3870 X2 (dual 3870 gpu's on single pcb) in Crossfire

[Angry_Games]

Or maybe they are 3890's? Who knows. But Legit Reviews has a nice article up about it...looks like AMD/ATI is going to level the playing field through brute force attacks of gpu scaling while Nvidia is going to brute strength attack with stronger single gpu's?

 

Who knows, but things JUST got a bit more interesting with this + Phenom...?

[Angry_Games]

ps:

 

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/new...-radeon-hd-3870

 

never sure about the Inquirer, but they are always worth a read nonetheless lol

[green-man]

i notaced them the other day, huge beasts.

 

i hav'nt yet but i'll hav a bit of a read through those links later on, see want they reckon.

 

if their that good then u'll hav to get ure sawn-off shotgun & balaclava out angry

[jelly]

Or maybe they are 3890's? Who knows. But Legit Reviews has a nice article up about it...looks like AMD/ATI is going to level the playing field through brute force attacks of gpu scaling while Nvidia is going to brute strength attack with stronger single gpu's?

 

Who knows, but things JUST got a bit more interesting with this + Phenom...?

 

I dont think AMD is trying to use brute froce to beat nvidia, but find a way to get fusion to work well. AMD want's to have a gpu and cpu in one package. Now having two gpu chips on on pcb is a interesting thing, its starting to show us that AMD is trying to shrink the gpus down. The next thing we will see is two gpus in one chip! :eek: Thats going to be one heck of a GPU! And if I remember right we will see fusion some time in 2009.

[Angry_Games]

is everyone apathetic about ATI gpu's at the moment to the point they could care less?

 

I seriously thought this thread would explode in comments after reading about ATI's dual-gpu card but more importantly, drivers that actually work properly for crossfire.

 

I see a lot of comments in the 3800 thread, but not a lot of comments there either about the scalability of having 2-4 gpu's running together, mostly only about the 38xx cards not being able to beat the Nvidia cards.

 

As each day passes though, I'm more and more interested in this. Not because it's dual-gpu and you might be able to get 4 gpu's working together...we've already been burned heavily by years of ATI and Nvidia trying to get multiple gpu's to work properly together (remember waaaaay back to the ATI MAXX 64 or whatever? Yeah, I had one! wheeeeeee!)

 

Mostly because I've read a couple different places that the drivers ACTUALLY WORK PROPERLY AND SCALE UP PROPERLY IN REAL GAMES.

 

Holy crap, could AMD-ATI actually finally maybe possibly get Crossfire to work properly? And why did it take these new 38xx series cards, or better yet, these dual 38xx gpu cards to get it right?

 

Inquiring minds want to know (without having to read the Inquirer lol)

[ViperJohn]

Or maybe they are 3890's? Who knows. But Legit Reviews has a nice article up about it...looks like AMD/ATI is going to level the playing field through brute force attacks of gpu scaling while Nvidia is going to brute strength attack with stronger single gpu's?

 

Who knows, but things JUST got a bit more interesting with this + Phenom...?

 

Actually AMD has already lost the X2 battle before it even begins. The D8E w/ 2 x G92's will be

about 25% faster on average.

 

Don't you mean the PheBomb lol. At 15% slower clock for clock than a Q6600 Kentfield, a higher

price than a same clocked KentField plus terrible OC overhead I can't see the PheBomb is doing

much of anything to help AMD.

 

Viper

[Angry_Games]

well, the problem at the moment for me is that I've not actually seen anything other than pics and previews of the dual-gpu ATI's, and I've only heard second-hand bits about the G92 from guys like you.

 

Nothing solid. Phenom...pretty solid (solidly getting it's butt kicked at that price point lol). No surprises there though, I got a big rant in the AMD section.

 

The gpu's though, you maybe missed the point that a lot of people are missing or have missed...that ATI isn't taking the top performance crown back, but they are leveling the playing field by introducing solid performance at a worthy price point.

 

Not exact, but more of a "10% less performance for 10% less price" sort of thing. This is more important than ATI coming out with a card that is 20% faster than an 8800GTX for the majority of us, not for the top 1%...since only the top cards are almost always out of the price range of those of us not in the top 1% (bleeding edge).

 

I'm very satisfied by the price-performance ratio of the 38xx series single cards vs the Nvidia cards. Too many people have made a huge deal about the fact that the 38xx cards are still slower than the 8800GTX/Ultra etc. The e-penis in me is just as upset as you and everyone else is, but the logical part of me says FINALLY ATI has put something on the table that we can be satisfied with because in the end, it doesn't suck, and in the end, it isn't that much slower than anything Nvidia has at or near that price point.

 

G92 you say? I say...where is it? Not on the market, so numbers are moot. Especially with the way these companies control every single string when it comes to previews. I never read previews. They aren't realistic. Remember Intel spouting 40% across the board performance over AMD when Conroe was coming out? When Conroe actually came out, we found out that yes it was definitely better than anything AMD had, but 40% across the board? Oh my no that just wasn't true at all. Games and almost every application the difference was closer to 10% to 20% on the high end, with 10% being the median for the most part (and even then you had to look out for IA-optimized benchmarks/software because as we know, things like DivX have always favored Intel's architecture).

