3870x2 reviews are here and where to buy

[Munky]

Originally posted by: keflex

Originally posted by: schneiderguy
When I look at a review I'm not looking for how well a card runs a game, I'm looking for which card is faster in that particular game.

You do understand that if synthetics shows that A is faster than B, but in real-world applications B > A, then the synthetic is pretty much useless, right? Kind of like how in vivo studies are alot more accurate than in vitro studies.

Of course, if all you do is buy bleeding edge hardware just to run benchmarks...

What do you mean "synthetics"? Anyone with a working brain knows synthetic benches like 3dmock are worthless, we care about performance in actual games. But if 5 review sites say the 3870x2 is faster than the 8800gtx in a certain game, and NVOCP says the gtx is faster according to their unreproducible and unverifiable testing methods, then I'm gonna call BS on it.

 

[jedisoulfly]

Originally posted by: hooflung

Originally posted by: Nurn

Originally posted by: Demoth
Keep in mind if buying his card that indications are you need PCIe 2.0 to get proper performance. If your not planning on a MB upgrade in the near futue, might want to consider that. Plus, as has been pointed out, speed increase is heavily dependant on individual games having correct driver support. This could be a future issue, especially for less popular titles down the road, where you could be limited to below single card speeds. You will also need a good quality PSU with a lot of juice coming off the 12V rail under load and noise levels will be relatively high.

A good card overall, but a niche card for enthusiasts mainly.

Anand says this GPU doesn't support PCIe 2.0.....

"On the board we've got two 3870 GPUs, separated by a 48-lane PCIe 1.1 bridge (no 2.0 support here guys). Each GPU has 16 lanes going to it, and then the final 16 lanes head directly to the PCIe connector and out to the motherboard's chipset."

I didn't read that as the card not being PCIe 2.0 but the interconnect between the two integrated gpu subsystems as not being PCIe 2.0.

2nd line then read the note at the bottom.
http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd3800/specs.html

Also here is another over priced link for a VisionTek
http://www.amazon.com/Radeon-3...&qid=1201559844&sr=8-2

 

[keflex]

Originally posted by: munky
What do you mean "synthetics"? Anyone with a working brain knows synthetic benches like 3dmock are worthless, we care about performance in actual games. But if 5 review sites say the 3870x2 is faster than the 8800gtx in a certain game, and NVOCP says the gtx is faster according to their unreproducible and unverifiable testing methods, then I'm gonna call BS on it.

Add one more to the list: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/ati_hd3870_x2/

The 3870 X2 3d Mark score blew the GTX out of the water... just what you'd expect if you'd listen to most of the other game sites that used the same testing methodology; what may be ironic to you, however, is that in the real-world benchmarks, the GTX scored better than 3870 X2 in almost every game (save Bioshock and Call of Juarez, iirc).

Btw, OC Club used both canned and real-world results in their review.

So, like i said, synthetic benchmarks are pretty much meaningless compared to real-world results.

 

[Ackmed]

And its released with plenty of stock, at MSRP. Despite some people with no clue clamoring that it was a paper launch last week.

Dont understand why Anands review shows the 8800GT SLI scores, yet only shows the single 8800GT in the power consumption part of the review. If you're going to show SLI scores for games, show SLI power consumption.

Originally posted by: *kjm
I?m just darn sick of all these retailers marking up the cards $50+ MSRP for both ATI and Nvidia! I won?t buy till they drop to MSRP or below.... I'll have to sit on my 1950pro for some time yet.

Huh? Newegg has 5 versions, all in stock, and all at $450+shipping. What else do you want? They also have GTX's for under MSRP.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tion=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: jedisoulfly

Originally posted by: hooflung

Originally posted by: Nurn

Originally posted by: Demoth
Keep in mind if buying his card that indications are you need PCIe 2.0 to get proper performance. If your not planning on a MB upgrade in the near futue, might want to consider that. Plus, as has been pointed out, speed increase is heavily dependant on individual games having correct driver support. This could be a future issue, especially for less popular titles down the road, where you could be limited to below single card speeds. You will also need a good quality PSU with a lot of juice coming off the 12V rail under load and noise levels will be relatively high.

