HD3870 X2 or nVIDIA

[imported_boe]

I keep holding off on my new system until intel releases their next batch of 45nm quads. I was all set to go with the 3870x2 but at the rate Intel is holding me back who knows nVidia may have something better. I'm not too keen on the new nVidia dual GPU card but with any luck they'll have a new GPU out soon that will be even better than the 9800. I haven't seen much which kind of surprises me although I might not be looking in the right places for info on the next nVidia GPU- processor not the next card. I'm hoping they have a new flagship card out soon with a flagship processor.

 

[*kjm]

Originally posted by: boe
I keep holding off on my new system until intel releases their next batch of 45nm quads. I was all set to go with the 3870x2 but at the rate Intel is holding me back who knows nVidia may have something better. I'm not too keen on the new nVidia dual GPU card but with any luck they'll have a new GPU out soon that will be even better than the 9800. I haven't seen much which kind of surprises me although I might not be looking in the right places for info on the next nVidia GPU- processor not the next card. I'm hoping they have a new flagship card out soon with a flagship processor.

I used to do that back in the day but now I make a good living and $500 is a piss in the bucket compared to always thinking about what is best. I just buy them and try them out for myself. So far I like the 3870X2 and it works for the games I run YMMV?????

 

[imported_boe]

LOL - well right now the economy is hurting my business so I have to be a bit more careful with my money. Feel free to piss $500 my way so I don't have to worry about seeing if there is a better card coming.

 

[*kjm]

boe I like ya

I didn't mean to sound cocky but you sound a lot like I used to be "wanting the best for my money". I just found out over the years there will always be better a week after I order mine and I will never win. I just deal with it. For example I orderd the Asus 3870X2 on Friday from the egg and on Sunday it was discontinued.... my luck for the last 18 years I just stand behind what I decided on for my reasons now.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: *kjm
boe I like ya

I didn't mean to sound cocky but you sound a lot like I used to be "wanting the best for my money". I just found out over the years there will always be better a week after I order mine and I will never win. I just deal with it. For example I orderd the Asus 3870X2 on Friday from the egg and on Sunday it was discontinued.... my luck for the last 18 years I just stand behind what I decided on for my reasons now.

i can't agree with you there ... i still go for the best bang-for buck and don't mind waiting a bit for it to come my way
.. it always has.

 

[imported_boe]

No need to worry about how ya sound - I do want the best for my money and FOR SURE anything I order will be obsolete within a month. I buy HT equipment, PCs and cars so I know I'm doomed but I'm also very happy with most of my purchases (although I bought my first RC helicopter that was $18 and it is a total POS but hey for $18 worth a try).

I have however over the years learned to set certain bars that products must meet to justify the upgrade or initial purchase - e.g. bought my first new prepro in 7 years because it finally had HDMI 1.3- didn't want any of the previous versions of HDMI - 1.3 seems to be the first with any potential to get things right. I'm waiting till next year to buy my first 1080p TV to replace my old rear projection because the new KURO might finally be 75" - not replacing my old TV till I could get something bigger but affordable - so to speak.

I'm thinking the new nVidia chipset might finally raise the bar that nVidia set about a year and a half ago (forgive my guess on the dates -I don't recall exactly when the 9800 GPU came out). Since the G100 and the R700 may be coming out second quarter, I may just wait.

 

[adamsleath]

Originally posted by: Chaoticpenguin666
I would really prefer to stick with nVIDIA, but according to the General Hardware board and the Benchmarks on this site, the 3870 X2 is the best single-card on the market.