 

I never paid a lick of attention to AMD's Phenom nonsense until all the sites on the net started receiving them. I never paid a lick of attention to the ATI video cards either until they started finding their way to everyone including Newegg.com.

 

When G92 hits, then we'll see real users complaining or praising, along with solid benchmarks. But until G92 cards are on the shelves at newegg, I can't be bothered with trying to gauge whether or not they'll have a certain percentage increase over whatever ATI card is out....besides, do we know that ATI is stopping at the 3870 or even 3870 dual-gpu? You, being ex-ATI guy, probably know more than I ever could imagine about what they are up to, but do even you know if they aren't holding back say a 3890 waiting for G92 to hit (or worse lol, they are having fab or other problems with it and have been ranked out publicly too many times for paper launches)?

 

 

 

I do definitely agree with you about the Phenom. The price point is much too ugly when you consider a Q6600 kicks butt over it in most stuff...but there again, when you look at 15% on some benchmarks, that might be 1.75 frames per second, or 1.3 seconds extra rendering time. 15% sounds pretty big if it's 15% of a pretty big number, but 15% of 30 seconds isn't really much.

 

Unless it's at the same or slightly higher price than the cpu that is 15% better. That's about as stupid as anything I've ever witnessed AMD do, and I've witnessed them shoot themselves in the face plenty of times over the years. I'm with you, totally unacceptable.

 

As for OC overhead, that remains to be seen. Sometimes the first few builds of the chip are super clockers and then they get sorta mediocre. Sometimes like Opterons though as the builds increase, the yield increases and who's to say that a slightly-in-the-future Phenom 9800 of a certain few steppings won't hit 3400Mhz without any real problem at all?

 

Hardly you say? But wait, what about all those great Opterons that hit 3Ghz+? Those were some seriously stellar chips that were better than Intel if only because of the price performance point. (And this was waaay back when an E6600 cost $365 and quads were still in engineering stage, plus look at the quads when they rolled out...sure they were the best, but they also cost $500 upwards of $1000 depending on the flavor).

 

I'm not really worried about the OC ability of the Phenom. That's really a moot point for the 99% of us who really don't give a crap too much. 1%'ers, yeah, you guys are going apeshit with anger or disappointment etc that AMD still can't get over the Intel hump. But the 99% of us?

 

We are only really disappointed that the damn Phenom is still a worse deal than the Q6600. Will one really notice the difference between a Q6600 and a Phenom? No. If you only overclock and benchmark all day, well yeah you will. What about the 99% of us who use Word, play games, surf porn, listen to stolen mp3's, watch youtube, fool around with VirtualDJ or such? Will we notice a difference?

 

No, no difference will be felt. Winrar takes 2 extra seconds to unzip some file. Xvid takes 8 extra minutes to encode that movie. DVD Shrink takes 3 extra minutes to rip a dvd. Word takes .00013 seconds longer to open. Firefox....ok you get the point by now I'm sure.

 

This is what I have the biggest problem with. People . about the performance of the Phenom (not really so much you, but almost all websites), when they should be . about the most important part like you and I are, that the price is a wash compared to anything Intel has.

 

AMD has always been the VALUE company with OC-friendly parts. Now AMD is actually more OC friendly than ever with that new Auto program they are working on (I've really yet to see too much negative heaped on it, though still too early to tell since no "real" users have had a chance to fool with it and destroy a machine or overclock it to heaven).

 

But they've lost the VALUE that we love so much (and desperately need sometimes since we can't always blow $279 on a cpu).

 

 

 

 

So no, I can't say AMD/ATI has already lost a battle with Nvidia/Intel. Maybe a battle yes, but like all battles, they are just part of a larger war. We've all witnessed Nvidia getting stomped in battles. I remember my early Radeons just stomping the everloving crap out of anything Nvidia, and I remember it again (though less stomping but still, some stomping nonetheless lol) when X1900XT's came around. Just like I remember the 6800GT (which got waxed by the X850XT) and the 7800GTX and the 8800 all doing the stomping.

 

Since the X2 war has really only just started, there really hasn't been a 'battle' yet unless you count the old 7950GX2 which really never took off, and was too problematic (heat) as well as too expensive. Any other SLI other than 78xx or higher series was a waste of money as well. SLI is still not as good as it could be (this isn't all Nvidia's fault, game devs have a hand in this as well). Crossfire...well you know my feelings on Crossfire up to now.

 

8800GTX SLI is the top of the heap. That's cool because I don't have $1000 to get two of them and run SLI (not to mention the $400 probably for a good psu and cooling bits to get them to run and run without melting or setting my wall on fire from the exhaust lol).

 

But I might have 2x$179 for a couple of 3850's. Or I might just have $279 for a single 8800GT. But then I might instead spend only $219 (assuming prices stay here) for a 3870 with 512MB of RAM knowing I saved $60 but only dropped a little performance.

