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
Bioshock
Our Bioshock test involves a quick run through a section of the Medical Pavillion. Since the game has no built-in benchmark, our runthrough is manual and we rely on FRAPS to measure the average frame rate. All of the enemies are already dead in the area so we don't run the risk of running into one of them during our test.
The Radeon HD 3870 X2 manages to outperform every other single card solution in our tests, being bested only by the 8800 GT SLI which is a good $150 more expensive than the ATI solution. It's worth noting that it looks like AMD had finally solved its DirectX 10 performance issues under Bioshock; it's not just that the 3870 X2 performs well, but AMD's driver team seems to have done some good work over the last few driver revisions.
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DigitalFreak - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Does Crossfire still not allow you to create your own profiles, like SLI does? I'm still not convinced that ATI has gotten their head around the whole dual gpu driver thing yet.Chaitanya - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
More exited about nvidia Gf9800 GX2 than the radeon 3870 X2. I hear from my source in nvidia its got a completly diffrent apporach than radeons and gf 7950Gx2Ecmaster76 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
*only* 54fps at 2560!thats horrible! /sarcasm
I think Quake Wars fans will be just fine.
legoman666 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I was going to post the same thing. Only 54 @ 2560x1600? What more do you really want?wien - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
54FPS average is not nearly enough to ensure 100% fluid gameplay. If that was the minimum FPS it'd be close enough, but above 60FPS minimum is preferable. This is a high-end card so expecting extreme performance is hardly unreasonable.NullSubroutine - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Why not test DX9 Crysis benchmarks? Even in Vista you can do that and see a large performance jump in Crysis.I still fail to see why Vista only scores are being posted on Anandtech when Vista represents such a small percentage of users.
damncrackmonkey - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
You fail to see why DX10 performance is relevant to a DX10 card?Personally, I like to use the command line. Why don't these reviews address command line text rendering performance?
duploxxx - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
nice comment at the end...."if AMD can do it, NVIDIA can as well. And we all know how the 3870 vs. 8800 GT matchup turned out."
pls anand give an update on that, as far as i have read no real review was done by anand and the ones floating around on the web concluded all the same... 3870cf is scaling better then sli, now knowing the price of those 2 i don't see why 8800gt sli is faster the 3870x2 with higher r680 clocks, lets see how nvidia will downclock there dual pcb card to get it out.
and knowing that 2x 3850 = 8800gtx with lower price tag
navygaser - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
When you go over to Tom's Hardware and look at their benchmarks for this card you can see a big difference in the FPS numbers at the same settings.Looks like this card does much better on the AnandTech system. They use 4GB RAM vs. Tom's 2GB and the drivers look to be newer as well.
Could the RAM and the drives account for this big difference?
GenoR32 - Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - link
I've seen that review and that's true... if you compare it to this one, you see some diferences..IMO, Tom's Hardware is Intel(look at the Phenom 9600 Black Ed. Review.. he practically destroys AMD and kiss Intel) and Nvidia Biased... he cant admit the fact that this card is awesome...
i hate that biased reviews... Anand FTW