ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2: 2 GPUs 1 Card, A Return to the High End

74 Comments

View All Comments

• Blacklash - Wednesday, January 30, 2008 - link

  I'd like to see a round up of ATi and nVidia's current mid to high range. Test them in games that allow 8xAA. I am hearing around in quite a few places ATi cards catch up or pass nVidia when you move from 4x to 8xAA. I'd love to see Anand prove this or debunk it.

• Giacomo - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - link

  I have to admit, even being a fan of nVIDIA, that I fell in love with this card. I like it in almost every aspect, I'm astonished by its combination of complexity and smooth working. Well: almost smooth, due to beta drivers. And this is an element of bigger interest too: there's even a bigger distance to put between itself and the rivals, when mature drivers are released.
  
  That said... I'm designing the last points of my new machine, I was ready to go with a 8800GTS 512MB, but suddenly stopped to look at this one... And I think I'll go with it.
  
  But... On which motherboard? These are the thoughts I'd like to share with you, I ask you: did you notice that Anandtech ones are among the best results in the various X2 reviews online? And did you notice they're obtained on a 780i platform?
  
  Initially, the most obvious idea was to buy this card together with an Asus Rampage Formula, so nicely reviewed on these pages. But now, looking at the system used for this review, the question: wouldn't my dear old desired eVGA 780i SLI an even better board for the new system, for this 3870 X2?
  
  Don't need crossfire nor SLI, really.
  
  Reviewer's opinion would be very appreciated too, of course, being the one who planned this "curious" match.
  
  Giacomo

• XrayDoc - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - link

  Does anyone know if the Intel X48 chipset will allow two of these cards to run in CrossfireX mode, or will you have to purchase an AMD chipset motherboard?

• karthikrg - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link

  This seems to be a stopgap solution though its heartening to see AMD/ATI having the faster single card solution now (albeit multi-GPU). With the Nvidia 9800GX2 due soon, the race is sure to get interesting. Hope AMD has something up its sleeves with the R700

• FullHiSpeed - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link

  This has nothing to do with graphics, but that PLX PEX8547 in the picture is a bridge, not a switch. Unfortunately, PLX doesn't make a Gen 2 PCIE bridge or switch. One would imagine that two GPU's on one board would benefit from the increased bandwidth of Gen 2. The PLX bridge/switch web page says the switches (and not the bridges) give "Low Latency Transfers" and "True Peer-to-Peer Data Transfers", both of which are probably important to this parallel processing application. This could explain why "the HD 3870 X2 is systematically 5% faster on average than the CrossFire solution" (nach Tom) in spite of the 16 lane Gen 1 bottleneck to the north bridge.

• Slaimus - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link

  I am still confused by the way AMD/ATI is allocating RV670 chips. If you check on newegg, there are well over 100 Sapphire 3870X2s in stock, but the Sapphire 3870 is still out of stock.
  
  The same thing was happening during the initial 3870/3850 launch, where way too many of the 3850 were produced compared to the 3870. Also, none of the 3850s were of the 512MB type.
  
  AMD should be filling the 3870 demand with the RV670 chips first, since it is probably the most profitable and most reasonable product.

• phaxmohdem - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link

  All I can think of is 2 GPU's 1 Cup :S

• flat6 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link

  The article says: "the performance is indeed higher than any single-card NVIDIA solution out today", but they didn't test an 8800 Ultra. In some cases the card was barely beating the 8800 GTX. How would it stack up against an Ultra? I understand that maybe they didn't compare against an 8800 Ultra because of the price difference, but the reviewer was all excited about AMD/ATI's return to the high-end; at the high-end, cost is no object. And why two 8800 GTs? If this is the high-end, why choose mid-price cards for SLI? Why not use two Ultras?
  
  I'm not saying a single Ultra would have trounced this card, only that I would have liked to see the comparison. I do think, however, that if they'd gone truly high-end on the SLI side, two Ultras might have killed it.
  
  

• strikeback03 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link

  http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3175...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3175...
  
  their previous testing showed the ultra as being similar in performance to the 8800 GTS 512 in most tests. So an Ultra (or 2 of them in SLI) might have done better in the AA tests, but not much else it would seem.

• flat6 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link

  Thanks, I just read it. Good grief. I didn't realize the GTS 512 was that fast. Point taken.