ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2: 2 GPUs 1 Card, A Return to the High End
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 28, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
It has been far too long since AMD/ATI have been at the top of the performance charts; the crown had been lost on both CPU and GPU fronts, but today's Radeon HD 3870 X2 introduction begins to change that. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is the most elegant single-card, multi-GPU design we've seen to date and the performance is indeed higher than any competing single-card NVIDIA solution out today.
AMD is also promising the X2 at a fairly attractive price point; at $449 it is more expensive than NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS 512, but it's also consistently faster in the majority of titles we tested. If you're looking for something in between the performance of an 8800 GTS 512 and a 8800 GT 512 SLI setup, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is perfect.
Even more appealing is the fact that the 3870 X2 will work in all motherboards: CrossFire support is not required. In fact, during our testing it was very easy to forget that we were dealing with a multi-GPU board since we didn't run into any CrossFire scaling or driver issues. We're hoping that this is a sign of things to come, but we can't help but worry about the future of these multi-GPU cards.
The fact that both AMD and NVIDIA are committed to them is promising, and hopefully that means an even better experience when it comes to compatibility and performance with CrossFire and SLI (single-card or not), but we've got no crystal ball - only time will tell how the driver support evolves in the future.
But today, we have a victory for AMD. The past few months have shown a very different graphics division of AMD than we've seen since the first talks of the acquisition. The Radeon HD 2900 XT was a failure and now AMD has arguably the fastest single-card graphics card on the market. The only worry we'd have if we were in AMD's shoes is that the 3870 X2 was made by putting a couple of 3870s onto a single board; if AMD can do it, NVIDIA can as well. And we all know how the 3870 vs. 8800 GT matchup turned out.
What AMD really needs is its next-generation high end GPU, the 3870 X2 will buy the top performance spot for a little while but it's R700 that we really need to see.
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Blacklash - Wednesday, January 30, 2008 - link
I'd like to see a round up of ATi and nVidia's current mid to high range. Test them in games that allow 8xAA. I am hearing around in quite a few places ATi cards catch up or pass nVidia when you move from 4x to 8xAA. I'd love to see Anand prove this or debunk it.Giacomo - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - link
I have to admit, even being a fan of nVIDIA, that I fell in love with this card. I like it in almost every aspect, I'm astonished by its combination of complexity and smooth working. Well: almost smooth, due to beta drivers. And this is an element of bigger interest too: there's even a bigger distance to put between itself and the rivals, when mature drivers are released.That said... I'm designing the last points of my new machine, I was ready to go with a 8800GTS 512MB, but suddenly stopped to look at this one... And I think I'll go with it.
But... On which motherboard? These are the thoughts I'd like to share with you, I ask you: did you notice that Anandtech ones are among the best results in the various X2 reviews online? And did you notice they're obtained on a 780i platform?
Initially, the most obvious idea was to buy this card together with an Asus Rampage Formula, so nicely reviewed on these pages. But now, looking at the system used for this review, the question: wouldn't my dear old desired eVGA 780i SLI an even better board for the new system, for this 3870 X2?
Don't need crossfire nor SLI, really.
Reviewer's opinion would be very appreciated too, of course, being the one who planned this "curious" match.
Giacomo
XrayDoc - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - link
Does anyone know if the Intel X48 chipset will allow two of these cards to run in CrossfireX mode, or will you have to purchase an AMD chipset motherboard?karthikrg - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
This seems to be a stopgap solution though its heartening to see AMD/ATI having the faster single card solution now (albeit multi-GPU). With the Nvidia 9800GX2 due soon, the race is sure to get interesting. Hope AMD has something up its sleeves with the R700FullHiSpeed - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
This has nothing to do with graphics, but that PLX PEX8547 in the picture is a bridge, not a switch. Unfortunately, PLX doesn't make a Gen 2 PCIE bridge or switch. One would imagine that two GPU's on one board would benefit from the increased bandwidth of Gen 2. The PLX bridge/switch web page says the switches (and not the bridges) give "Low Latency Transfers" and "True Peer-to-Peer Data Transfers", both of which are probably important to this parallel processing application. This could explain why "the HD 3870 X2 is systematically 5% faster on average than the CrossFire solution" (nach Tom) in spite of the 16 lane Gen 1 bottleneck to the north bridge.Slaimus - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I am still confused by the way AMD/ATI is allocating RV670 chips. If you check on newegg, there are well over 100 Sapphire 3870X2s in stock, but the Sapphire 3870 is still out of stock.The same thing was happening during the initial 3870/3850 launch, where way too many of the 3850 were produced compared to the 3870. Also, none of the 3850s were of the 512MB type.
AMD should be filling the 3870 demand with the RV670 chips first, since it is probably the most profitable and most reasonable product.
phaxmohdem - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
All I can think of is 2 GPU's 1 Cup :Sflat6 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
The article says: "the performance is indeed higher than any single-card NVIDIA solution out today", but they didn't test an 8800 Ultra. In some cases the card was barely beating the 8800 GTX. How would it stack up against an Ultra? I understand that maybe they didn't compare against an 8800 Ultra because of the price difference, but the reviewer was all excited about AMD/ATI's return to the high-end; at the high-end, cost is no object. And why two 8800 GTs? If this is the high-end, why choose mid-price cards for SLI? Why not use two Ultras?I'm not saying a single Ultra would have trounced this card, only that I would have liked to see the comparison. I do think, however, that if they'd gone truly high-end on the SLI side, two Ultras might have killed it.
strikeback03 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3175...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3175...their previous testing showed the ultra as being similar in performance to the 8800 GTS 512 in most tests. So an Ultra (or 2 of them in SLI) might have done better in the AA tests, but not much else it would seem.
flat6 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Thanks, I just read it. Good grief. I didn't realize the GTS 512 was that fast. Point taken.