A good card overall, but a niche card for enthusiasts mainly.

Anand says this GPU doesn't support PCIe 2.0.....

"On the board we've got two 3870 GPUs, separated by a 48-lane PCIe 1.1 bridge (no 2.0 support here guys). Each GPU has 16 lanes going to it, and then the final 16 lanes head directly to the PCIe connector and out to the motherboard's chipset."

I didn't read that as the card not being PCIe 2.0 but the interconnect between the two integrated gpu subsystems as not being PCIe 2.0.

2nd line then read the note at the bottom.
http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd3800/specs.html

Also here is another over priced link for a VisionTek
http://www.amazon.com/Radeon-3...&qid=1201559844&sr=8-2

All the x2's at newegg say pci-e 2.0.

 

[jedisoulfly]

Originally posted by: happy medium

Originally posted by: jedisoulfly

Originally posted by: hooflung

Originally posted by: Nurn

Originally posted by: Demoth
Keep in mind if buying his card that indications are you need PCIe 2.0 to get proper performance. If your not planning on a MB upgrade in the near futue, might want to consider that. Plus, as has been pointed out, speed increase is heavily dependant on individual games having correct driver support. This could be a future issue, especially for less popular titles down the road, where you could be limited to below single card speeds. You will also need a good quality PSU with a lot of juice coming off the 12V rail under load and noise levels will be relatively high.

A good card overall, but a niche card for enthusiasts mainly.

Anand says this GPU doesn't support PCIe 2.0.....

"On the board we've got two 3870 GPUs, separated by a 48-lane PCIe 1.1 bridge (no 2.0 support here guys). Each GPU has 16 lanes going to it, and then the final 16 lanes head directly to the PCIe connector and out to the motherboard's chipset."

I didn't read that as the card not being PCIe 2.0 but the interconnect between the two integrated gpu subsystems as not being PCIe 2.0.

2nd line then read the note at the bottom.
http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd3800/specs.html

Also here is another over priced link for a VisionTek
http://www.amazon.com/Radeon-3...&qid=1201559844&sr=8-2

All the x2's at newegg say pci-e 2.0.

I was confused on the note at the bottom of the page also. It is pci-e 2.0.
"ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 GPUs support PCIe 2.0. Some third party board configurations may not fully comply with complete PCIe 2.0 specification and operate at PCIe 1.1 specifications on motherboards that support PCIe 2.0. Please consult with board manufacturer if this is an important feature for you. "


From what I have seen in the reviews it seems that boards that used pci-e 1.0 show not as great reslults than reviews that used boards with pci-e 2.0

 

[*kjm]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
And its released with plenty of stock, at MSRP. Despite some people with no clue clamoring that it was a paper launch last week.

Dont understand why Anands review shows the 8800GT SLI scores, yet only shows the single 8800GT in the power consumption part of the review. If you're going to show SLI scores for games, show SLI power consumption.

Originally posted by: *kjm
I?m just darn sick of all these retailers marking up the cards $50+ MSRP for both ATI and Nvidia! I won?t buy till they drop to MSRP or below.... I'll have to sit on my 1950pro for some time yet.

Huh? Newegg has 5 versions, all in stock, and all at $450+shipping. What else do you want? They also have GTX's for under MSRP.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tion=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

Sorry newegg was out of the Asus by the time I wanted to buy it and last time they ran out of the 3870's they raised the prices like the others.... we will see when they get them back in stock what the prices are.... want to bet?

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: *kjm

Originally posted by: Ackmed
And its released with plenty of stock, at MSRP. Despite some people with no clue clamoring that it was a paper launch last week.

Dont understand why Anands review shows the 8800GT SLI scores, yet only shows the single 8800GT in the power consumption part of the review. If you're going to show SLI scores for games, show SLI power consumption.

Originally posted by: *kjm
I?m just darn sick of all these retailers marking up the cards $50+ MSRP for both ATI and Nvidia! I won?t buy till they drop to MSRP or below.... I'll have to sit on my 1950pro for some time yet.

