3870x2 reviews thread...

[fivefeet8]

Performance is on par with what an overclocked dual 3870's would get. The hardware still has similar dx10 performance issues.

[mumstheword]

Does the 3870x2 need a crossfire mobo?

[hirantha]

Does the 3870x2 need a crossfire mobo?

any mobo with PCI-E 16X will do. 16x is for to get the max performance.. even 4x is possible.

[slaWter]

Too bad Crossfire X support is still 1-2 months away. Otherwise I would have bought two cards today...
Good to see ATI is back with a good highend card!

[SH64]

Not bad .. i wonder why the low min framerate though. hope its just a driver issue.
my only problem now is the power reqs .. under load it draws more power than the GTX .. so i think my 480W wont be sufficient for it.

[fivefeet8]

Not bad .. i wonder why the low min framerate though. hope its just a driver issue.


Driverheaven got an explanation from ATi. It seems that when games load data on the fly(ie. texture streaming), the data has to traffic through 2 buffers into both 512 meg RAMs. Another thing that is unique of this card is that Crossfire can not be disabled. It's essentially a Crossfire single card, but the inner crossfire bridge cannot be set to disable it. So if a game is slower with crossfire than a single card, there's nothing you can do until a driver fixes it.

[Blacklash]

This was kind of interesting,

4xAA|16xAF
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/3668/hmm2qp4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

8xAA|16xAF
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/7152/hmmou0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Source:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2008/test_ati_radeon_hd_3870_x2/24/

[Amuro]

This was kind of interesting,

4xAA|16xAF
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/3668/hmm2qp4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

8xAA|16xAF
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/7152/hmmou0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Source:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2008/test_ati_radeon_hd_3870_x2/24/
Obviously something wrong with the ATI drivers. 8xAA's probably not in effect.

[brady]

Pretty nice peformance and a very nice price. Unfortunately, or fortunately, my GTX holds its own well enough and probably will for a while at the resolutions I play at on my HDTV (768p). I'm kindof sad that nvidia is probably going to best AMD(ATI) again in a few months. It would be nice to see things back in the red, so to speak, for a little while longer.

[DRen72]

If they can pull off good driver support especially for quad Crossfire, then these X2 cards will be terrific for X38 boards. Nothing nVidia is planning to bring out this year (that I know of) would be able to best quad Crossfire on the X38 platform. Real potential here.

[SH64]

Driverheaven got an explanation from ATi. It seems that when games load data on the fly(ie. texture streaming), the data has to be traffic through 2 buffers into both 512 meg RAMs. Another thing that is unique of this card is that Crossfire can not be disabled. It's essentially a Crossfire single card, but the inner crossfire bridge cannot be set to disable it. So if a game is slower with crossfire than a single card, there's nothing you can do until a driver fixes it.
Hmm interesting .. thanks for the info.

& yeah not being able to run into single GPU mode is a disadvantage.

[Amuro]

If they can pull off good driver support especially for quad Crossfire, then these X2 cards will be terrific for X38 boards. Nothing nVidia is planning to bring out this year (that I know of) would be able to best quad Crossfire on the X38 platform. Real potential here.
What about two 9800GX2 quad SLI?

[LordJuanlo]

That would need an nVidia chipset :thumbdwn:

[UberRN69]

I'm just glad to see that ATI is selling there top of the line card for only $450.
Even when NVIDIA fires back with something faster, hopefully is won't cost 6 C-notes, and they will lower their price a bit. Remember back when paying $400 for a video card was unheard of :rolleyes:.

Too bad I just barely bought my 8800GT. But it doesn't matter anyway, because I had to stay at a particular price range. $$$ for performance - a 8800GT is still hard to beat.

[mtl]

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/AMDX2Review/conclusion.php

There is however one flaw which became clear when testing this card, its ability to achieve a minimum frames per second performance which is in line with other products (read page 17 for more information). On three of the games in this review the X2 suffered drops in performance which were more extreme than the comparison products and this is something ATI need to work on.

