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ATi's New Monster - 3870 X2
ATi released its new dual GPU solution today, just thought I'd link some reviews.
Newegg currently has the card for $450 too.
While not a huge improvement over the ultra (trades blows with it in some cases) it is over $150 cheaper than the cheapest ultra. Pretty impressive in my opinion. Maybe as new drivers come along we will see some more of improvement too.
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Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
Comments
i was looking at those earlier today. i'm surprised that they didn't get their driver optimizations completed sooner so they could release this card and be able to use crossfire with it. it seems like a really bad marketing move if ya ask me.
*edit*
looking back over those benches it really points out to me how much stronger the nvidia 8800 cards are over the ati cards.. i mean shit.. the 8800 ultra out performed the 3870x2 as well as the 3870 in crossfire in quite a few of these tests. that is an impressive single graphics card.
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TheCore
Yea, but consider the price difference too. The cheapest ultra on newegg is 630 dollars compared to the 3870 X2 at 450 bucks.
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Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
i agree. at the price point it's a nice card. shoddy release without crossfire support tho. i also didn't notice any benches against the 8800GT in sli, even tho nvidia cards scale poorly it woulda been an interesting bench to see.
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TheCore
Yeah, releasing a card thats only a tiny bit better than the 8800 Ultra, 8 months after the Ultra was released... This makes me thing that ATI is in a bad spot right now.
No doubt that within a few months nVidia will announce their new card and it will blow the 3870 X2 out of the water.
I really hope ATI has something up their sleeve and the 3870 X2 is just something they threw together quickly to keep the competition alive.
Also the 8800 Ultri is able to run in SLI.
The 3870 X2 cannot run in CrossFire(ATI's version of SLI) This card is basicly 2 video cards on one board, and it very narrowly outperforms the 8800 Ultra...
- - "What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?" - -
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/8852/index.html
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TheCore
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/8852/index.html
Good Lord! That one card is almost as good as the 8800 GTS in SLI mode. Thats a monster of a card.
I'm interested to see what the GTS, and Ultra versions of the card will do. Not to mention if it can be used in SLI mode.
- - "What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?" - -
hhttp://techreport.com/articles.x/13967/1
The 8800gt in SLI are still faster for around $50 more.
ATI hasn't really released a card in the last few years that didn't need a few months of driver updates to get its full potential. Once thats done it should show a competive aspect to the 9800 x2.
Its been a few months since the HD3870 released. The 8800GTS G92 chipset was about a 20% peformance advantage to the 3870, but now the advantage is only 9%. Also the scaling for the HD3870 in Crossfire X now properly works. Hopefully, they can get crossfire working on the 3870x2 because thats where the real advantage in ATI is at this point.
hhttp://techreport.com/articles.x/13967/1
The 8800gt in SLI are still faster for around $50 more.
Yea, but it also takes up two PCI-E slots to do so, not everyone has a crossfire or SLI compatible motherboard.--------------------------------
Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
GeCube released 55nm, pci express 2, HD3870x2 (dual gpu) that supports ATI CrossFireX technology (ie. with quad dual-link DVI support the card can be hooked up to FOUR different displays at the same time!)
It comes with built-in HDMI, 5.1 surround sound supporting HDCP, HD DVD, Blu-ray and UVD (Unified Video Decoder.) Featuring 1GB gddr3 memory and a 512bit memory bus the card can easily overclock core (to 850MHz) and memory (to 1920MHz) frequencies.
Meanwhile Nvidia plans to launch next gen nForce 790i chipset (motherboard) this spring. It will support Intel cpu with FSB up to 1.6GHz. It will also support DDR3 system memory, 3-way SLI and Hybrid SLI (Windows 7 Vienna) technology.
edit
Compare a HD3870x2 vs a pair of HD3870 in Crossfire. (spoiler the x2 consistently beats out the Crossfire pair.) Notice one needs a pcie2 mobo to maximize the x2 potential and +30" monitor.
There is some need for architecture explanation where the 640 stream processors on a $440 hd3870x2 comes up short against the 128 in the $490 GF8800gtx.
The hd3870x2 is able to handle 2560x1600 very well in Call of Duty 4, HL2, and UT3. A single $250 Radeon HD 3870 cannot do this, so there is a marked improvement over a single Radeon HD 3870 video card. As driver updates are released it is a safe bet performance will also be increasing, especially in Crysis.
Sounds pretty nice. AT the moment I'm hoping I can dump a 3870 in a x38 or x48 board when I build my new comp.
But right now I have to move to a new apartment, and a bunch of other crap...so thinking about my new rig makes me want to cry IRL.
D.
I ordered 2 yesterday, been waiting for these, expecting delivery by Friday. Cant wait :P
I understand the drivers for crossfirex arent working properly yet, which is fine, but nevertheless 875Mhz per core and 1960Mhz Memory clocks are just what I'm after.
the 3870x2 isnt actually that great of a card when you compare it to a GTX, it only does slightly better at much much higher resolutions
plus, whenever youre already running at those super high reses, you have to also turn everything else up, and fps will go even lower
check it here
http://www.overclock.net/hardware-news/286717-hardocp-3870x2-vs-gtx-review.html
Those results have also been disputed and it's supposed doesn't compare as well as it does in the reviews in real world situations.
member of imminst.org
Those results have also been disputed and it's supposed doesn't compare as well as it does in the reviews in real world situations.
How so? I've seen results from a few other sites as well. Overall the results are consistent with the ones I posted.
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Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
There has only been 1 review so far that has put the 3870 x2 below the GTX, and that one was botched for many reasons. When benchmarking, using actual in-game playing to determine a graphics card power is very misleading. How do you know the reviewer didn't sit in a corner with 1 card while going out and annihaliting with the other? Also it doesn't even matter if you play the game to determine graphical performance within the game since those gameplay changing effects are handled by the processor not the GPU. This leads to some performance issues caused because of lack of support on a platform. The best way is to use a matinee sequence since there is no way to change any aspect of it between tests while it also measures how it will perform rendering real-time characters and environments.