 counterpart, that can reach core speeds of 775MHz (and even 825MHz in the dual-chip cards). Given the fact that multiple-GPU offerings are usually depending on driver support, the card is expected to be less powerful than Nvidia's similar offerings.