Are the drivers for two HD 3870X2's any good yet?

ShadowFold · Mar 20, 2008

Im helping my enthusiast friend pick parts for his new rig and I want to suggest two HD 3870X2's but im not sure if the drivers fully support 4x GPU's yet or not. Any help would be appreciated

Megasty · Mar 20, 2008

Nope, having 2 x2's now is like having an x2 with a power sucking leech attached to it. I'm trying the XG drivers for tri-fire now. I don't know when I'll be able to pry the other x2 from my kid-bro to try XG with quad-fire.

jbunch07 · Mar 20, 2008

the review ive read show that 3 cards scale much better than 4, you get very little performance with the 4th gpu, i might do what magasty is doing and use tri fire...
@Megasty what cards are you testing tri fire with...X2 and 3870?

ShadowFold · Mar 20, 2008

So should he go HD 3870X2 + HD 3870?

jbunch07 · Mar 20, 2008

ShadowFold said:
So should he go HD 3870X2 + HD 3870?

yea prob...if i knew the review i would post a link but cant seem to find it...thats prob what im going to do as well...3870X2 + 3870

of course they may release better drivers somewhere down the road...they always do!

Megasty · Mar 20, 2008

3870x2 & 3870, both Diamond if it matters. It really does appear that 2 3870x2s are a complete waste. ATI needs to help us out badly. I have a degree in EE & the code for cat just boggles my mind, but it has been 15yrs since I've been in college so I guess that won't help me a bit if I wanted to tackle that driver garbage...

jbunch07 · Mar 20, 2008

Megasty said:
3870x2 & 3870, both Diamond if it matters. It really does appear that 2 3870x2s are a complete waste. ATI needs to help us out badly. I have a degree in EE & the code for cat just boggles my mind, but it has been 15yrs since I've been in college so I guess that won't help me a bit if I wanted to tackle that driver garbage...

so you would rec amend 3870x2 & 3870 instead of 2 3870x2s?

Nitro-Max · Mar 20, 2008

2 x2 might get better with driver updates you never know? But a 3870 is alot cheaper for now maybe he could upgrade a bit later? prices may have fallen a bit more by then too.

ShadowFold · Mar 20, 2008

I think hes gonna do HD 3870X2 + HD 3870

Cant wait to play games on it

he usually kicks me out after a few hours tho grrr :laugh:

he has a QX9650 right now and a DFI X38 so they should go nicely together.

Megasty · Mar 20, 2008

jbunch07 said:
so you would rec amend 3870x2 & 3870 instead of 2 3870x2s?

If we complain ALOT to ATI they might catch the hint & figure out that 2 x2s are just blowing smoke & fix it with cat 8.4 but I wouldn't hold my breath. The 3870x2 & 3870 works now & thats what I'm sticking with until they fix it, if they fix it :rolleyes:

Edit: btw I only game with the Q6600, I bench with the QX9650. When it come to most of the dx10 games out there, they don't care about the Q6 @ 3.6 or the Q9 @ 4.2. I haven't even used my GTS's since I got the x2. I might kill the thing if I game with it since I kicked it up to 5.7 ghz about 10 times now

jbunch07 · Mar 20, 2008

so do u think the prob is the drivers or the cpu bottleneck?

ShadowFold · Mar 20, 2008

Its probly drivers. I wouldnt put it past ATi to make bad drivers

(remember the HD 2900XT launch..)

warup89 · Mar 20, 2008

jbunch07 said:
yea prob...if i knew the review i would post a link but cant seem to find it...thats prob what im going to do as well...3870X2 + 3870

of course they may release better drivers somewhere down the road...they always do!

from Anandtech.com

review:

Crossfire X

Megasty · Mar 20, 2008

jbunch07 said:
so do u think the prob is the drivers or the cpu bottleneck?

Drivers, 3dmark06 easily proves that:

Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz: 1 card: 13,214 CF: 13,724

Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz: 1 card: 17,341 CF: 17,972

jbunch07 · Mar 20, 2008

warup89 said:
from Anandtech.com

review:

Crossfire X

Yes thats it! thanks
everyone read that shows you what we were talking about!

Megasty · Mar 20, 2008

There are a hand full of games out there that scale well but all of them don't see that 4th GPU @ low res & can hardly use any of it @ high res. Crysis scales like garbage but it gives me about a 30% improvement using the 3870x2 with the 3870 than w/o. It does nil over 1 card with 2 x2s. Thats why they didn't use Crysis...

jbunch07 · Mar 20, 2008

Megasty said:
There are a hand full of games out there that scale well but all of them don't see that 4th GPU @ low res & can hardly use any of it @ high res. Crysis scales like garbage but it gives me about a 30% improve using the 3870x2 with the 3870 than w/o. It does nil over 1 card with 2 x2s. Thats why they didn't use Crysis...

well i believe I've made the decision then...going the cheaper route X2+3870 my wallet likes me now...but not allot

KainXS · Mar 20, 2008

jbunch07 said:
well i believe I've made the decision then...going the cheaper route X2+3870 my wallet likes me now...but not allot

you did, and you can add a 4870 later

jbunch07 · Mar 20, 2008

KainXS said:
you did, and you can add a 4870 later

Yes sir!
i like the way you think! :toast:

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Are the drivers for two HD 3870X2's any good yet?

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