Huh? Newegg has 5 versions, all in stock, and all at $450+shipping. What else do you want? They also have GTX's for under MSRP.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tion=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

Sorry newegg was out of the Asus by the time I wanted to buy it and last time they ran out of the 3870's they raised the prices like the others.... we will see when they get them back in stock what the prices are.... want to bet?

So you complain because "all these retailers marking up the cards $50+ MSRP for both ATI", yet when I give you 5 different version of the 3870x2 at MSRP price, its not good enough. The fact is, newegg has 5 out of 6 in stock, and at MSRP. Of course you wanted the only one that was out of stock, for arguments sake I would imagine. We arent talking about the 3870's, we'er talking about the 3870x2's.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: keflex

Originally posted by: apoppin
HardOCP has the most useless benchmarks - anywhere

Agreed! Benchmarking a game based on how it actually performs in-game is totally useless!

That would be OK if that is what HardOCP did ... but that is far from what "is" - their useless skewed benches and variable settings depend totally on their reviewer's [clear lack of] objectivity and impartiality.

Their reviews don't match up with any honest and thorough reviews of the same HW.
... and historically from the way they perform their testing, it is clear that their testing criteria is rather easily manipulated to skew the results in favor of one GPU to meet their predetermined conclusions.

AnandTech and a host of honest reviewers all use the same tried and true methods. If they wanted to ADD something like "playable settings", it would be good as we could get a better picture. But then they better compare more then 1 playable setting to see the effects of higher AA [for example] or lowering shadows.

 

[TC777]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Newegg has 3870X2s for sale at MSRP right now. Tempted to pick up one of these with a Wolfdale CPU, very tempted. Need to take some measurements to make sure the card won't get in the way of anything inside my case though.

People who want one of these should go buy one now then- because if they start selling, newegg's pricing formulas will kick in and the price will go up.

I have to say I'm somewhat surprised by the reviews I've seen. There were some earlier 3870CF vs 8800GT SLi reviews that showed the CF more competitive with GT SLi than ATs review did.

Nonetheless, I like multi GPU cards (typing this on a 7950GX2) and if I were an ATi fan, this is the card I'd have.

I would agree about Newegg. Usually (not always) Newegg will start with a normal price, then jack it up if the product gets good reviews. Although when I checked just now, it looks like Newegg has a large supply of these cards, at least 99 of them for the Sapphire.

I'm not an ATI or Nvidia fanboy, although currently I have an ATI 3870 that I'm happy with, but I also know the Nvidia cards are great also. I do get angered by the Nvidia fanboy attitudes though, its enough that it makes me not want to use Nvidia.

 

[jedisoulfly]

Originally posted by: *kjm

Originally posted by: Ackmed
And its released with plenty of stock, at MSRP. Despite some people with no clue clamoring that it was a paper launch last week.

Dont understand why Anands review shows the 8800GT SLI scores, yet only shows the single 8800GT in the power consumption part of the review. If you're going to show SLI scores for games, show SLI power consumption.

Originally posted by: *kjm
I?m just darn sick of all these retailers marking up the cards $50+ MSRP for both ATI and Nvidia! I won?t buy till they drop to MSRP or below.... I'll have to sit on my 1950pro for some time yet.

Huh? Newegg has 5 versions, all in stock, and all at $450+shipping. What else do you want? They also have GTX's for under MSRP.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tion=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

Sorry newegg was out of the Asus by the time I wanted to buy it and last time they ran out of the 3870's they raised the prices like the others.... we will see when they get them back in stock what the prices are.... want to bet?

Typically Asus cards are more than other brands that are the same card. (not in this case/time though) IMO paying a mark up for a brand name is silly in the case of graphic cards. Unless you wanted the Asus card solely for the game that comes with it I don't see why it would matter. The only difference between like (reference design) cards is the sticker and the package contents. I was very happy and surprised to see newegg selling them at MSRP. Maybe newegg listened to the black lash after they price gouged on other products.