 

 

This is a good time again. People getting upset about AMD and/or ATI not kicking the . out of the top dogs is the wrong way to go about thinking. The right way (i guess it's just my opinion) is to realize AMD and ATI are still in the game, and actually making things interesting for us 99%'ers with a good choice of prices and performances (well, except that Phenom nonsense...but AMD will have no choice but to come around when Intel starts sticking it to them with dropping prices when 45nm Penryn becomes widely available).

 

Good times, good times. 1%'ers maybe not so good (if you are getting bored with Intel and 8800GTX already lol). Me, I'm looking forward to new challenges of the Phenom and ATI 3xxx series gpu's. But I go into it KNOWING that it isn't going to be top of the line. I go into it KNOWING that it's just another trade-off, the same trade-off stuff I been preaching here for a couple years.

 

Except that %#@$@# Phenom lol. Maybe if the prices are reasonable, we'll have a real reason to switch to Phenom instead of the only real reason right now: Spider.

 

And Spider...well, that's some hype still at the moment. Looks like the whole idea works and actually works properly, but there again, no real hands have real retail products to give us real opinions.

 

 

Oh, and finally, I guess I'm just excited that MAYBE FINALLY ATI's multi-gpu solution will actually work (ie proper drivers and game support). I keep reading that the 4-gpu solution (whether dual-gpu cards or 4 single gpu cards) actually scales properly. But until you or Praz or someone else that can afford such nonsense actually owns such a setup and can give us real info that we can trust, it's still a pipe dream.

 

But if we don't have dreams, is there a reason to go on? Nope, I'd be buying a standard Dell and game on my consoles exclusively if I couldn't dream a little.

[green-man]

im alot more interested after hearing ati has got crossfire actually working right, which it never really has before proper.

 

since i orignally saw the tech spec's for crossfire, i always though the concept of how it works is much better than SLI, but it never really worked out before like that.

 

the tiling or super tiling, should hav offered a boost in speed on almost all games without the need for the game to support crossfire.

 

where as SLI was always geared towards first person shooters because the way the screen is split across the gpu's, so games other than fpshooters did'nt see as much speed boost.

 

if ati/amd can pull a rabbit out the hat with crossfire & get it working, sli will need to catch up as thats never work to its full potencial either.

[slick2500]

Angry I love reading your rants, everytime I read them I think to myself you know hes right. And the last two that you wrote, now makes me realize what AMD/ATI is doing, they aren't trying to get in with the top 1% of pc users they are trying to get in with the normal everyday user that doesn't have $2,000 to blow on a new system. They are trying to win over those of us who want a good product at an affordable price.

 

And I agree with what you said about ntune in the thread in the AMD cpu/mobo section it sucks butt big time, I had to uninstall it manually off my pc from inside safemode because it xxxxed up my system.

 

And we will have to wait until January to see how these new boards work.

[Praz]

And the last two that you wrote, now makes me realize what AMD/ATI is doing, they aren't trying to get in with the top 1% of pc users they are trying to get in with the normal everyday user that doesn't have $2,000 to blow on a new system. They are trying to win over those of us who want a good product at an affordable price.

These new video card are just one piece of a 4 piece puzzle. Hopefully they can last long enough to get the other 3 pieces in place. If they don't pull through it won't be because of Intel. Sure, Intel wants to keep AMD down but not destroyed. A monopoly is no better for them then it would be for consumers.

[Angry_Games]

These new video card are just one piece of a 4 piece puzzle. Hopefully they can last long enough to get the other 3 pieces in place. If they don't pull through it won't be because of Intel. Sure, Intel wants to keep AMD down but not destroyed. A monopoly is no better for them then it would be for consumers.

 

yep, this is also the hidden beauty I think of this new ATI card thing...you can buy a single card that does a very very good job in all games...sure it can't beat an 8800GT, but so what, it's $40-$80 cheaper depending on which 38xx card.

 

But, as Praz so wisely states, it's a single piece of a 4-piece puzzle. IF (and this is a BIG xxxxING IF! lol) they get all 4 gpu's working together, they WILL be something that the top 1%'ers will rush out and buy also.

 

I'm already hearing rumblings of 2 and 4 gpu ATI 38xx solutions actually positively working properly with the latest drivers, and that my friends, is QUITE exciting to think possibly, maybe, JUST MAYBE, we could see game performance scale up to new heights with each added gpu working properly in tandem with each other.

 

4x 3870's would be a treat if it actually worked together...who knows what kind of performance it would really give?

 

Again, we can dream, and if we can't dream, we should just drink a gallon of bleach and end it.

[bcbooter]

Im actually very excited about the new ati cards, they are very efficient, but however I am scared for their drivers.....

thats what they really need to be working on..

I never really consider sli;crossfire. because I dont want to spend the extra money+ money on water block for a peice of hardware that costs twice as much but only delivers like a 1/4 extra performance..if that, i always found it better to save that extra cash from a single card to just get teh next best thing, which will usually outperform the old card..even if there's two