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3870 X2 Wipes the Floor!!


krazypoloc

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Yeah, since Crossfire more or less works everywhere (Your game doesnt work? Just rename the .exe to any game known to work with CF), Its a great card! Much better than nVidias dual-PCB monster.

 

Once the price sinks a bit, this will be an amazing deal.

 

Im only going to get one if it comes out as a GDDR4 version, otherwise im going to stick with my plan of 2x 3870s.

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Yeah, since Crossfire more or less works everywhere (Your game doesnt work? Just rename the .exe to any game known to work with CF), Its a great card! Much better than nVidias dual-PCB monster.

 

Once the price sinks a bit, this will be an amazing deal.

 

Im only going to get one if it comes out as a GDDR4 version, otherwise im going to stick with my plan of 2x 3870s.

 

 

This is not a crossfire card. Its pure hardware Dual GPU, so regardless of the chipset you are running it will use both GPU's, no fiddling required! Unlike the Nvidia offering which will be SLI.

 

And IMO this is a great deal at the current price point! I mean the 8800Ultra's where going for $600+ but just a few months back, lest we forget. To offer a card that trumps the current reference cards at this price is a breath of fresh air.

 

Oh and from what it sounds like you could get one of these and pair it with either a 3870 X2, or just a 3870 in crossfire.

 

Crossfire......haha......still reminds me of the tabletop game with the little metal balls and guns....:)

 

pic56896_md.jpg

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No, it still is Crossfire.

 

Games that do not support Crossfire will run worse on the X2 than on a single 3870.

 

Really? I thought the dual GPU was supported though the AMD drivers and not the game.....or something. I have never owned a crossfire setup so I'm not really sure. But from the review thats what it sounded like....I have however owned an SLI configuration and the new dual GPU cards from Nvidia that are coming will have to be software "enabled" to run in SLI.

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it's crossfire but it's run on the card so the chipset isn't involved (meaning you can run it on an nvidia chipset). It's still a crossfire set up though so you get any other shortcomings involved in that. The two in one nvidia cards are the same way.

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it's crossfire but it's run on the card so the chipset isn't involved (meaning you can run it on an nvidia chipset). It's still a crossfire set up though so you get any other shortcomings involved in that. The two in one nvidia cards are the same way.

 

Ah I see, thanks a lot.

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yep, just like the 7950GX2, it was still SLI, just didn't matter if you used it on an Nvidia SLI chipset.

 

The 3870x2 is still Crossfire, as it still uses dual-gpu's with independent dual memories, and the drivers very much affect the performance.

 

Tom's Hardware (again with teh Tom's Hardware dude...didn't you rail on them endlessly for years and years all the way up until...today??? Angry, you xxxxing lamer!!! hhahahaha) has a similar review (everyone will have one now that the embargo has been released).

 

While I don't pay that much attention to actual benchmark numbers (because as I've stated time and again, benchmark numbers even between two EXACT SAME systems in my own possession at EXACT SAME settings can produce different benchmark results, let alone each individual review site's hardware setup variation) other than within the reference of their own testing (ie their testing of the review card vs other cards in their system setups, which leaves it to apples vs apples), I do pay attention to summaries and conclusions.

 

Tom's, as loathe as I am about anything they write, when they say the same thing other sites say in these areas, they are as good as any site. Specifically about the drivers. I've yet to read a 3870x2 review that doesn't claim that while the card pretty much kicks butt (to varying degrees that each site might say) in numbers, the drivers are still kinda suspect.

 

possibly, POSSIBLY all the sites could be wrong and the drivers are just fine, with the problem being all the review sites once again set their hopes and dreams much too high for ATI to fulfill. I did find this to be quite true when the Phenom came out, as well as the socket AM2 A64. Sometimes we just want more than what we get, and in turn, we get angry and/or upset and foolishly blame the product when it is ourselves and our way of thinking that should at the center of blame (especially in the area of socketAM2, where AMD NEVER once said it was a revolution in performance increase...all I ever remember them saying was the AM2 was necessary to move on to a DDR2/3 memory controller and chipset as DDR1 was finally getting a bit limited when it came to the evolution of the processor...ie if they stayed with DDR1, the cpu would very quickly bottom out in performance in future generations as hardware was demanding more and more memory bandwidth, and performance could only increase so far with the limit DDR1 bandwidth was capable of.

 

 

Is this the case here? I'm not sure. What do you guys think? Do we (ie the review sites) expect too much out of ATI/AMD because of our feelings for them (the love we share for them sticking it to Intel here and there and giving us a viable choice, and more importantly, giving superior performance for a good chunk of time)?

 

Or do you think that, based on what you know about previous Crossfire and even SLI setups, and how drivers are almost always the limiting (and sometimes the crashing!) factor, that these sites are correct and with proper drivers dual-gpu's from ATI could increase their performance lead by a much larger margin? (which begs the question...if this were true for Crossfire, isn't it also true for SLI and as of yet we really don't see all that great of a performance difference between single and multi-gpu setups until you practically hit the extreme resolution range of 1920x1200, or better yet, 2560xwhatever the hell is after 2560? lol

 

discuss!

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Well, Im pretty sure this card is going to be good, since Crossfire scales extremely well under DX10, and any game can be made to run CF with a little finesse. And if you read the review @ anandtech, they used the new beta driver, because of which the card was postponed by one week..and with that driver they pretty much beat the Ultra in every game, including Crysis!

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Well, Im pretty sure this card is going to be good, since Crossfire scales extremely well under DX10, and any game can be made to run CF with a little finesse. And if you read the review @ anandtech, they used the new beta driver, because of which the card was postponed by one week..and with that driver they pretty much beat the Ultra in every game, including Crysis!

 

 

Exactly! This card will only get BETTER! Here is the quote from Anandtech.

 

Last Minute Driver Drop: Competitive Crysis Performance

 

Today's launch was actually supposed to happen last week, on January 23rd. At the last minute we got an email from AMD stating that the embargo on 3870 X2 reviews had been pushed back to the 28th and we'd receive more information soon enough.

 

The reason for the delay was that over the weekend, before the launch on the 23rd, AMD was able to fix a number of driver issues that significantly impacted performance with the 3870 X2. The laundry list of fixes are as follows:

 

• Company of Heroes DX10 – AA now working on R680. Up to 70% faster at 2560x1600 4xAA

• Crysis DX10 – Improves up to ~60% on R680 and up to ~9% on RV670 on Island GPU test up to 1920x1200.

• Lost Planet DX10 – 16xAF scores on R680 improved ~20% and more. AF scores were horribly low before and should have been very close to no AF scores

• Oblivion – fixed random texture flashing

• COJ – no longer randomly goes to blackscreen after the DX10 benchmark run

• World in Conflict - 2560x1600x32 0xAA 16xAF quality=high we get 77% increase

• Fixed random WIC random crashing to desktop

• Fixed CF scaling for Colin McRae Dirt, Tiger Woods 08, and Blazing Angels2

• Fixed WIC DX9 having smearable text

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Well for right now I dont care for this card, Not becuse of performance but the fact it wont fit in my case, it will hit my hard drives. I have a chieftec case. Both AMD and Nvidia need to stop making the cards so long.

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