Any opinions on this?

yes i agree 3870x2 is the best single card on the market...and they are priced quite well - get the cheapest one if possible of course

you've heard it b4, but the 3500+ single core sys is really going to bottleneck an 8800gt; i know cos i used to have a 3500+; i upped my ram to 2gb to play battlefield 2...a couple years ago.

now i have an e4300 @ 3.2GHz...(oops i should change my sig; i;ve sold off my e6700 and uber expensive ram and old 8800gts ) and now i have a single 8800gt

but i guess if you were to upgrade your gcard only you would definitely want to max out the graphics settings and resolution as much as possible to reduce the cpu load. - depends what game you play; the one exception to the rule .- as you probly know - is crysis - which no gcard can really handle at the moment at anywhere near max settings/resolution.

if you change to a ddr2 platform ddr2 is really really cheap right now for a typical 2gigs.

also a dual core chip is good because typically you have one core to run the game and the other to handle the os/background crap....

an 8800gt is really a good bang for bucks gcard - get a cheap one.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: *kjm
boe I like ya

I didn't mean to sound cocky but you sound a lot like I used to be "wanting the best for my money". I just found out over the years there will always be better a week after I order mine and I will never win. I just deal with it. For example I orderd the Asus 3870X2 on Friday from the egg and on Sunday it was discontinued.... my luck for the last 18 years I just stand behind what I decided on for my reasons now.

This logic is fine if you have a lower res monitor, like 16X10, but when you get into the 1900X1200 and 25X16 resolutions, a 25% difference in performance can suddenly become a very big deal in the quality of your gaming experience with new games.

In any case, the GX2s are rumored to launch tomorrow, and I would think anyone considering a high end card today would wait one day to evaluate the high end.

If it doesn't launch tomorrow, the "always something better coming" logic kicks into gear.

 

[batmang]

Originally posted by: Extelleron
Fastest card right now is the HD 3870 X2, but your best bet is to probably buy an 8800GTS 512MB for under $300 AR. I've seen them for $269 recently, which is an excellent deal.

IMO wait for R700/G100 before purchasing a really expensive card.

I agree.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: *kjm
boe I like ya

I didn't mean to sound cocky but you sound a lot like I used to be "wanting the best for my money". I just found out over the years there will always be better a week after I order mine and I will never win. I just deal with it. For example I orderd the Asus 3870X2 on Friday from the egg and on Sunday it was discontinued.... my luck for the last 18 years I just stand behind what I decided on for my reasons now.

This logic is fine if you have a lower res monitor, like 16X10, but when you get into the 1900X1200 and 25X16 resolutions, a 25% difference in performance can suddenly become a very big deal in the quality of your gaming experience with new games.

In any case, the GX2s are rumored to launch tomorrow, and I would think anyone considering a high end card today would wait one day to evaluate the high end.

If it doesn't launch tomorrow, the "always something better coming" logic kicks into gear.

that's a very well thought out argument. unfortunately, kjm posted that on 2/20 so it's probably too late for him

 

[adamsleath]

i'll take a free gx2; noway would i pay for one.

 

[Sind]

As mentioned, the 9800GX2 will likely be "SLi in a slot" like the the 7950GX2 was, and SLi isn't known for being "buggy as hell". It's a more mature, flexible, and coded for technoolgy than Crossfire- there's no reason to speculate NVIDIA will fix something that isn't broken.

OTOH- the 3870X2 does not allow the user to disable Crossfire in the drivers. The problem with this is that for games that don't scale with Crossfire, performance will actually be worse than a single 3870, which is very very bad for a $400 card.

Umm to this day my 7950GX2 is buggy as hell in Vista x64 with 4GB of ram despite many attempts to correct it, I still randomly get code 43 errors upon boot up. "Strangely" this also happens with my 7800GTX512 SLi system as well. I guess you have forgotten that it took from January to May 2007 for a officially released driver to correct users being able to run Vista x64 and a 7 series card with 4GB of RAM, but that's not buggy as hell I guess. That to this day is why I will never use SLi again.

You can turn off Crossfire with the control panel by disabling Cat AI, tada.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Sind

Umm to this day my 7950GX2 is buggy as hell in Vista x64 with 4GB of ram despite many attempts to correct it, I still randomly get code 43 errors upon boot up. "Strangely" this also happens with my 7800GTX512 SLi system as well. I guess you have forgotten that it took from January to May 2007 for a officially released driver to correct users being able to run Vista x64 and a 7 series card with 4GB of RAM, but that's not buggy as hell I guess. That to this day is why I will never use SLi again.

