just ordered an HD 3870 xt..

[trog100]

But I bet your fan aint at 100%?? try the 2006 run with fan at 100%....sounds to me like thats thermal throttling causing the recover, not the max wall. Trt says at 100% fan speed his card is running cooler than with his Accelero S1 heatpipe cooler.

could be.. but thats the bencher in u talking.. the gamer in me says another 10mhz wont make the slightest difference..

still i will flash it now i know winflash works.. i tend to clock for everyday usage.. which means i knock at least 5% off the max clocks obtainable..

with frame rates i like to add 50% to the minimum playable..

its all fun thow..


trog

 

[Tatty_Two]

could be.. but thats the bencher in u talking.. the gamer in me says another 10mhz wont make the slightest difference..

still i will flash it now i know winflash works.. i tend to clock for everyday usage.. which means i knock at least 5% off the max clocks obtainable..

with frame rates i like to add 50% to the minimum playable..

its all fun thow..


trog

Your right but I dont get hung up on benching, I stay well below max for everyday use, the only reason I mentioned it is because I really do beleive with the right overclocking utility these cores will acheive 900.

 

[trt740]

But why support Vista and not XP, when there are more XP users out there? I want two of these cards bad, but for a change (for the worse) ATI's driver support seems like it's lacking...

the cat 7.11 work for this card i'm using them now

 

[jpierce55]

could be.. but thats the bencher in u talking.. the gamer in me says another 10mhz wont make the slightest difference..

still i will flash it now i know winflash works.. i tend to clock for everyday usage.. which means i knock at least 5% off the max clocks obtainable..

with frame rates i like to add 50% to the minimum playable..

its all fun thow..


trog

If you use overdrive it only oc's in 3d and that is cool for everyday use. With the 1900's I oc'ed (stock voltage) and ran 2 benchmarks right after overdrives auto clock to check max temp reached, and then backed one slide down on each setting.

For 10-15mhz it would not be worth the warranty risk, but lets give a few more days of people playing with it.

 

[trog100]

well i just flashed mine.. it allows the core to go up.. useing the CCC self test thing it goes right up to 885.. it passes the self test..

using rivatuner to set a fixed fan speed of 70%.. i tried a couple of benches.. it bombed in 3mark 2006.. it bombed in the lightsmark bench.. it did get half way thru em thow..

slowed it down to 875.. it made a 2005 run and made the lightsmark run.. but i lost 400 points of my 850 2005 and a couple of points of my lightsmark score..

extra cooling is probably good for about 10 to 15 extra mhz i recon.. why my scores went down at the higher clocks i have no idea..

i was a bit worried the new bios had slowed things down.. but back at my 850 core speed without rivatuner running things are back to normal..

its a shame the CCC dont let u up the default fan speed a bit cos there is plenty left without sounding too noisy.. judging by noise alone 70% is way faster than the drivers run the fan at default under full load..

nice to have stock cooler that has plenty in reserve..

trog

ps.. i am using the cat 7.11 drivers by the way..

ps 2.. there is way less heat coming out of the fan grill with this thing than my 1900xtx.. less air blast and its cooler..

 

[Tatty_Two]

But are the Cat 7.11's improving card performance in XP? reading around they seem to be in Vista.

 

[trog100]

they made a big improvement in that lightsmark bench score.. they dont work as well as the hotfix drivers in crysis.. but i cant really say the 3dmarks seem about the same and i can only compare with the not exactly standard 3870/hotfix drivers..

but my score in that lightsmark bench went up from 226 to 309.. the fur bench is a little better..

trog

 

[t_ski]

But are the Cat 7.11's improving card performance in XP? reading around they seem to be in Vista.

The only thing I've seen for comments on the 7.11s is that they fix bugs, but there aren't any speed improvements.

@trt - perhaps the website was just not updated - I wasn't checking the rekease notes or anything for them. Decided to keep the card, I see

 

[t_ski]

Newegg just got some more in, but they've raised all the prices on the HD3870s to $269.

 

[Eliranos]

hi you cant play dx 10 games on xp right? so when u play on xp its running on dx 9.0c mod?

 

[trog100]

hi you cant play dx 10 games on xp right? so when u play on xp its running on dx 9.0c mod?

it would be 9c similar to what a none dx10 card would do..

trog

 

[Eliranos]

so what u say is if im not planing on moving to vista i can just have a 3850 its strong in dx 9 card

 

[Tatty_Two]

so what u say is if im not planing on moving to vista i can just have a 3850 its strong in dx 9 card

Yes you can but TBH, many current games will struggle to run at good resolutions/detail levels even in DX9C with just 256MB GDDR.