3800's

[wildman2]

They are out and at the egg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814161211

[green-man]

lol i had to rub my eyes when i saw those prices. i might hav to get a 3870xt when payday gets round.

 

well these prices http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist....id=56&subid=416

[Angry_Games]

55nm, 320 stream processors...for $179?

 

Where are the reviews for this bad boy? I definitely want to see some reviews of this!

[green-man]

55nm, 320 stream processors...for $179?

 

Where are the reviews for this bad boy? I definitely want to see some reviews of this!

 

here here, i cant find eney yet.

[Guest Lavell]

Very interesting. I need something to power my new 24-inch widescreen LCD monitor beautifully (see sig). Like Angry said, I need some positive reviews to convince me to go out and get one (or 2 for Crossfire).

[Guest element]

here here, i cant find eney yet.

 

http://www.dailytech.com/11152007+Daily+Ha...article9668.htm

 

List of reviews with a few of the usual suspects.

[Guest r3d c0m3t]

Here's a review for the 3850 in Crossfire.

 

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/591/1/

[Guest r3d c0m3t]

Call me crazy, but this all just seems very disappointing. The HD 3870 is barely any better than the HD 2900XT, both of which can't even out-perform the 8800GT, let alone a GTX or an Ultra model.

 

What is AMD/ATI thinking? For a card that's fabbed on the smaller 55nm process, it sure as hell doesn't perform that much better than the 80nm 2900XT. I certainly feel left out, and I'm beginning to regret being stuck with the X38 chipset. :mad:

[green-man]

here's a pritty good one http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/601644/ati-...benchmarks.html

 

i does look a bit of a mixed bag.

 

i was hopeing a 3870xt would be able to replace my 1900xtx, if there's little difference i wont bother. saying that if it needed 2 to get a noticable difference over my 1900xtx i'd be more intrested.

[alexfort93]

I would get two and crossfire, if they can out perform an Ultra, its defiantly cheaper that way to.

[Angry_Games]

I'm going to say that the Radeon 2900XT is every bit as good of a card as any 8800 Nvidia card, probably better in fact (on paper, the tech specs are actually better than most of Nvidia's).

 

Here's the real problem, and it's the same problem that plagued the 8800 series when it first arrived:

 

DRIVERS

 

without good drivers, hardware is nothing but a silicon pile of .. The ATI Radeon 2xxx series cards are no different. When I first got my 8800GTS 320MB, I was extremely disappointed as my 7950GT and X1900XT cards were actually outperforming it. Now with more mature drivers, there's a pretty significant gap between my 8800 and all my other cards.

 

Drivers are the issue almost always, and here's something to keep in mind about why the problem exists in drivers now:

 

Microsoft + Vista

 

You've got Microsoft telling all the hardware mfg's that everything from now on will be Vista, which means everything will be DirectX 10.

 

So you get all these gpu mfg's out there scaling up badass DX10 hardware, but wait...waaaaaaaaiiiit a xxxxin' minute here...Vista only has 3%-5% penetration? So....that means....Windows XP still has at least a 90% penetration rate in the market, and yet....wait....Microsoft won't allow DX10 on Windows XP?

 

Ok ok, so...now you've got this DX10 hardware, and sure the mfg's make DX10 drivers, but MS themselves changed the DX10 spec not long after it was out, which almost crippled DX10 hardware that was spec'd and built before the change. Now on top of that, you've got DX10 hardware which is, at the hardware level, EXTREMELY different than any previous DX9 hardware. And since 90% of customers are still running DX9 Windows XP, you've got to create these drivers that work DX10 hardware via DX9 software...think of it sorta as an emulator almost.

 

The ATI hardware is fantastic. Same as the Nvidia hardware. But the drivers...the drivers are a huge bungled, jumbled pile of crap because of what I just described.

 

At some point the drivers will catch up, but for now, you've got an ATI card that is probably capable of defeating anything Nvidia has except maybe the 8800GTX/Ultra, but it's crippled by these drivers and the two VERY DIFFERENT DirectX formats....and these cards and drivers have to work on the majority (WindowsXP + DX9), yet the mfg's are forced to build DX10 hardware for an OS that no one wants, and no one is using.

 

I've got an X1900XT in an AMD64 X2 3800+ rig and it games as good if not sometimes better than my 8800GTS 320MB + E6600 Core2 rig, and it all boils down to drivers.

 

If you still don't believe, look at ANY forum on the net where people are still bitching about Vista and video drivers, as well as the big hit in performance when using DX10 vs DX9 (and pay attention to how little difference there is in visual quality between DX9 and DX10).

 

This could have all been avoided if MS simply released DX10 to WindowsXP as well.

 

So the real answer is Linux or MacOS, except we all know what piles of crap they are for everyday average joes like us who just want to #@$@# play a damn game.

 

/end rant

[schoolslave]

A_G, you should seriously write a book containing all your rants. I bet you would make a LOT of money considering how very true and entertaining your rants are.

 

(I'm not being sarcastic)