You can turn off Crossfire with the control panel by disabling Cat AI, tada.

I never used 7 series SLi with Vista, so I can't really comment without looking it up.

I did use 8 series single, double, and three way with SLi with very few issues, and now I'm using a soon to be released part without issue.

So for me, "buggy as hell" just isn't the case.

Were Crossfire drivers in Vista any better from January to May?

Sure- you can disable Cat AI in the control panel, but you disable every optomization and patch in the driver for that game so ATi recommends you don't do it.

 

[Sind]

I don't have a crossfire setup so I could care less about any problems they had, for my $2k worth of video cards it was a problem and thats the point. Do I need to mention the driver issues when the 7950GX2 was released? Not everything was bells and roses, and to this day it still isn't.

Here you have the 9800GX2, which for whatever reason was dated to be released in January but pushed back. You also have the tweaktown review, which you were all over stating that the drivers that they used, that were dated from January, didn't enable SLi, then you have the revised TT with recent drivers that shows really no performance increase from the first set, and actual decreases in some games.

Now from a users standpoint of someone who has multiple problems with SLI and a single SLI card, why would I want to purchase this product who apparently has been delayed due to a) drivers b) whatever c) SLI problems? Vs one that seems to run seemlessly. I would argue any game you would actually need to disable crossfire, maybe someone else can comment, is so old that you wouldn't notice a difference in performance with any optimisations running so it seems like a moot point from my pov.

I will wait and see what the 9800GTX has to offer, but really I don't see any point the 9800 series at all and will most likely wait for whatever fancy codename is past that. Let's hope tomorrow will bring something amazing, but I seriously doubt it. From these leaked benches, and a rumored 150-200 price over its competitor for a not always guarenteed marginal increase in performance it seems, it doesn't make much sense to me from a consumer standpoint if you are looking to stay in a single slot solution, the 3870X2, GTS, 9600GT all seem a much better buy.

 

[bryanW1995]

god I hope that 9800gtx isn't really just an overclocked 9800gts 512...

when will r700 and gt200 be here? now? what about now?

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Sind
I don't have a crossfire setup so I could care less about any problems they had, for my $2k worth of video cards it was a problem and thats the point. Do I need to mention the driver issues when the 7950GX2 was released? Not everything was bells and roses, and to this day it still isn't.

Here you have the 9800GX2, which for whatever reason was dated to be released in January but pushed back. You also have the tweaktown review, which you were all over stating that the drivers that they used, that were dated from January, didn't enable SLi, then you have the revised TT with recent drivers that shows really no performance increase from the first set, and actual decreases in some games.

Now from a users standpoint of someone who has multiple problems with SLI and a single SLI card, why would I want to purchase this product who apparently has been delayed due to a) drivers b) whatever c) SLI problems? Vs one that seems to run seemlessly. I would argue any game you would actually need to disable crossfire, maybe someone else can comment, is so old that you wouldn't notice a difference in performance with any optimisations running so it seems like a moot point from my pov.

I will wait and see what the 9800GTX has to offer, but really I don't see any point the 9800 series at all and will most likely wait for whatever fancy codename is past that. Let's hope tomorrow will bring something amazing, but I seriously doubt it. From these leaked benches, and a rumored 150-200 price over its competitor for a not always guarenteed marginal increase in performance it seems, it doesn't make much sense to me from a consumer standpoint if you are looking to stay in a single slot solution, the 3870X2, GTS, 9600GT all seem a much better buy.

Sind, this thread isn't really about the 7 series of cards, but I had all of them in all configurations and would be happy to discuss them in another thread.

Apparently you don't understand how the graphics induistry works, let me help you:

Cards don't materialize in three months. They take a long time, and the drivers go through alpha and beta and final release, and any card you've ever used had drivers three months before the product launched that weren't done yet.

