by: Tatty_One

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perhaps they want to avoid the instance you had with your brand spanking new HD3870 where they just had to put something together on a CD outside of Catalyst........technically that would count as no "official" driver support at all :D

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.

definitely no XP driver suport.. but i aint gonna stand up for the green team.. smoke mirrors and dirty tricks right from when the mysterious amazingly cheap 8800gt popped up..

they are still getting credit for that one when it was just a brought forward 9xxxx series card with one simple purpose.. take the credit from where it belonged.. they have had too much good press so far.. time for a reality check i recon..

trog

how is it slower? 2 8800gts are faster than 2 3870's..... wierd.

by: tvdang7

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how is it slower? 2 8800gts are faster than 2 3870's..... wierd.

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Hell one gts can compete w/ and x2, so that has got some serious problems if the gx2 cant get 50% better than the x2 at least.

by: farlex85

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Hell one gts can compete w/ and x2, so that has got some serious problems if the gx2 cant get 50% better than the x2 at least.

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one gts is actually a 9series...one gt is actually a 9series...
3870 is still a r600...8800gt brought forward because nvidia wanted to take away ati's shine.
now the real 9 series are having trouble outperforming the old *8800* series...
now fanbois are upset....i ask Y????
i prefer ati but im no fool...i have both a gt and a 3870...but i will continue to preach that i believe atis new gpu design was superior to nvidias.

If nVidia is really having a hard time bumping the performance for their GF9 series, we're gonna see a major change over once ATI's 4000 series roll out stouting the RV770, and I think that lead will continue to the 5000 series, unless nVidia gets their new GPU to market.

by: DanishDevil

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ATi Crossfire: Multiply and Conquer
nVidia SLI: Divide and Conquer

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it truly seems the way these two companies are going. ATI has realizes they have a major edge over nVidia with mulit-GPU setups, and are going to start rubbing that in nVidia's face. I still think the 3870x2 is really more of a test-bed, ATI just testing the waters. It was more successful than people thought it would be, so they've made plans for the 4870x2. If that card goes over well . . . the 5870x2, if it's stouting the dual-core R700 as I forsee that it will, will be a technological, double handed bitch slap to nVidia.

by: DanishDevil

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ATi Crossfire: Multiply and Conquer
nVidia SLI: Divide and Conquer

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so the fact that 8800GT SLi beats 3870 crossfire is obviosly of no consequence to you.

by: wolf

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so the fact that 8800GT SLi beats 3870 crossfire is obviosly of no consequence to you.

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The 8800GT in SLI does NOT beat the 3870 in Crossfire!

http://en.expreview.com/2007/11/26/hd-3870-crossfire-vs-8800gt-sli/

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=716

- Christine

by: calvary1980

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http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=716

- Christine

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Yeah and all the games they tested on are either part of the TWIMTBP programme or in some way NVidia favourable.

by: springs113

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one gts is actually a 9series...one gt is actually a 9series...
3870 is still a r600...8800gt brought forward because nvidia wanted to take away ati's shine.
now the real 9 series are having trouble outperforming the old *8800* series...
now fanbois are upset....i ask Y????
i prefer ati but im no fool...i have both a gt and a 3870...but i will continue to preach that i believe atis new gpu design was superior to nvidias.

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I am a bit of a fanboi I admit although I do buy ATi from time to time but I am not upset, on the contrary, if I can get 8800GT and 8800GTS performance a few months earlier than NVidia origionally planned then thats all good for me, I think the fact that there is also the 8800GS and 9600GT already out never mind the GX2 and 9800GTX that might be disappointments will only really effect that 5% of the market who always go for the top end cards and who change cards regularily. For me, getting a G92 8800GTS in December that gives me 8800GTX performance (in my resolution) for half the price can only be a good thing.

If an ATi owner cares to call themself a "fanboi" then fine, they may care to remember that before the 2900XT came on the shelves, all the reviews were aweful, citing poor AA performance, could not compete against meer 8800GTS 320MB blah blah, once the card did arrive and after a little driver development is was very good for the price IMO, I sometimes wonder why many tend to forget these little details which is why, I judge a card by it's performance once released with drivers that actually support it..............just my thoughts.

by: btarunr

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Yeah and all the games they tested on are either part of the TWIMTBP programme or in some way NVidia favourable.

