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Radeon HD 3870 X2, 3870, 3850 Info

B

Bidermaier

Member
Wow, i am really surprised with the little power these card need. Before you needed a 850W PSU if you wanted to go crossfire with two 2900, which was a waste of money and energy.

I am really looking foward the 3870 performance. I can afford a decent PC now and when my wallet is ready i can get the second 3870 and finally play crysis :lol


6urc0fn.jpg

Is not that crossfire chart a bit too optimistic?.
 
T

Tenacious-V

Thinks his PR is better than yours.
Bidermaier said:
Is not that crossfire chart a bit too optimistic?.
Click to expand...

Not really, if you look at the scaling numbers on the left, the highest would be around 85%. It averages to be around 60% faster in crossfire.
 
S

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Tenacious-V said:
Not really, if you look at the scaling numbers on the left, the highest would be around 85%. It averages to be around 60% faster in crossfire.
Click to expand...
So they want you to pay twice the price for less than twice the performance, and deal with the heat and power consumption issues on top of that? What's the point if there will probably be something cheaper and twice as fast that runs on less power released in less than 6 months?

Sometimes it feels like the value/performance cards (GT/Pro) are the only worthwhile investments.
 
N

NovemberMike

Member
SapientWolf said:
So they want you to pay twice the price for less than twice the performance, and deal with the heat and power consumption issues on top of that? What's the point if there will probably be something cheaper and twice as fast that runs on less power released in less than 6 months?

Sometimes it feels like the value/performance cards (GT/Pro) are the only worthwhile investments.
Click to expand...
What card are you going to get for $400 that performs at 160% of this card? Anyway, this card looks to drink about 100 watts, so even two wouldn't be that bad. Really, you could have a quad core, 4 gigs of ram, two of these and some hard drives and not even touch the limits of a 500 watt supply.
 
D

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
Vic said:
Yep
Click to expand...

omg i might actually do that... i got one of the best motherboards available but it doesn't support SLI... pisses me off.

so i think i'll do it if it's like $800 for both combined :)
 
T

Tenacious-V

Thinks his PR is better than yours.
SapientWolf said:
So they want you to pay twice the price for less than twice the performance, and deal with the heat and power consumption issues on top of that? What's the point if there will probably be something cheaper and twice as fast that runs on less power released in less than 6 months?

Sometimes it feels like the value/performance cards (GT/Pro) are the only worthwhile investments.
Click to expand...

It's not for everyone. It's for people who want more performance than a single card can give and are willing to pay more for it. Obviously, you don't fit into that market.

It's the exact same thing as NVIDIA's SLI. You will never get 2x performance with SLI either, it will be roughly the same ratio as ATi's Crossfire.

There will always be something cheaper and faster down the road, that's the way this industry works, but if you want to have the fastest you can get, and are willing to pay a premium for it, then SLI and Crossfire are the way to go.
 
A

artist

Banned
Tenacious-V said:
It's not for everyone. It's for people who want more performance than a single card can give and are willing to pay more for it. Obviously, you don't fit into that market.

It's the exact same thing as NVIDIA's SLI. You will never get 2x performance with SLI either, it will be roughly the same ratio as ATi's Crossfire.

There will always be something cheaper and faster down the road, that's the way this industry works, but if you want to have the fastest you can get, and are willing to pay a premium for it, then SLI and Crossfire are the way to go.
Click to expand...
Also remember xDNA or something on those lines is coming ... meaning CrossFire will work on ANY chipset, even Nvidia's SLI chipsets, bascially any mobo with 2 PCIe 8x or 16x slots.
 
T

Tenacious-V

Thinks his PR is better than yours.
irfan said:
Also remember xDNA or something on those lines is coming ... meaning CrossFire will work on ANY chipset, even Nvidia's SLI chipsets, bascially any mobo with 2 PCIe 8x or 16x slots.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm actually pretty excited about that. No need to make sure you've got SLI or Crossfire, as long as it's got 2 pci-e slots, you're good to go.
 
T

Tenacious-V

Thinks his PR is better than yours.
What's actually the most impressive out of all of these is the HD3850. It does for the low end, what the 8800GT did for the midrange! It's price bracket puts it squarely against the 8600GT and the HD2600XT and it blows them both out of the water.
 
B

Bidermaier

Member
Two questions is the 3870X2 a different sku?
are they just two 3870 crossfired together?

Also...when crossfiring two cards... is the memory of both cards being used?
I read somewhere that if you wanted to play crysis with the textures at high and 1680x1050 512MB was not enough.
 
J

Jaagen

Member
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it would have been stupid if it didn't.

EDIT: I think it's just two GPU's on the same PCB sharing the memory(the same concept as the RAGE Fury Maxx)
 
T

Tenacious-V

Thinks his PR is better than yours.
Bidermaier said:
Two questions is the 3870X2 a different sku?
are they just two 3870 crossfired together?

Also...when crossfiring two cards... is the memory of both cards being used?
I read somewhere that if you wanted to play crysis with the textures at high and 1680x1050 512MB was not enough.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if it would considered a different SKU because it is using the same RV670 core afaik. It is 2 HD3870's crossfired on 1 PCB. It's basically the same thing as the Geforce 7950GX2 was.
 