 

[TC777]

You can't get an accurate reading of a games performance by just playing the game, it MUST be a canned benchmark to be fair and have accurate readings. Anything else just makes for unfair comparisons due to not displaying the exact same graphics between cards, or human biased opinion. I know for example when I play the game LOTRO, if I even turn my character slightly in a certain direction, it affects the FPS big time, up or down.

 

[TC777]

Not sure if its been posted here or not, but Hardwarecanucks has their review up also. I have always liked their 3870 review as they are very detailed, and easy to understand graphs. The 3870x2 seems to do very well in his comparisons. He even has the card taken apart to see what it looks like.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com...870-x2-1gb-review.html

 

[happy medium]

I posted the review..... thanks tcool.

 

[TC777]

Forgot to add, in that Hardwarecanucks review, he says that most people probably will get older drivers with their retail card that won't be as good as the latest version he has. Apparently the testers have access to the latest drivers, and that they had quite a few revisions just for this x2 card.

 

[Syntax Error]

Originally posted by: jedisoulfly

Originally posted by: *kjm

Originally posted by: Ackmed
And its released with plenty of stock, at MSRP. Despite some people with no clue clamoring that it was a paper launch last week.

Dont understand why Anands review shows the 8800GT SLI scores, yet only shows the single 8800GT in the power consumption part of the review. If you're going to show SLI scores for games, show SLI power consumption.

Originally posted by: *kjm
I?m just darn sick of all these retailers marking up the cards $50+ MSRP for both ATI and Nvidia! I won?t buy till they drop to MSRP or below.... I'll have to sit on my 1950pro for some time yet.

Huh? Newegg has 5 versions, all in stock, and all at $450+shipping. What else do you want? They also have GTX's for under MSRP.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tion=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

Sorry newegg was out of the Asus by the time I wanted to buy it and last time they ran out of the 3870's they raised the prices like the others.... we will see when they get them back in stock what the prices are.... want to bet?

Typically Asus cards are more than other brands that are the same card. (not in this case/time though) IMO paying a mark up for a brand name is silly in the case of graphic cards. Unless you wanted the Asus card solely for the game that comes with it I don't see why it would matter. The only difference between like (reference design) cards is the sticker and the package contents. I was very happy and surprised to see newegg selling them at MSRP. Maybe newegg listened to the black lash after they price gouged on other products.

Fat chance. As soon as supply dwindles and demand stays high, prices are going to go up. Their automatic price calculator will make sure of that. Economics 101.

 

[*kjm]

Originally posted by: Syntax Error

Originally posted by: jedisoulfly

Originally posted by: *kjm

Originally posted by: Ackmed
And its released with plenty of stock, at MSRP. Despite some people with no clue clamoring that it was a paper launch last week.

Dont understand why Anands review shows the 8800GT SLI scores, yet only shows the single 8800GT in the power consumption part of the review. If you're going to show SLI scores for games, show SLI power consumption.

Originally posted by: *kjm
I?m just darn sick of all these retailers marking up the cards $50+ MSRP for both ATI and Nvidia! I won?t buy till they drop to MSRP or below.... I'll have to sit on my 1950pro for some time yet.

Huh? Newegg has 5 versions, all in stock, and all at $450+shipping. What else do you want? They also have GTX's for under MSRP.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tion=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

Sorry newegg was out of the Asus by the time I wanted to buy it and last time they ran out of the 3870's they raised the prices like the others.... we will see when they get them back in stock what the prices are.... want to bet?

Typically Asus cards are more than other brands that are the same card. (not in this case/time though) IMO paying a mark up for a brand name is silly in the case of graphic cards. Unless you wanted the Asus card solely for the game that comes with it I don't see why it would matter. The only difference between like (reference design) cards is the sticker and the package contents. I was very happy and surprised to see newegg selling them at MSRP. Maybe newegg listened to the black lash after they price gouged on other products.

Fat chance. As soon as supply dwindles and demand stays high, prices are going to go up. Their automatic price calculator will make sure of that. Economics 101.

