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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HilbertSpace - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
When giving the power consumption numbers, what is included with that? Ie. how many fans, DVD drives, HDs, etc?m0mentary - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I didn't see an actual noise chart in that review, but from what I understood, the 3870GX2 is louder than an 8800 SLI setup? I wonder if anyone will step in with a decent after market cooler solution. Personally I don't enjoy playing with headphones, so GPU fan noise concerns me.cmdrdredd - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
then turn up your speakersdrebo - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I don't know. It would have been nice to see power consumption for the 8800GT SLI setup as well as noise for all of them.I don't know that I buy that power consumption would scale linearly, so it'd be interesting to see the difference between the 3870 X2 and the 8800GT SLI setup.
Comdrpopnfresh - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I'm impressed. Looking at the power consumption figures, and the gains compared to a single 3870, this is pretty good. They got some big performance gains without breaking the bank on power. How would one of these cards overclock though?yehuda - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
No, I'm not impressed. You guys should check the isolated power consumption of a single-core 3870 card:http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/rad...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/...lay/rade...
At idle, a single-core card draws just 18.7W (or 23W if you look at it through a 82% efficient power supply). How is it that adding a second core increases idle power draw by 41W?
It would seem as if PowerPlay is broken.
erikejw - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - link
ATI smokes Nvidia when it comes to idle power draw.Spoelie - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
GDDR4 consumes less power as GDDR3, given that the speed difference is not that great.FITCamaro - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Also you figure the extra hardware on the card itself to link the two GPUs.yehuda - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - link
Yes, it could be that. Tech Report said the bridge chip eats 10-12 watts.