3870 X2 Reviews

[mascaras]

I have yet to see one of these cards above 875Mhz which most topping out at 855-865Mhz.

maybe because they have the same Bios BUG as HD3870s , and you have to flash the bios

>> http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=174746








regards

[SKYMTL]

i think thats because the Bios BUG (same as HD3870 single card) and you have to flash the bios

>> http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=174746


regards

Like I said in my review. Flashing the BIOS on this card is much more complicated than flashing a single-GPU card. I am in the process of looking into it but yikes...

[Monkeywoman]

well techpowerup did it some how. BTW, the person reviewing the card was W1izz, soo he prolly played around with the program to get it working; same with gpu-z. id expect ATITool 0.27 to have ocing abilities for the x2, when he releases it.

[mascaras]

Like I said in my review. Flashing the BIOS on this card is much more complicated than flashing a single-GPU card. I am in the process of looking into it but yikes...

did you try ATiwinflash to see if you can select each GPU for flash?? (like HD3870 Crossfire)


btw: 878Mhz here >> http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...53#post2730853

well techpowerup did it some how. BTW, the person reviewing the card was W1izz, soo he prolly played around with the program to get it working; same with gpu-z. id expect ATITool 0.27 to have ocing abilities for the x2, when he releases it.

AMDTOOL should work Fine ........

regards

[guess2098]

did you try ATiwinflash to see if you can select each GPU for flash?? (like HD3870 Crossfire)


btw: 878Mhz here >> http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...53#post2730853






AMDTOOL should work Fine ........

regards

CCC overclock for 3870x2 sometime does work properly. i am sure that 878 is not real 878.

[zbogorgon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeHgoyGRbuI

what about this ?

[DilTech]

I get the feeling things are about to get extremely controversial on this card...

(Editor's Note: You will see here today that our evaluation of the gaming performance produced by this video card does not track with some other big sites on the Web, and the simple fact is that those sites did not measure "gaming performance." Those sites measured frames per second performance in canned benchmarks and even some of them went as far as to use cut scenes from games to pull their data from. I have been part of this industry for years now and we are seeing now more than ever where real world gaming performance and gaming "benchmarks" are not coming to the same conclusions. Remember that when we evaluate video cards, we use them exactly the way you would use them. We play games on them and collect our data.

Another thing to think about is this. Do game developers want to provide built in benchmarks that show their games running slow? Or would the game developers rather put a game "benchmark" in that shows their game hauling ass? Do you think that slow benchmarks equal more sales?

The "3dfx way" of evaluating video cards is DEAD. It did have its time and place, but we are beyond that now. Any person using those methods to influence your video card purchase is likely irresponsible in doing so. You might even consider them liable. And I think that is going to come bubbling to the surface more and more as the industry matures. )

Look thru the discussion about the review, you'll see people attacking them left and right, mainly pointing out the Anandtech review, which after reading thru you notice they use demos/flybys/cutscenes to bench. For call of duty 4 Anandtech used the cutscene of the guy smoking a cigar for their numbers, this doesn't even test the performance of really any of the engines effects(explosions, gunshots, etc)... [H] also explain the reason they do things the way they do, and that's because of the FX series benchmark scores compared to what it was capable of in gaming itself.

Kinda makes me think it's time someone does a "benchmark vs real-world gameplay" review, merely to show if [H] has been full of it the past few years or if they've been right for quite some time. I personally haven't given [H] too much thought before, but they might just be on to something here.

Personally, I'm not taking sides until we see how this pans out. Either way, even if it took 2 gpus to do it, atleast ATi are finally making their way back into the fight. Hopefully it can compete with it's real competition!

[Monkeywoman]

wow, coolit has nice cooling systems, they are just BIG. cant wait to see what thermalright comes up with. 12 heat pipes anyone?

[guess2098]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeHgoyGRbuI

what about this ?

so you email them for their bios XD
or maybe asus' bios different than others. which i will know it tomorrow

[PhilDoc]

It does seem a little strange that the way benchmarks were done was not questioned so much until this card appeared.

[zbogorgon]

so you email them for their bios XD
or maybe asus' bios different than others. which i will know it tomorrow

maybe I will

[mascaras]

so you email them for their bios XD
or maybe asus' bios different than others. which i will know it tomorrow

HIS HD3870X2 also can do 918Mhz >> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/H...870_X2/23.html


maybe one of the Cores of your HD3870X2 not so good and looks like the max OC will be the Max Mhz the weakest Core can handle :

We managed to max out Overdrive with the highest settings available. We found that when you overclock, both GPUs will overclock at the same frequency. Therefore the GPU with the weakest overclocking potential will be your highest stable overclock.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

[guess2098]

HIS HD3870X2 also can do 918Mhz >> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/H...870_X2/23.html


maybe one of the Cores of your HD3870X2 not so good and looks like the max OC will be the Max Mhz the weakest Core can handle :

not for all 4 of sappire XD
might be sappire 3870x2 has bios lock. not sure

[Kunaak]

its funny to me, ATI keeps making cards only trying to match the 8800GTX... which sometimes it does... sometimes it doesnt.

still makes me glad I kept my GTX.
I am not a fan of crossfire, cause crossfire depends too much on driver support.
which means inconsistent performance.
sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.

with a single card, it always works, no matter what game you play.