As far as needing to disable Crossfire only on "old games", allow me to help you out with that mistaken idea as well:

Why you would have had to disable Crossfire in Bioshck, WIC, Lost Planet, and Quake Wars on Sept 21, 2007

Unfortunately, CrossFire compatibility is still an issue for AMD. New games like BioShock and World in Conflict don't support CrossFire at this time, and Lost Planet and Quake Wars have graphical glitches.

XBitlabs finds seven new games don't work with Crossfire in their review of the 3870X2 on 2/18/08

On the other hand, it was either equal to or slower than the single-chip ATI Radeon HD 3870 in seven out of the nineteen tests, namely in Call of Duty 4, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Tomb Raider: Legend, Hellgate: London, Gothic 3 and Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts.

So what do the above links and quotes prove?

1. That sometimes it's useful to be able to disable Crossfire, because sometimes it takes a while for Crossfire to work. Sometimes it never does.

2. That all vendors have multi-GPU driver issues, so your arguments against NVIDIA apparently could be applied to any company that does multi-card.

ANYWAY, time is about UP, hierarchy of products shifts again soon...........

:clock:

 

[qbfx]

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

This remains to be seen at this point. We don't really know the heat output of the 9800GX2 yet.

[...]

But we can speculate and there are some facts that give us the field to do that like lowering the clockspeeds on the old G92 chips which was already running quite hot, imagine two of those face to face, yay

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

As mentioned, the 9800GX2 will likely be "SLi in a slot" like the the 7950GX2 was, and SLi isn't known for being "buggy as hell". It's a more mature, flexible, and coded for technoolgy than Crossfire - there's no reason to speculate NVIDIA will fix something that isn't broken.

[...]

I'm not much into coding (except for some simple stuff on Delphi ) but I know one thing for sure - you can mix different cards and generations and use multiple monitors in Crossfire, and you CAN'T in SLi. So by what means is SLi more flexible and mature ?

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: qbfx

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

This remains to be seen at this point. We don't really know the heat output of the 9800GX2 yet.

[...]

But we can speculate and there are some facts that give us the field to do that like lowering the clockspeeds on the old G92 chips which was already running quite hot, imagine two of those face to face, yay

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

As mentioned, the 9800GX2 will likely be "SLi in a slot" like the the 7950GX2 was, and SLi isn't known for being "buggy as hell". It's a more mature, flexible, and coded for technoolgy than Crossfire - there's no reason to speculate NVIDIA will fix something that isn't broken.

[...]

I'm not much into coding (except for some simple stuff on Delphi ) but I know one thing for sure - you can mix different cards and generations and use multiple monitors in Crossfire, and you CAN'T in SLi. So by what means is SLi more flexible and mature ?

The only results we've seen posted for temperature show it much cooler than the 3870X2.

As for more "flexible, mature, and coded for" I meant:

Flexible:
1. Can edit profiles, can't with Crossfire.
2. Can create profiles, can't with Crossfire.
3. Can force SFR and an additional AFR2 mode with Global settings, can't with Crossfire, they have AFR1 or fuggadaboutit. (note:SFR is more compatible with games)
4. Should be able to disable SLi on GX2, cannot on 3870X2. (can't say till later today)

While you are correct you can mix cards on CF, unless it's a X2 and 3870, I don't see why anyone would want to. Mating a slower card to your faster card just makes you benefit less from CF, errrr....woot?

Multi monitor support is the one feature CF has that is better, but it has little to do with gaming, and there's a lot of big tradeoffs in 1.-4. to exchange for this.

Mature: It's been around longer, doing things better. Being able to force AFR came to it middle of last year. SLi has been forcing every render mode for three years+. That multimonitor support showed up a couple months ago. It too CF years to get to a pretty usable state.

Coded for: Games launch with profiles built in the games, or present in the drivers. CF users wait for days to months, or hope forcing AFR works.

Anyway, I'm sold on the GX2. I've used it for UT3, Crysis, and Jericho and it rocked my 25X16 monitor. So much so I ordered a second one from newegg this morning as a matter of fact.

