ATI Radeon HD 3870 & 3850: A Return to Competition
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on November 15, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
2, 3 or 4 GPUs: Introducing CrossFire X
DirectX 9 didn't support more than 3 frame render ahead, and we saw this manifest in less than optimal scaling on NVIDIA's quad SLI solutions. Now that Vista and DirectX 10 are around, it's possible to render 4 or more frames ahead, and quad solutions have a higher potential. AMD is taking advantage of this via CrossFireX which currently enables up to 4 GPUs to be connected in the same system with three CrossFire bridges. It's not a pretty solution: you'll need a non NVIDIA chipset motherboard with 4 physical x16 PCIe slots.
Aside from potential performance scalability, there is also the capability to support up to 8 monitors from one system with 4 graphics cards installed. While this isn't as universally desired, it could be something fun to play with. We don't currently have a platform solution that we can use to test this yet, but we will certainly test this when we are able.
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Roy2001 - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Well, once I played games with AA enabled, I would never turn it off. I would rather lower the resolution.falacy - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
That's a giant "ME TOO!" for me.my old ATi 9800XT would run 4x AA at 1024x768 in most games and I found that more enjoyable than running 1280x1024 without AA. The 60Hz fliker of the monitor at 1280x1024 played a role in that I am sure, but mostly the trouble with gaming without AA is that objects in the distance tend to shimmer in an unnatural way that seems to pull me out of the moment. So, indeed lower resolution + 4x AA = a better experience than higher resolution that has distracting artifacts.
DrMrLordX - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Alright, thanks. I actually overlooked the AA tests on Oblivion. Silly me.Mostly I was interested in knowing if the 3870 had better results running with 4x AA than the 2900XT. Interestingly enough, the 3870 doesn't seem to lose a lot with 4x AA, especially at high resolutions. The 8800GT is another story.
munky - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
But... I'd like to see more games benchmarked, and with AA preferably.StormRider - Friday, November 16, 2007 - link
Is anyone else bothered by the transistor count of 666 million? Couldn't they have done something so that it was 665 million or 667 million instead?aeternitas - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link
lol How stupid. As you go out using this card to obviously kill some sort of opponent, you're bothered by this?Kaleid - Friday, November 23, 2007 - link
Just a number, nothing more to it.