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Thats a bad excuse, most games are part of the TWIMTBP programme period.

:laugh:glad i bought a 3870x2:roll:

by: mandis

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The 8800GT in SLI does NOT beat the 3870 in Crossfire!

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?cat=grfx&id=580&pagenumber=1

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Good review! If you read it throughly though, the 8800GT's in SLi win! It does say that the efficiency of the 3870's is better but the speed of the 8800GT's make them have to recommend the SLi setup ahead of Xfire as tthe GT's win most of the real world gaming tests :). personally, I would prefer personally one HD3870x2 rather than two 8800GT's in Sli but thats mainly because I am lazy!

by: Tatty_One

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personally, I would prefer personally one HD3870x2 rather than two 8800GT's in Sli but thats mainly because I am lazy!

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But have they fixed the 3870X2's problems yet? Particularly the one where only one core is used in Crysis?

by: Tatty_One

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Good review! If you read it throughly though, the 8800GT's in SLi win! It does say that the efficiency of the 3870's is better but the speed of the 8800GT's make them have to recommend the SLi setup ahead of Xfire as tthe GT's win most of the real world gaming tests :).

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The ati 3870 wins in crossfire when AA is disabled, and the sli 8800gt wins with AA enabled. AA is the very last thing I would turn on. If I have the option I'd much rather go up in resolution then turn on AA.

by: mandis

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The ati 3870 wins in crossfire when AA is disabled, and the sli 8800gt wins with AA enabled. AA is the very last thing I would turn on. If I have the option I'd much rather go up in resolution then turn on AA.

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AA goes back to the days when we all played games at 640 x 480.. back then it made sense but as the resolutions go up it makes less sense.. the original idea was to lose the jaggies without the need to go up a resolution.. sadly the performnce hit back then was too great.. today i think AA is pretty meaningless at higher resolutions..

trog

by: mandis

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The ati 3870 wins in crossfire when AA is disabled, and the sli 8800gt wins with AA enabled. AA is the very last thing I would turn on. If I have the option I'd much rather go up in resolution then turn on AA.

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I am not denying that, my point was, that the link you posted in that earlier post suggests the opposite in many case and you posted that to evidence that the XFire was quicker but to my eyes your evidence shows the opposite, in that link you posted out of all the games tests, even if we ignore AA and just as you have said....concentrate on the non AA then by my calculations out of 10 game benches SLi wins 7 and XFire wins 3!!!! Now thats the review you posted to prove the XFire was quicker.....am I reading something wrong here? because that link you posted clearly shows that across the board SLi is quicker?? :confused:

Even more strange is out of those 10 game benches, you have now posted a chart that shows ONLY the 3 out of 10 benches that the XFire does win in, the 7 that SLi wins are not even mentioned there????

Have a look again at your origional link here:

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/articl...0&pagenumber=1

by: trog100

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AA goes back to the days when we all played games at 640 x 480.. back then it made sense but as the resolutions go up it makes less sense.. the original idea was to lose the jaggies without the need to go up a resolution.. sadly the performnce hit back then was too great.. today i think AA is pretty meaningless at higher resolutions..

trog

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I agree, but see my post above, in the link that Mandis provided earlier it clearly shows that without AA, the sli rig wins 7 out of 10 benches. I am not saying either is better than the other, just pointing out that there seems to be very conflicting info here, non of which (for a change) have I posted :D

by: trog100

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AA goes back to the days when we all played games at 640 x 480.. back then it made sense but as the resolutions go up it makes less sense.. the original idea was to lose the jaggies without the need to go up a resolution.. sadly the performnce hit back then was too great.. today i think AA is pretty meaningless at higher resolutions..

trog

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very true - but nowadays, though, even with higher screen resolutions, AA has become a means of exacting a better looking image, as compared to abating a need for higher resolutions. As long as the hardware can manage it, it's possible to run a game where little to no line jaggedness is visible, thus increasing realism.

But, truth be told, even with most modern gaming hardware and rig setups, we can really only accomplish this level of image quality with high screen resolutions and playable performance with older titles. Newer games are still too hardware heavy for any eye candy to really be worth the performance hit.

by: btarunr

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Yeah and all the games they tested on are either part of the TWIMTBP programme or in some way NVidia favourable.

