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
Single-board CrossFire
The Radeon HD 3870 X2 features a single CrossFire connector at the top of the PCB, meaning you'll eventually be able to add a second card to it to enable 3X or 4X CrossFire modes (depending on whether you add another 3870 X2 or just a single 3870).
Unfortunately driver support for the ATI CrossFireX technology isn't quite there yet, although AMD tells us to expect something in the March timeframe. Given that CeBIT is at the beginning of March we're guessing we'll see it at the show.
As we alluded to earlier, the fact that the 3870 X2 features two GPUs on a single board means that it doesn't rely on chipset support to enable its multi-GPU functionality: it'll work in any motherboard that would support a standard 3870.
Driver support is also seamless; you don't have to enable CrossFire or fiddle with any settings, the card just works. AMD's Catalyst drivers attempt to force an Alternate Frame Render (AFR) mode whenever possible, but be warned that if there are issues with the 3870 X2's multi-GPU rendering modes and a game you may only get single-GPU performance until AMD can fix the problem. In our testing we didn't encounter any such issues but as new games and OS revisions come out, as we saw with the GeForce 7950 GX2, there's always the chance.
AMD insists that by releasing a multi-GPU card it will encourage developers to take CrossFire more seriously. It is also committed to releasing future single-card, multi-GPU solutions but we'll just have to wait and see how true that is.
Last Minute Driver Drop: Competitive Crysis Performance
Today's launch was actually supposed to happen last week, on January 23rd. At the last minute we got an email from AMD stating that the embargo on 3870 X2 reviews had been pushed back to the 28th and we'd receive more information soon enough.
The reason for the delay was that over the weekend, before the launch on the 23rd, AMD was able to fix a number of driver issues that significantly impacted performance with the 3870 X2. The laundry list of fixes are as follows:
• Company of Heroes DX10 – AA now working on R680. Up to 70% faster at 2560x1600 4xAA
• Crysis DX10 – Improves up to ~60% on R680 and up to ~9% on RV670 on Island GPU test up to 1920x1200.
• Lost Planet DX10 – 16xAF scores on R680 improved ~20% and more. AF scores were horribly low before and should have been very close to no AF scores
• Oblivion – fixed random texture flashing
• COJ – no longer randomly goes to blackscreen after the DX10 benchmark run
• World in Conflict - 2560x1600x32 0xAA 16xAF quality=high we get 77% increase
• Fixed random WIC random crashing to desktop
• Fixed CF scaling for Colin McRae Dirt, Tiger Woods 08, and Blazing Angels2
• Fixed WIC DX9 having smearable text
With a list like that, we can understand why AMD pushed the NDA back - but most importantly, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 went from not scaling at all in Crysis to actually being competitive.
The Radeon 3800 series has always lagged behind NVIDIA when it came to performance under Crysis, and with the old driver Crysis was a black eye on an otherwise healthy track record for the 3870 X2. The new driver improved performance in Crysis by around 44 - 54% at high quality defaults depending on resolution. The driver update doesn't make Crysis any more playable at very high detail settings, but it makes the X2's launch a lot smoother than it would've been.
According to AMD, the fix in the driver that so positively impacted Crysis performance had to do with the resource management code. Apparently some overhead in the Vista memory manager had to be compensated for, and without the fix AMD was seeing quite poor scaling going to the 3870 X2.
The Test
| Test Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 3.00GHz |
| Motherboard | EVGA nForce 780i SLI Power Measurements done on ASUS P5E3 Deluxe |
| Video Cards | ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 ATI Radeon HD 3870 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (512MB) |
| Video Drivers | ATI: 8-451-2-080123a NVIDIA: 169.28 |
| Hard Drive | Seagate 7200.9 300GB 8MB 7200RPM |
| RAM | 4x1GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit |
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footballrunner800 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
its probably the drivers since Anandtech is still not using x64 and with a 1gb card that gives windows less than 3 gb of usable memory. The review says that AMD came with improvments on the last minute so imagine when they perfect themSunrise089 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
The drivers sure could.bill3 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I wont link the review, doubt it's even possible, but over at the H Brent's review shows the 3870X2 in a much worse light. They show it outright losing to a single 8800GTX in COD4, Crysis, and UT3, while squeaking out a win in HL2.In the forum review thread when the differences between Brent's review and Anand's was brought up, it was basically claimed by Kyle that Anand's review is illegitimate because he only benchmarks "canned demos" (if you're familiar with H such spiel is nothing new from them). Further Kyle goes so far as to claim "AMD experienced a 60% fps increase in the Crysis canned GPU benchmark, we saw a couple frames a second in real gameplay. "
Kyle also says your COD4 bench, one of the two you guys did that wasn't "canned" and therefore invalid, is also invalid because you only benched a cutscene He hasn't said but I'm assuming the only bench you guys did that meets the Kyle standard would be Bioshock since it is real gameplay timed by fraps.
There are a few platform differences between the reviews, but Kyle has poo-pooed these as not making any major difference.
Thought you guys might be interested..the thread is the 3870X2 review thread at H forums.
Parhel - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
HardOCP is just plain disreputable in every way. Their methodology is nonsense, their reviews are completely inadequate, and they continue to exist only because they drum up fake controversies and attempt to assassinate someone's character every few months.I'm not exaggerating when I say that I take what The Inquirer has to say more seriously.
Frumious1 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
I'm just shocked by how many people seem to place any relevance on the HOCP garbage. "It's because we're REAL WORLD and eveyone else is lies and fake stuff!" What a laugh. They play ONE resolution on TWO cards and pretend that's testing. Oh, and they don't use the same settings on both cards, they don't run at the same resolutions as previous reviews, they don't use the most comparable card (8800 GTS 512, anyone?), their testing isn't remotely similar to anything at any other site (hence they can just make claims about how they're doing it right and everyone else is wrong).... I could go on.Anyway, Anand and crew are best served in my opinion by completely ignoring this childish stuff from Kyle and his cohorts. You can choose: either all of the enthusiast sites except HOCP are wrong, or Kyle is wrong. Ocham's Razor suggests that the latter is far more likely.
AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - link
Yeah, one resolution and one competitor card doesn't say much.JWalk - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Yeah, Kyle is currently yelling at people in the forum thread. He has been asked multiple times why Anand, and most other sites, have a completely different view in their benchmarks. (Keep in mind that HardOCP only benchmarked 4 freaking games on 2 cards. According to Kyle, it would have been too much work to benchmark more games or more cards. Awww...not hard work...anything but that. LOL)Then, he either chants "canned" benchmarks over and over, or he tells the person asking the question to get lost and never come back to HardOCP.
It has even been pointed out more than once that the review sample he received might be the problem. Maybe he should try another card. But he is in full-blown arrogant a$$ mode right now. ;)
Devo2007 - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Not surprising coming from Kyle -- he comes across that way quite often.I don't like his reviews much -- not because of the canned benchmarks vs. real-world gameplay they preach about, bur rather the fact that they typically only compare one or two other cards to the one being tested. I have a GTS 320MB, and it would be nice to see whether the GTS 512MB would be worth it. Sadly, no direct comparison was done, because the GTS 320MB doesn't compete with said card.
I generally try to read several reviews to get an idea of a product - one site is never enough for these things. :)
boe - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
Usually the stock coolers are pretty dang loud. I'm wondering if any cooling solutions will be available from zalman, artic or the other standards?It would have been sweet if there was a db measurement chart.
Gholam - Monday, January 28, 2008 - link
GeCube has a version that looks like it has 2xZalman VF900-Cu on it. Custom PCB with 4 DVI outputs too.