That was my point... oh and Ackmed I was not complaining just stating facts. Look at the prices in the OP links not just NewEgg. That is how the 3870's went and I "think/feel" that is what we will see here.

 

[jedisoulfly]

Originally posted by: tcool93
Not sure if its been posted here or not, but Hardwarecanucks has their review up also. I have always liked their 3870 review as they are very detailed, and easy to understand graphs. The 3870x2 seems to do very well in his comparisons. He even has the card taken apart to see what it looks like.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com...870-x2-1gb-review.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com...-x2-1gb-review-15.html

I like that the reviewer has already brought up the issue of after market coolers. He states they will be doing a review later on the use of Zalman coolers. I think but am not certain that the mounting holes would be compatible with a Zalman VF900. I have one of these installed on my x1800xt and it is not much wider than the mounting holes. It appears to me that 2 of these could be mounted with enough room. I am not sure how much heat the interface chip puts out but you could probably use some passive heatsinks on it the RAM and other parts that generate heat. I look forward to seeing if this is the idea he had also.

Edited
Tweektown has a review and its not the reference cooler. It looks like Zalman's but slightly different than the VF900. Also since the cooler is different it allows for 4 DVI ports.

http://www.tweaktown.com/revie..._3_the_card/index.html

 

[jedisoulfly]

Originally posted by: Syntax Error

Originally posted by: jedisoulfly

Originally posted by: *kjm

Originally posted by: Ackmed
And its released with plenty of stock, at MSRP. Despite some people with no clue clamoring that it was a paper launch last week.

Dont understand why Anands review shows the 8800GT SLI scores, yet only shows the single 8800GT in the power consumption part of the review. If you're going to show SLI scores for games, show SLI power consumption.

Originally posted by: *kjm
I?m just darn sick of all these retailers marking up the cards $50+ MSRP for both ATI and Nvidia! I won?t buy till they drop to MSRP or below.... I'll have to sit on my 1950pro for some time yet.

Huh? Newegg has 5 versions, all in stock, and all at $450+shipping. What else do you want? They also have GTX's for under MSRP.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tion=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

Sorry newegg was out of the Asus by the time I wanted to buy it and last time they ran out of the 3870's they raised the prices like the others.... we will see when they get them back in stock what the prices are.... want to bet?

Typically Asus cards are more than other brands that are the same card. (not in this case/time though) IMO paying a mark up for a brand name is silly in the case of graphic cards. Unless you wanted the Asus card solely for the game that comes with it I don't see why it would matter. The only difference between like (reference design) cards is the sticker and the package contents. I was very happy and surprised to see newegg selling them at MSRP. Maybe newegg listened to the black lash after they price gouged on other products.

Fat chance. As soon as supply dwindles and demand stays high, prices are going to go up. Their automatic price calculator will make sure of that. Economics 101.

I did say maybe

 

[nitromullet]

I've been following this thread somewhat all day (in between work stuff), but haven't really had time to post until now, so I'll drop my 2 cents in here as well on a few of the topics mentioned.

1) testing methodolgy:

I don't understand how someone can say one site's benchmarks are completely worthless because they don't do a straight apples-to-apples test.... I like hardocp's benchmarks, but I don't think that they can't stand 100% on their own. If you think about it though, the same is true for almost all sites' benchmarks. Look at AT for instance, they are benchmarking these cards on systems that most of us will never own. Who's got the cash for a QX9650 that they are going to pair with an 8800GT? Most likely no one, so in that respect the benchmark doesn't tell you much about how the card(s) will perform for you.

That being said, I find value in a different benchmarks posted by the different review sites, and I make a decision based on the aggregate of those results. Let's face it, there is no 'one stop shop' for benchmarks, but they all give you something to work with.

2) HD3870X2 performance:

It performs up there with other cards in its price bracket for the most part. I doesn't do very much to drive performance forward though. The same performance for the same price is acceptable, but not terribly inspiring. Overall I would give the HD3870X2 a rating of "good", and I'd probably recommend it to someone for a tad below the MSRP of $450. $400 would be nice, but for $375 it would be on!

