ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 (R680) 1GB First Full Review Posted

niko084 · Jan 22, 2008

Wile E said:
Until you realize that the drivers aren't anywhere near mature, and it's still faster then the nVidia offering in the same price range.

Don't forget that nothing out can beat down crysis yet...

I think this kid is looking for a miracle... You can't please some people without releasing a $200 card that will give you 100fps in anything completely maxed.

EastCoasthandle · Jan 22, 2008

Impressive, regardless of what the fanboys think
Now lets see what the GX2 brings to the table.

EddxPT · Jan 22, 2008

Crossfire scales allot better than SLI, and nvidia cannot latelly compete with ati on the price/performance ratio. My guess is the GX2 from nvidia will perform a little better than 3870X2 but for a 30% to 40% higher price than the 3870X2. Also Nvidia as been struggling with availability.It will be from nvidia merely a product to state that they are still the leaders in single card performance.

Remember also, allot of people have P965, 975X, P35 and X38 mobos wich support crossfire....I can see someone pairing this with a 3870 or a 3850 that already owns if it needs to increase performance further.Hopeffuly ati releases crossfireX for intel mobos. So well done ATI,now Ati should do some work on the drivers now to squeeze some fps more from the 3X00 series. Also game developers : stop favoring brands - u end up loosing market in the end.

EastCoasthandle · Jan 22, 2008

The FPS Labs review uses a Foxconn N68S7AA (nvidia 680i) SLI Motherboard that only uses PCIe 1.1, not 2.0 (correct me if I am wrong). Remember the 3870X2 needs a PCIe 2.0 PCIe. Also, this is no different then the 7950gx2 vs x1950xtx last time around.

Source

As you know, on the board ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 is two graphics processor. According to the information available at the reference motherboard ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 will be installed 1 GB of memory GDDR3, which operates at a frequency of 2 GHz processors and related 256 - bit tyres. The product is meant for connecting to the bus PCI Express 2.0, which interact with the responsibility of the special chip-bridge. The truth seems to be in this role will be used PEX6347 not, as expected, but PEX8548. At the given scheme, the bridge is at the centre of charges between the two processors. Near each processor can be found on four chip memory.

The following illustration shows that the transition from PCI Express 1.1 for PCI Express 2.0 provides a noticeable increase in productivity - around 20-30%, depending on the application and the screen resolution.

source

Makaveli · Jan 22, 2008

Do you really believe PCI E 1.0 bandwidth is holding this card back?

Seems like you are hoping so?

niko084 · Jan 22, 2008

Makaveli said:
Do you really believe PCI E 1.0 bandwidth is holding this card back?

Seems like you are hoping so?

Well the ultra I believe uses almost all the bandwidth on a pci-e 1.0 so I would figure this card would.

EastCoasthandle · Jan 22, 2008

I would ignore the Crysis results. From what I read in another post Crysis can't use more than 128 shaders which means it's not using all of 3870's shaders. 2 GTs in SLI is still 2*128.

Lets not forget

EastCoasthandle · Jan 22, 2008

Makaveli said:
Do you really believe PCI E 1.0 bandwidth is holding this card back?

Seems like you are hoping so?

The review found in the OP uses a 2.0 capable MB. The review from FPS Labs uses an SLI, 680i MB and clearly shows a decrease in performance in most games. Why would you use a CF video card on a SLI motherboard as defacto of gaming performance? :slap:

Looks like you are hoping that the lower performance found using an 680i MB is true when it's the worst case senerio :shadedshu

hacker111 · Jan 22, 2008

Love it!

niko084 · Jan 22, 2008

EastCoasthandle said:
I would ignore the Crysis results. Crysis can't use more than 128 shaders which means it's not using all of 3870's shaders. 2 GTs in SLI is still 2*128.

Lets not forget

Ya Crysis is some BS.... I bought it, maybe I should file a complaint to the BBB :nutkick:

Tekmuch · Jan 22, 2008

Airbrushkid said:
The same can be said about Ati. Look at some of the games when they start up and the splash screen is Ati. Isn't Fear one of those bias to ati? Why didn't they use World of Conflict game it's a Dx10 game. It takes Ati to produce a card that needs 2 GPU's to catch up with Nivida.

What is with the hate. Do you not want any competition at all. You've had your time to gloat on your favorites. Let the ATi folks have some to. :toast:

pentastar111 · Jan 22, 2008

Tekmuch said:
What is with the hate. Do you not want any competition at all. You've had your time to gloat on your favorites. Let the ATi folks have some to.