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so Nvidia wants there hardware supported, you forget AMD is able to also get in on programs ever look at HL2 EP2, TF2 or Portal, all 3 say runs best on ATI. Both compaines are free to enter programs like this, and neither program ensures the game can not be run on the others hardware. For instance look at HL2 EP2 preformace between the ATI cards and NVidia cards and tell me who wins though its got ATI's program?

by: Tatty_One

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I am not denying that, my point was, that the link you posted in that earlier post suggests the opposite in many case and you posted that to evidence that the XFire was quicker but to my eyes your evidence shows the opposite, in that link you posted out of all the games tests, even if we ignore AA and just as you have said....concentrate on the non AA then by my calculations out of 10 game benches SLi wins 7 and XFire wins 3!!!! Now thats the review you posted to prove the XFire was quicker.....am I reading something wrong here? because that link you posted clearly shows that across the board SLi is quicker?? :confused:

Even more strange is out of those 10 game benches, you have now posted a chart that shows ONLY the 3 out of 10 benches that the XFire does win in, the 7 that SLi wins are not even mentioned there????

Have a look again at your origional link here:

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/articl...0&pagenumber=1

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http://en.expreview.com/2007/11/26/hd-3870-crossfire-vs-8800gt-sli/

I accidentally posted the wrong link. It is sorted now though. My point however was not to prove that the 3870 Xfire was faster than the 8800GT SLI but rather that it was on par in terms of performance. There are a lot of games out there with architecture specific optimizations which renders them unsuitable for benchmarking different architectures. Personally i prefer nvidia over ati (just check my system specs) but this does not mean that I'll try to discredit and burry the opposite team by making false accusations. I'm nobody's fanboy and I simply think that credit should go where it's due.

Cheers

actully, to be honest, Nvidia's is alot easier to program for because the thread dispatch processor is less complex to program for. This is why an ATI card preforms closer to a 64-128 SP card than a 320 SP card

by: mandis

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The 8800GT in SLI does NOT beat the 3870 in Crossfire!

http://en.expreview.com/2007/11/26/hd-3870-crossfire-vs-8800gt-sli/

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Erm yes it does?!

COD4: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13967/6
HL2:EP2: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13967/7
ET:QW: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13967/8
Crysis & UT3: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13967/9

Of course which is correct?! This is a problem I have with alot of reviews lately, the results vary so greatly that as a consumer I am left thinking :wtf:

by: Xaser04

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Erm yes it does?!

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Erm NO it doesn't! Just read my previous post...

by: Xaser04

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Of course which is correct?! This is a problem I have with alot of reviews lately, the results vary so greatly that as a consumer I am left thinking :wtf:

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There is indeed a lot of confusion because of that. It seems that many websites out there are picking sides thus trying to polarize the market.

by: mandis

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http://en.expreview.com/2007/11/26/hd-3870-crossfire-vs-8800gt-sli/

I accidentally posted the wrong link. It is sorted now though. My point however was not to prove that the 3870 Xfire was faster than the 8800GT SLI but rather that it was on par in terms of performance. There are a lot of games out there with architecture specific optimizations which renders them unsuitable for benchmarking different architectures. Personally i prefer nvidia over ati (just check my system specs) but this does not mean that I'll try to discredit and burry the opposite team by making false accusations. I'm nobody's fanboy and I simply think that credit should go where it's due.

Cheers

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All credit to you, but it does not change the fact that that link clearly shows us that even without AA enabled, the SLi setup wins 7 to 3 in 10 gaming benchmarks across multiple resolutions so your point about equal performance is only correct and relative dependant on what review you read, my point is, despite what you say, the majority of reviews and benches (that I have read) do show that in fact, the SLi setup with two 8800GT's is faster than XFire with two HD3870's but TBH this discussion is fairly immaterial in the greater scheme of things, because less than 5% of all users run XFire or SLi and there is no way in getting away from the fact that put simply, the 8800GT is the faster card, the fact that the HD3870 itself is only a fairly mild upgrade from the 2900XT just goes to show IMO how good the 2900XT actually was/is.