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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footballrunner800 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
its probably the drivers since Anandtech is still not using x64 and with a 1gb card that gives windows less than 3 gb of usable memory. The review says that AMD came with improvments on the last minute so imagine when they perfect themSunrise089 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
The drivers sure could.bill3 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I wont link the review, doubt it's even possible, but over at the H Brent's review shows the 3870X2 in a much worse light. They show it outright losing to a single 8800GTX in COD4, Crysis, and UT3, while squeaking out a win in HL2.In the forum review thread when the differences between Brent's review and Anand's was brought up, it was basically claimed by Kyle that Anand's review is illegitimate because he only benchmarks "canned demos" (if you're familiar with H such spiel is nothing new from them). Further Kyle goes so far as to claim "AMD experienced a 60% fps increase in the Crysis canned GPU benchmark, we saw a couple frames a second in real gameplay. "
Kyle also says your COD4 bench, one of the two you guys did that wasn't "canned" and therefore invalid, is also invalid because you only benched a cutscene He hasn't said but I'm assuming the only bench you guys did that meets the Kyle standard would be Bioshock since it is real gameplay timed by fraps.
There are a few platform differences between the reviews, but Kyle has poo-pooed these as not making any major difference.
Thought you guys might be interested..the thread is the 3870X2 review thread at H forums.
Parhel - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
HardOCP is just plain disreputable in every way. Their methodology is nonsense, their reviews are completely inadequate, and they continue to exist only because they drum up fake controversies and attempt to assassinate someone's character every few months.I'm not exaggerating when I say that I take what The Inquirer has to say more seriously.
Frumious1 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I'm just shocked by how many people seem to place any relevance on the HOCP garbage. "It's because we're REAL WORLD and eveyone else is lies and fake stuff!" What a laugh. They play ONE resolution on TWO cards and pretend that's testing. Oh, and they don't use the same settings on both cards, they don't run at the same resolutions as previous reviews, they don't use the most comparable card (8800 GTS 512, anyone?), their testing isn't remotely similar to anything at any other site (hence they can just make claims about how they're doing it right and everyone else is wrong).... I could go on.Anyway, Anand and crew are best served in my opinion by completely ignoring this childish stuff from Kyle and his cohorts. You can choose: either all of the enthusiast sites except HOCP are wrong, or Kyle is wrong. Ocham's Razor suggests that the latter is far more likely.
AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - link
Yeah, one resolution and one competitor card doesn't say much.JWalk - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Yeah, Kyle is currently yelling at people in the forum thread. He has been asked multiple times why Anand, and most other sites, have a completely different view in their benchmarks. (Keep in mind that HardOCP only benchmarked 4 freaking games on 2 cards. According to Kyle, it would have been too much work to benchmark more games or more cards. Awww...not hard work...anything but that. LOL)Then, he either chants "canned" benchmarks over and over, or he tells the person asking the question to get lost and never come back to HardOCP.
It has even been pointed out more than once that the review sample he received might be the problem. Maybe he should try another card. But he is in full-blown arrogant a$$ mode right now. ;)
Devo2007 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Not surprising coming from Kyle -- he comes across that way quite often.I don't like his reviews much -- not because of the canned benchmarks vs. real-world gameplay they preach about, bur rather the fact that they typically only compare one or two other cards to the one being tested. I have a GTS 320MB, and it would be nice to see whether the GTS 512MB would be worth it. Sadly, no direct comparison was done, because the GTS 320MB doesn't compete with said card.
I generally try to read several reviews to get an idea of a product - one site is never enough for these things. :)
boe - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Usually the stock coolers are pretty dang loud. I'm wondering if any cooling solutions will be available from zalman, artic or the other standards?It would have been sweet if there was a db measurement chart.
Gholam - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
GeCube has a version that looks like it has 2xZalman VF900-Cu on it. Custom PCB with 4 DVI outputs too.