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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DigitalFreak - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Does Crossfire still not allow you to create your own profiles, like SLI does? I'm still not convinced that ATI has gotten their head around the whole dual gpu driver thing yet.Chaitanya - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
More exited about nvidia Gf9800 GX2 than the radeon 3870 X2. I hear from my source in nvidia its got a completly diffrent apporach than radeons and gf 7950Gx2Ecmaster76 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
*only* 54fps at 2560!thats horrible! /sarcasm
I think Quake Wars fans will be just fine.
legoman666 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I was going to post the same thing. Only 54 @ 2560x1600? What more do you really want?wien - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
54FPS average is not nearly enough to ensure 100% fluid gameplay. If that was the minimum FPS it'd be close enough, but above 60FPS minimum is preferable. This is a high-end card so expecting extreme performance is hardly unreasonable.NullSubroutine - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Why not test DX9 Crysis benchmarks? Even in Vista you can do that and see a large performance jump in Crysis.I still fail to see why Vista only scores are being posted on Anandtech when Vista represents such a small percentage of users.
damncrackmonkey - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
You fail to see why DX10 performance is relevant to a DX10 card?Personally, I like to use the command line. Why don't these reviews address command line text rendering performance?
duploxxx - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
nice comment at the end...."if AMD can do it, NVIDIA can as well. And we all know how the 3870 vs. 8800 GT matchup turned out."
pls anand give an update on that, as far as i have read no real review was done by anand and the ones floating around on the web concluded all the same... 3870cf is scaling better then sli, now knowing the price of those 2 i don't see why 8800gt sli is faster the 3870x2 with higher r680 clocks, lets see how nvidia will downclock there dual pcb card to get it out.
and knowing that 2x 3850 = 8800gtx with lower price tag
navygaser - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
When you go over to Tom's Hardware and look at their benchmarks for this card you can see a big difference in the FPS numbers at the same settings.Looks like this card does much better on the AnandTech system. They use 4GB RAM vs. Tom's 2GB and the drivers look to be newer as well.
Could the RAM and the drives account for this big difference?
GenoR32 - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - link
I've seen that review and that's true... if you compare it to this one, you see some diferences..IMO, Tom's Hardware is Intel(look at the Phenom 9600 Black Ed. Review.. he practically destroys AMD and kiss Intel) and Nvidia Biased... he cant admit the fact that this card is awesome...
i hate that biased reviews... Anand FTW