 

[dadach]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: qbfx

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

This remains to be seen at this point. We don't really know the heat output of the 9800GX2 yet.

[...]

But we can speculate and there are some facts that give us the field to do that like lowering the clockspeeds on the old G92 chips which was already running quite hot, imagine two of those face to face, yay

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

As mentioned, the 9800GX2 will likely be "SLi in a slot" like the the 7950GX2 was, and SLi isn't known for being "buggy as hell". It's a more mature, flexible, and coded for technoolgy than Crossfire - there's no reason to speculate NVIDIA will fix something that isn't broken.

[...]

I'm not much into coding (except for some simple stuff on Delphi ) but I know one thing for sure - you can mix different cards and generations and use multiple monitors in Crossfire, and you CAN'T in SLi. So by what means is SLi more flexible and mature ?

The only results we've seen posted for temperature show it much cooler than the 3870X2.

As for more "flexible, mature, and coded for" I meant:

Flexible:
1. Can edit profiles, can't with Crossfire.
2. Can create profiles, can't with Crossfire.
3. Can force SFR and an additional AFR2 mode with Global settings, can't with Crossfire, they have AFR1 or fuggadaboutit. (note:SFR is more compatible with games)
4. Should be able to disable SLi on GX2, cannot on 3870X2. (can't say till later today)

While you are correct you can mix cards on CF, unless it's a X2 and 3870, I don't see why anyone would want to. Mating a slower card to your faster card just makes you benefit less from CF, errrr....woot?

Multi monitor support is the one feature CF has that is better, but it has little to do with gaming, and there's a lot of big tradeoffs in 1.-4. to exchange for this.

Mature: It's been around longer, doing things better. Being able to force AFR came to it middle of last year. SLi has been forcing every render mode for three years+. That multimonitor support showed up a couple months ago. It too CF years to get to a pretty usable state.

Coded for: Games launch with profiles built in the games, or present in the drivers. CF users wait for days to months, or hope forcing AFR works.

Anyway, I'm sold on the GX2. I've used it for UT3, Crysis, and Jericho and it rocked my 25X16 monitor. So much so I ordered a second one from newegg this morning as a matter of fact.

yeah right...we will wait for actual benchmarks instead of reading the biased opinion of nvidia employees

how come ha doesnt have to pay for this advertising space...oh wait, i might be onto something here

btw...as far as temperature on x2 goes...on gaming it came up to 80 degrees and the damn fan wouldnt spin up more than 5%...after using riva tuner and setting it to 35%, the temperature is around 50 degrees...hopefully the reviewers know how to do this...its obviously a problem in bios

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: dadach

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: qbfx

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

This remains to be seen at this point. We don't really know the heat output of the 9800GX2 yet.

[...]

But we can speculate and there are some facts that give us the field to do that like lowering the clockspeeds on the old G92 chips which was already running quite hot, imagine two of those face to face, yay

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

As mentioned, the 9800GX2 will likely be "SLi in a slot" like the the 7950GX2 was, and SLi isn't known for being "buggy as hell". It's a more mature, flexible, and coded for technoolgy than Crossfire - there's no reason to speculate NVIDIA will fix something that isn't broken.

[...]

I'm not much into coding (except for some simple stuff on Delphi ) but I know one thing for sure - you can mix different cards and generations and use multiple monitors in Crossfire, and you CAN'T in SLi. So by what means is SLi more flexible and mature ?

The only results we've seen posted for temperature show it much cooler than the 3870X2.

As for more "flexible, mature, and coded for" I meant:

Flexible:
1. Can edit profiles, can't with Crossfire.
2. Can create profiles, can't with Crossfire.
3. Can force SFR and an additional AFR2 mode with Global settings, can't with Crossfire, they have AFR1 or fuggadaboutit. (note:SFR is more compatible with games)
4. Should be able to disable SLi on GX2, cannot on 3870X2. (can't say till later today)

While you are correct you can mix cards on CF, unless it's a X2 and 3870, I don't see why anyone would want to. Mating a slower card to your faster card just makes you benefit less from CF, errrr....woot?