[Krizby87]

Funny, cause even single card ATI need optimized driver too with their VLIW architecture. I guess no one learns their lessons since the introduction of HD2900XT and the promises of "future" drivers that deliver performance surpassing 8800GTX, only to see now that you need 2 of them to actually get anywhere near that.

[cegras]

I get the feeling things are about to get extremely controversial on this card...



Look thru the discussion about the review, you'll see people attacking them left and right, mainly pointing out the Anandtech review, which after reading thru you notice they use demos/flybys/cutscenes to bench. For call of duty 4 Anandtech used the cutscene of the guy smoking a cigar for their numbers, this doesn't even test the performance of really any of the engines effects(explosions, gunshots, etc)... [H] also explain the reason they do things the way they do, and that's because of the FX series benchmark scores compared to what it was capable of in gaming itself.

Kinda makes me think it's time someone does a "benchmark vs real-world gameplay" review, merely to show if [H] has been full of it the past few years or if they've been right for quite some time. I personally haven't given [H] too much thought before, but they might just be on to something here.

Personally, I'm not taking sides until we see how this pans out. Either way, even if it took 2 gpus to do it, atleast ATi are finally making their way back into the fight. Hopefully it can compete with it's real competition!

Yeah, but if ALL cards are run with the SAME benchmark, it still gives a RELATIVE scale of performance. I don't see what water your argument or [H]'s argument holds.

Funny, cause even single card ATI need optimized driver too with their VLIW architecture. I guess no one learns their lessons since the introduction of HD2900XT and the promises of "future" drivers that deliver performance surpassing 8800GTX, only to see now that you need 2 of them to actually get anywhere near that.

Considering games are built on the nvidia architecture? Go figure.

[GoThr3k]

its funny to me, ATI keeps making cards only trying to match the 8800GTX... which sometimes it does... sometimes it doesnt.

still makes me glad I kept my GTX.
I am not a fan of crossfire, cause crossfire depends too much on driver support.
which means inconsistent performance.
sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.

with a single card, it always works, no matter what game you play.

yeah right, 3870X2>> Ultra.....

[v_rr]

its funny to me, ATI keeps making cards only trying to match the 8800GTX... which sometimes it does... sometimes it doesnt.

still makes me glad I kept my GTX.
I am not a fan of crossfire, cause crossfire depends too much on driver support.
which means inconsistent performance.
sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.

with a single card, it always works, no matter what game you play.

HD 3870X2 is far away better then 8800 Ultra.
Deal with it

[DilTech]

Yeah, but if ALL cards are run with the SAME benchmark, it still gives a RELATIVE scale of performance. I don't see what water your argument or [H]'s argument holds.



Considering games are built on the nvidia architecture? Go figure.

It's not my argument, I merely see their point and would like to see it all further tested.

It does hold water though for the following reason...

You see, using cut-scenes and fly-bys don't use half of the effects actually used in gameplay. Why does this matter? Because a card can ROCK at some effects, and suck at others, and without testing the actual gameplay you wouldn't know which is better overall.

[Monkeywoman]

driver wise, ATI should drop legacy support, i.e. only support HD cards and up. most of the space in the drivers the release have all the optimizations for all the cards. if the only support HD and up, the driver size will be smaller but would allow more room for optimizations. you cant optimize an x700 to work with Crysis.

[Epsilon84]

It's not my argument, I merely see their point and would like to see it all further tested.

It does hold water though for the following reason...

You see, using cut-scenes and fly-bys don't use half of the effects actually used in gameplay. Why does this matter? Because a card can ROCK at some effects, and suck at others, and without testing the actual gameplay you wouldn't know which is better overall.

Exactly. A good example of this would be the CS:S stress test. It is nothing like real world gameplay. The same can be said about UT3 flybys.

Of course a lot of people are going to discredit [H] because of their 'controversial' results, but at least it offers a differing POV in gaming benchmarks.

Btw, interesting to see that EastCoastHandle has linked to every review except [H]'s. I wonder why...

[LordEC911]

with a single card, it always works, no matter what game you play.

Someone quickly forgot the first few months of their new GTX...

[cegras]

It's not my argument, I merely see their point and would like to see it all further tested.

It does hold water though for the following reason...

You see, using cut-scenes and fly-bys don't use half of the effects actually used in gameplay. Why does this matter? Because a card can ROCK at some effects, and suck at others, and without testing the actual gameplay you wouldn't know which is better overall.

Then, when you do that, you take game-level card optimizations into effect. E.g. number of SP's it was programmed to use, and whatever, such as some cards that have been developed on nvidia hardware.

So basically, all tests are null and void?

[Krizby87]

lol, the talk about games being developed on what hardware is trash talk. You buy video cards to like, what, playing games ? or simply showing your e-peen with your shiny new 512bit bus, 640 stream processors, 1.3B transistors card only to wait for magical drivers update for it to work correctly on newly released games ?

And Crytek should be more than happy cause they were able to develop on G80, don't want to make a game over a year late with only graphical as their strong point you know, might be trumped by other games before it even released.

[Scimitar]

Excellent performance! Definately needed some more horsepower in this game.