A

artist

Banned
Bidermaier said:
Two questions is the 3870X2 a different sku?
are they just two 3870 crossfired together?
Click to expand...
Yes, its a different sku. The difference is that it has two 3870 chips on the same PCB.

Bidermaier said:
Also...when crossfiring two cards... is the memory of both cards being used?
I read somewhere that if you wanted to play crysis with the textures at high and 1680x1050 512MB was not enough.
Click to expand...
Yes, thats the limitation for both SLI/CrossFire. Suppose you have two 512MB cards in SLI/CrossFire, the framebuffer will be 512MB only since only card will be processing the scene (or part of the scene) at any given time.

I am not aware of Crysis' framebuffer requirements for 1680x1050 resolution.
 
J

JoeFu

Banned
I wonder how much the 3870 1gig one will be.

Is there any reason to have 1 gig for your video card?
 
D

Durante

Member
The first thing I thought when I saw those benchmark slides is "so they still need to compare with a 8600 to look good".
 
S

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
NovemberMike said:
What card are you going to get for $400 that performs at 160% of this card? Anyway, this card looks to drink about 100 watts, so even two wouldn't be that bad. Really, you could have a quad core, 4 gigs of ram, two of these and some hard drives and not even touch the limits of a 500 watt supply.
Click to expand...
The upcoming 9800GTX?
 
N

NovemberMike

Member
SapientWolf said:
The upcoming 9800GTX?
Click to expand...

I said $400. That thing is supposed to be going for ~$600 last I heard, and we still don't have anything out for certain about it.
besides, Crossfire support means that somebody can buy one now, and next year they have a valid upgrade when they need something faster (and the card is down $50 to $100).
 
T

Teknopathetic

Member
Uh, the 3870 is 200$, not 150. And this is of course assuming that they manufacture enough to meet demand preventing the same price gouging that's going on with the 8800GT at the moment.
 
G

Gwanatu T

Junior Member
DopeyFish said:
so... would using two 3870X2s in crossfire work? :p
Click to expand...

Dear Lord that's sick, I wonder how nice the performance would be? A friend of mine is building a new PC by the end of the year, I'll tell him to hold off until he we get final numbers of this configuration.
 
A

artist

Banned
6pin.JPG


3870na.JPG


table.gif


Crysis HD3870
3870crysis2.png


Crysis 8800GT
8800crysis2.png


From 3Dmark06 and Crysis, it looks like nVidia 8800GT is better than HD3870. However, there is one thing we need to tell you

We found ATi HD3870 is actually has better picture process while Crysis benching.

Specially the light refraction from water, HD3870 is very smooth but 8800GT is not. It is around frame 500 to 1000.
Click to expand...

Source @ http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/38704.htm
 
T

Tenacious-V

Thinks his PR is better than yours.
irfan said:
Source @ http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/38704.htm
Click to expand...

What is up with the 8800GT's rendering in Crysis?

From 3Dmark06 and Crysis, it looks like nVidia 8800GT is better than HD3870. However, there is one thing we need to tell you

We found ATi HD3870 is actually has better picture process while Crysis benching.

Specially the light refraction from water, HD3870 is very smooth but 8800GT is not. It is around frame 500 to 1000.
Click to expand...

Check out the water from that link you posted.

8800GT
8800crysis.jpg


HD3870
3870crysis.jpg
 
A

artist

Banned
zoku88 said:
Not bad. Not bad at all. It seems whether I buy this or the 8800GT will all depend on price.
Click to expand...
Apparently Nvidia is intentionally limiting the supply of 8800GTs because
1. It is eating into their GTX/Ultra margins
2. Binning for a G92 based new sku (new GTS) or something else (GX2)
 
Z

zoku88

Member
Tenacious-V said:
What is up with the 8800GT's rendering in Crysis?



Check out the water from that link you posted.

8800GT
.

HD3870
.
Click to expand...
Is the HD3870 not rendering the clouds (or, are they not supposed to be there?) I'm so confused...
 
J

JoeFu

Banned
man, so almost as good as the GT, about 40-70 dollars cheaper because of the freaking price gauging on the GT.... I don't know. If I see a link tomorrow that looks good, I think I'm buying the 3870.
 
N

nubbe

Member
Nvidia messing with the image quality as usual... ATI's offereing seem quite attratctive at that price.
 
T

Tenacious-V

Thinks his PR is better than yours.
irfan said:
Those arent clouds but a bug with the 8800 series and 169.04 :D
Click to expand...

So basically, as of right now, NVIDIA is cheating in Crysis. They're not rendering everything correctly to increase performance. It's the GeforceFX/3DMark thing all over again.
 
A

artist

Banned
Tenacious-V said:
So basically, as of right now, NVIDIA is cheating in Crysis. They're not rendering everything correctly to increase performance. It's the GeforceFX/3DMark thing all over again.
Click to expand...
Well they have promised that the bug is fixed without any performance drop in the next driver ..
 
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