ATI/AMD radeon 3870X2

waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
It is the best single card gfx solution for the money at the moment. I know the 9series will destroy it, but the 9series like all high end Nvidia will come in at a healthy £400 at least. The 3870X2 is a real achievement from ATi/AMD.

one review

another one

There's plenty more out there and I'll post more if people want but that gives the general idea.

I know we are all supposed to hate ATI and love nvidia but this is a awesome card and for the price tag it really is a good job.
Also with a X38/48 board you can stick 2 of these together and have POWAAAA.

There is the posibilty of a 8GPU core system but as at the mo it is only conceivable on AMD boards then it's pretty much a no no as although they've done well with this the Phenoms are still a bit meh
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
Read a review of this a few days ago and I have to say I like the look of it. Its a shame i'm not upgrading atm or i'd be after a couple...
 
waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
It's picture time
DSCN1711.jpg

from the box

DSCN1714.jpg

the old one

DSCN1715.jpg

the new monster


Benchmarks to follow
 
Tetsuo_Shima

Tetsuo_Shima

In Cryo Sleep
It's a big 'un, I'll say that much. Your case is a lot neater than mine, Ive got cables all over the place, strangling the components.

Very nice, very nice indeed.
 
waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
A few updates,

3dmark06 is looking at around 15500 at stock CPU. Crysis all on high the DX9 benchmark was quite happy at around 50-55FPS again on stock CPU. This is very reasonable especially as the full drivers for this card haven't been released yet. It gets pretty toasty at full load but that is to be expected, not dangerously hot but running the crysis bench hitting the 80s. Which for a card that draws as much power as this does it's not too bad at all.

I'll stick on my OC profile later see what will happen then.

I'll do a proper run down later but right now I cba.
 
Iron_fist

Iron_fist

Super Moderator
Staff member
do i spy a P180? those are so very easy to make neat and tidy :)

bob have you come across the powerplay issue in your testing as there is a possibility that i will need to get a new card in the next few weeks and the 3870 is what i currently have my eye on
 
waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
Iron_fist said:
do i spy a P180? those are so very easy to make neat and tidy :)

bob have you come across the powerplay issue in your testing as there is a possibility that i will need to get a new card in the next few weeks and the 3870 is what i currently have my eye on
Click to expand...

It's a P182, but yus easiest thing in the world to keep tidy, also quite good at keeping dust out, that has been sitting in a dusty room since november and is still tres clean.

I've seen no real issues with the card at all, I don't play crysis so other than benching it I can't tell in that scenario. I was expecting some probs as the official drivers for the X2s aren't actually out yet so was expecting some bumpy bits but so far hath been smooth sailing.

Mine is of course an odd one with the crossfire issue of course because it doesn't see it as a crossfire setup, it goes its a 3870X2 ok fine by me, the drivers know it has 2x3870 on it but isn't the same as running 2 3870s.
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
From reading the review of this card, the card is supposed to show up to the system as just one card - not 2. The work of using both cores is done internally on the card.
 
waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
thatbloke said:
From reading the review of this card, the card is supposed to show up to the system as just one card - not 2. The work of using both cores is done internally on the card.
Click to expand...

yeah it does, if you really poke around the driver knows what it is. Appears to the outside world to be one uber core but the drivers know what a X2 is so in the advanced section it tells you.
 
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