Multi monitor support is the one feature CF has that is better, but it has little to do with gaming, and there's a lot of big tradeoffs in 1.-4. to exchange for this.

Mature: It's been around longer, doing things better. Being able to force AFR came to it middle of last year. SLi has been forcing every render mode for three years+. That multimonitor support showed up a couple months ago. It too CF years to get to a pretty usable state.

Coded for: Games launch with profiles built in the games, or present in the drivers. CF users wait for days to months, or hope forcing AFR works.

Anyway, I'm sold on the GX2. I've used it for UT3, Crysis, and Jericho and it rocked my 25X16 monitor. So much so I ordered a second one from newegg this morning as a matter of fact.

yeah right...we will wait for actual benchmarks instead of reading the biased opinion of nvidia employees

how come ha doesnt have to pay for this advertising space...oh wait, i might be onto something here

btw...as far as temperature on x2 goes...on gaming it came up to 80 degrees and the damn fan wouldnt spin up more than 5%...after using riva tuner and setting it to 35%, the temperature is around 50 degrees...hopefully the reviewers know how to do this...its obviously a problem in bios

Dadach-
you frequently violate TOS with your personal attacks and make the forum a worse place.

I'm going to go through your posts and email links of all your clear violations to the moderators here, and see if you get to stay on the board.

Your ways are about to change, the forum guidelines exist to protect people from anti-social behavior like yours.

 

[dadach]

you have no arguments here so you have to go cry to mommy? its a shame

anyways...the funny part is that you were allowed to come back after deceiving and lying to the whole community here...it is the truth...and the biggest irony is that you are talking about protection and anti-social behaviour, after pulling your stunts and misrepresenting yourself

so, if stating the truth considers as a personal attack around here, then i am in violation...just cant stand liers sorry

At what point did you think that getting personal was ok? DO NOT GET PERSONAL.
If you just can't simply talk about the technology in the OP, then just don't post at all.

Anandtech Moderator - Keysplayr2003

 

[surfsatwerk]

Originally posted by: dadach

yeah right...we will wait for actual benchmarks instead of reading the biased opinion of nvidia employees

how come ha doesnt have to pay for this advertising space...oh wait, i might be onto something here

btw...as far as temperature on x2 goes...on gaming it came up to 80 degrees and the damn fan wouldnt spin up more than 5%...after using riva tuner and setting it to 35%, the temperature is around 50 degrees...hopefully the reviewers know how to do this...its obviously a problem in bios

http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...howthread.php?t=180875

Seems like this guy enjoys the card.

 

[qbfx]

Originally posted by: nRollo

[...]

The only results we've seen posted for temperature show it much cooler than the 3870X2.

[...]

While you are correct you can mix cards on CF, unless it's a X2 and 3870, I don't see why anyone would want to. Mating a slower card to your faster card just makes you benefit less from CF, errrr....woot?

[...]

The same results you take for impossible except for the temperature, alright then ...

You'll mix the slower card with the faster one because you CAN. Because when you upgrade your card you wont have to throw out your old one or sell it for 10 bucks. It'll still increase performance. If you don't have money to buy another 9800GX2 you wont benefit from SLi at all with your old 8800GTX, but you would benefit from the CF coupling your old 2900XT with your new 3870X2 even if it's not the optimal CF configuration. You have to be dumb to argue about that, it's a HUGE advantage.

 

[surfsatwerk]

Anand's got a review up, so less jibba-jabba and more reading imo.

And once again NVIDIA sets its self on top of the graphics card performance pile.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: surfsatwerk
Anand's got a review up, so less jibba-jabba and more reading imo.

And once again NVIDIA sets its self on top of the graphics card performance pile.

And once again they are also the most expensive too.

Remember the days when a high end video card was only 299.99? And then each successive generation after that tacked 50 dollars onto the top end price tag? 299 to 349 to 399 to 449 to 499 to 549 to 599 to 649, and higher for some niche cards like the 8800U. Double the price for SLI/Crossfire methods.