[Blacklash]

I'm just glad to see that ATI is selling there top of the line card for only $450.
Even when NVIDIA fires back with something faster, hopefully is won't cost 6 C-notes, and they will lower their price a bit. Remember back when paying $400 for a video card was unheard of :rolleyes:.

Too bad I just barely bought my 8800GT. But it doesn't matter anyway, because I had to stay at a particular price range. $$$ for performance - a 8800GT is still hard to beat.

Honestly, don't feel bad about the GT, It is the king of price vs performance. Taken from techPowerUp!-

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/8076/perfdollarts2.gif (http://imageshack.us)

The HD 3870 X2 is a better value vs the GTX and at the same time the 8800GT 512Mb, HD3850 256Mb and 8800GTS 512Mb are better than it "price vs performance". For most people the 8800GT 512Mb and 8800GTS 512Mb are definitely going to be the best choice. The HD 3870 X2 is certainly viable for folks on a 30" screen.

As far as 8xAA goes it is not broken on the ATi cards. This has been demonstrated before where usually the ATi cards lag behind the nVidia with 4xAA and catch or pass them with 8xAA. Is that 100% guaranteed? No and nothing ever is.

[nekrosoft13]

Driverheaven got an explanation from ATi. It seems that when games load data on the fly(ie. texture streaming), the data has to traffic through 2 buffers into both 512 meg RAMs. Another thing that is unique of this card is that Crossfire can not be disabled. It's essentially a Crossfire single card, but the inner crossfire bridge cannot be set to disable it. So if a game is slower with crossfire than a single card, there's nothing you can do until a driver fixes it.

interesting, so its not really 1gb card, just 512mb.

it fills both sets of 512mb with same data, just like normal sli/cf

[nekrosoft13]

This was kind of interesting,

4xAA|16xAF
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/3668/hmm2qp4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

8xAA|16xAF
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/7152/hmmou0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Source:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2008/test_ati_radeon_hd_3870_x2/24/


thats just bull

[methimpikehoses]

interesting, so its not really 1gb card, just 512mb.

it fills both sets of 512mb with same data, just like normal sli/cf

:thumbdwn:

[methimpikehoses]

$383 shipped:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0281494

[fivefeet8]

interesting, so its not really 1gb card, just 512mb.

it fills both sets of 512mb with same data, just like normal sli/cf

Of course, the card is stated to use Crossfire internally. It's not a real Dual Core GPU in the normal sense of the word since it's still using an internal PCIe1.1 bridge between both cores. Each core having access to it's own 512 meg ram pool.

Not all data is copied though. It depends on the method used to split the work and the type of data itself.

[SH64]

Ok but how come other SLI systems or the 7950GX2 didnt suffer the same issue ? (i.e. extreme minimum framerate)
the 7950GX2 wasnt a real 1GB card too.

[slaWter]

interesting, so its not really 1gb card, just 512mb.

it fills both sets of 512mb with same data, just like normal sli/cf

What else did you expect?

--


btw ATI supports AA in Unreal Engine 3 with the Cat. 8.3.
http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardware/grafikkarten/ati/2008/januar/ati-karten_unreal-engine-3-spielen_aa/

Performance is quite good actually!

[fivefeet8]

Ok but how come other SLI systems or the 7950GX2 didnt suffer the same issue ? (i.e. extreme minimum framerate)
the 7950GX2 wasnt a real 1GB card too.

Who knows. That's a question best left for ATi to answer. It's more than likely a drive issue, or at least something that can be improved on through drivers.

[SH64]

btw ATI supports AA in Unreal Engine 3 with the Cat. 8.3.
http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardware/grafikkarten/ati/2008/januar/ati-karten_unreal-engine-3-spielen_aa/

Performance is quite good actually!
Latest nvidia drivers support AA in UE3 games too .. what are you getting at ? :p
(MoH:Airborne , UT3 , Bioshock .. etc)