I think it is fantastic that AMD/ATI is finally rivalling nVidia...and for a fraction of what the g-force cards are selling for! :eek:

..I'm going to be switching camps for my next build(All AMD this time around) :nutkick:

The price vs performance ratio is very, very good. NVIDIA seems to have borrowed the same "bloated" Intel mindset when it comes to their pricing tactics :twitch:

Don't get me wrong this rig I curently running is a very nice machine..I have no complaints as far as the performance goes but it did cost a pretty penny to assemble:shadedshu...I'm figuring for that same amount of cash the AMD/ATI configuration would be a very healthy beast indeed.

DaMulta · Jan 22, 2008

I want one of these in a Lan Case

I can't wait to see a crossfire review over these cards. Or a Quad card setup if they bring a driver out for it. I have ran Crossfire HD2900XT and I want to see what that would be with 4 cards. Which is about that you could consider a Crossfire 3879 X2 setup .

So far I like the looks of the new dual GPU card.

pentastar111 · Jan 22, 2008

DaMulta said:
I want one of these in a Lan Case

I can't wait to see a crossfire review over these cards. Or a Quad card setup if they bring a driver out for it. I have ran Crossfire HD2900XT and I want to see what that would be with 4 cards. Which is about that you could consider a Crossfire 3879 X2 setup .

So far I like the looks of the new dual GPU card.

I'm getting this LianLi case

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=204&products_id=22439

Airbrushkid · Jan 22, 2008

It's not hate. It's the truth. ATI needs 2 GPUs to stay with Nvidas 1 GPU. Just pointing it out. It's funny that you guys will buy a that.

Tekmuch said:
What is with the hate. Do you not want any competition at all. You've had your time to gloat on your favorites. Let the ATi folks have some to.

AsRock · Jan 22, 2008

Still like to know what about when a game is not supporting the x2GPU's game performance crashes way below the GTX\Ultra ?. Or will it use both GPU's all the time ?;..

OrbitzXT · Jan 22, 2008

Airbrushkid said:
It's not hate. It's the truth. ATI needs 2 GPUs to stay with Nvidas 1 GPU. Just pointing it out. It's funny that you guys will buy a that.

As someone who doesn't hide his love of nVidia, I have to say your argument is pretty stupid. Who cares how they achieve their numbers? When it comes down to it, all that really matters to us is price and performance. That said, as I pointed out earlier I will not buy the R680 because ATI drivers don't have functional Image Scaling, otherwise I'd probably be interested in this card because of its price and performance.

Grow up people, who cares how many GPUs there are to get the performance. Do you really think anyway that 10 years from now we'll have graphics cards with a single processing unit on them? nVidia tried this method earlier and it wasn't great because of bad drivers, if ATI can pull it off and have good drivers to support it, more power to them.

magibeg · Jan 22, 2008

Airbrushkid you have to realize that to an end user it doesn't matter how many cores they need to use so long as they deliver ample performance over the competition.

I'm really not sure why theres a semi-flame war going on. Also for nvidia fans out there, the next gen nvidia card will come out and do well i'm sure but it doesn't exist yet so you can't compare it to something that doesn't exist.

All that said and done as long as ati prices this out properly and theres no massive price gouging this would be an excellent product for the high end.

edit- i see orbitz beat me to the punch here

a111087 · Jan 22, 2008

Airbrushkid said:
It's not hate. It's the truth. ATI needs 2 GPUs to stay with Nvidas 1 GPU. Just pointing it out. It's funny that you guys will buy a that.

yes, it's two gpu on one card, so what? what is important is how it performs and it performs great! :nutkick:

D.F. · Jan 22, 2008

Airbrushkid said:
It's not hate. It's the truth. ATI needs 2 GPUs to stay with Nvidas 1 GPU. Just pointing it out. It's funny that you guys will buy a that.

It's a good card. From what I read before the 9800gx2 (or something like that) which uses two gpus was only about 30%-40% faster than the 8800 ultra. This card is already about 15%? faster than the 8800 ultra if you sum all the results, and I'll bet it will be cheaper than the 9800gx2.

HaZe303 · Jan 22, 2008

Better performance than I expected from the card. When ATI/AMD gets the drivers figured out, maybe this card will be the monster it should be and already is. Now the only thing that conserns me is cooling the beast and price?

Scrizz · Jan 22, 2008

so does windows see it as one?

HaZe303 · Jan 22, 2008

Scrizz said:
so does windows see it as one?

Hope so, maybe that will help against games with no xfire/sli support? But I seriously doubt it, so I think it will show up as xfire. Or the way ATI wants it to show with its drivers?

[I.R.A]_FBi · Jan 22, 2008

does a car driver care if a car has 4 cylinders or 8 if its fast? i think not!

OrbitzXT · Jan 22, 2008

Doesn't one use more gas than the other? I don't know anything about cars but I was told that.

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ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 (R680) 1GB First Full Review Posted

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