3) Dual GPU/card solutions:

One of the things that HD3870X2 does seem to get high marks for in the reviews I've read is the fact that it 'feels' like a single gpu. ATI seems to have done a very good job of making the dual gpu nature of this card very transparent to the enduser.

It will be interesting to see of the 9800GX2 is a successful in that area - personally, I have my doubts. NVIDIA doesn't have very user friendly drivers, and they really haven't felt very 'complete' since the 8-series came out, especially not after Vista launched. They work, but they feel a little 'duct taped', as new a new beta fixes one thing they break another feature. "WHQL" means absolutely nothing with NVIDIA drivers. (IMO)

The reason I mention the seamlessness of dual gpu setups is because I do believe they are the future, and making them seemless, scale well, and a good value will be critcal to their success.

When we get a new core from NV and ATI, I think the focus will be more towards keeping die size and temps per chip down, while the high end will focus on multi-gpu scaling. I think that the current crop of gpus are in a way a single step back so we can make two steps forward in the coming year. NV and ATI are learning how to get the 'same with less' (G92 vs. G80, RV670 vs. R600) so they can eventually get more performance from the same power/size/heat requirements in the future.

...sorry for the long post, but I've been mulling this stuff over all day with not time to post

 

[n7]

Card is actually pretty impressive.

I expected it to do a lot worse than it does.

There's a few too many games with too low minimum fps, & some results likely a bit bugged due to needing better drivers for it, but overall, it does better than i even expected.

Price is too high though considering the drawbacks.
Needs to be ~$400 maybe, since right now, an extra $150-200 over the GTS 512 MB isn't worth it unless you just play the games in which it does far better (which there are a number of, so i guess that could work for some people).

 

[WaTaGuMp]

I cant justify this card for myself seeing it isnt a huge jump over my GTX in all cases and would most likely cause me to have to get another PSU also.

 

[cozumel]

Also check out this quality review at DriverHeaven

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Rollo


People who want one of these should go buy one now then- because if they start selling, newegg's pricing formulas will kick in and the price will go up.

That is true, but I won't have the funds until early Mar anyway, minor delay with my tax refund because of the IRS's processing of certain forms. By then, I'll have to evaluate Nvidia's offerings, if they've launched.

Should give availability some time to stabilize and for another revision of Catalyst to hit the wild as well.

based on 8800gt and 3870 prices for the first few months post-launch that is certainly true. The real question is how long before 9800gx2 comes out? Nvidia was able to pull the 8800gt launch forward to steal some 3870 thunder, so they must be a little bit behind right now or they would have tried the same with 9800gx2. If 9800gx2 comes out in a month then 3870x2 will almost certainly remain reasonably priced. If, however, 9800gx2 gets multiple delays and stretches into april/may, then we might see some very expensive 3870x2's, especially if they continue with the strong driver improvements.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Demoth
Keep in mind if buying his card that indications are you need PCIe 2.0 to get proper performance. If your not planning on a MB upgrade in the near futue, might want to consider that. Plus, as has been pointed out, speed increase is heavily dependant on individual games having correct driver support. This could be a future issue, especially for less popular titles down the road, where you could be limited to below single card speeds. You will also need a good quality PSU with a lot of juice coming off the 12V rail under load and noise levels will be relatively high.

A good card overall, but a niche card for enthusiasts mainly.

I believe that anand specifically said in the review that it was pci-e 1.1. It surprised me to read that, but it was there. Even if it is a pci-e 2.0 card, why on earth would it need a pci-e 2.0 mobo to get "proper performance". From everything I've seen and heard, there isn't a card on the market today that will run faster on pci-e 2.0 vs 1.1.

The driver support issue cannot be dismissed, however. This is definitely not an "ultra"-type card that you can just turn on and expect top performance in every game. Going forward it will be difficult for amd to keep the card on top unless they really ARE committed to multi-gpu formats for the long haul.

Power draw is supposed to be less than a single 2900xt, though that's nothing to brag about. I mean, my wife has never been a white house intern but I don't brag about that...