A look at 3870 X2

[dOm1naTOr]

While making our way through various exhibits at CES, Dave and I got a chance to get hands on time with AMD's upcoming ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card. As we mentioned in our initial coverage of the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series back in November, the 3870 X2 is a dual-GPU powered card that leverages ATI's CrossFire technology.
We can't disclose any specifications just yet, but can say that the 3870 X2 has a pair of R670 GPUs on single PCB coupled together via a PCI Express fanout switch from PLX. Frame Buffer memory configurations are likely to be similar to existing Radeon HD 3870 cards - per GPU - but representatives from ATI informed us that board parters are likely to design cards with up to 2GB frame buffers. As for power and performance, once again, we can't give specifics for now. However, think less power than a 2900 XT with performance on par or better than a Radeon HD 3870 CrossFire configuration.

read on:
http://www.hothardware.com/News/ATI_...2_R680_at_CES/
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/593/1/

Holy cow...
look at those cards. Even a single 3870 is powerful than 8800GTS 640MB. And they say the X2 version is better than 2*3870in crossfire.
Even a single 3870 has massive 320 shader units and if some is optimised for ATI, then its gonna be 2x better in 3870 than 8800. Unfortunately all games nowadays are optimised for nvidia. Still 3870 kicks hard nd outperforms 8800GTS 640.
Now consider 2*3870GX2 in crossfire. Total of 320*4=1280 shader units!!
There gonna be tough competition soon:
3870 vs 9600
3870 X2 2GB vs 9800

[desiibond]

^^ Yes. Though ATI Manufactures better cards, They do not get enough support from Game designers and moreover, they are under-advertised.

Remember, for some of the latest games, we see the logo of nvidia with a caption "Best played on nVidia cards". This is something that should be corrected like putting nvidia and ATI logos together.

[dOm1naTOr]

There were once many games which had ATI logos at starting. They were financially gud at that time. Now they dun have enuf bucks to give away to developers to put their logo in starting.

Intel nd nvidia is spending millions for advertising in every way possible. And they even make developers to relese patches to improve performance on their cards more often.

ATI's 3870 despite having 320 shader units, no game engines are not using even half of it, all due to non optimisation.

[desiibond]

This truly is a really bad time for AMD.

Buggy and under performing processors
Minimal acceptance of AMD's DX10 cards.
Not enough funds for marketing campaign.

Let's hope they recover after 2010. One good product can bring them back into the race.

[dOm1naTOr]

BTW, they are DX 10.1 cards.
Currently HD 3850 nd 3870 are very cheap. They are for 170$ nd 240$.
3850 outperforms 8800TS 320 nd costs only 170$[bout 6.5k]
But unfortunately they r not available in India directly on stores.

[nvidia]

^^Are you sure about the price of HD3850?

[dOm1naTOr]

see here
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814129101
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161211
They have HDMI adapter bundled

[x3060]

hell, nice card ....

[Harvik780]

Would really like to see its 3DMark 06 scores in cross fire with a QX9750.

[dOm1naTOr]

HD 3xxx series cards ll benefit from bout 30~35% performance boost in 3D rendering if used in Spider platform. So i think 3870 X2 performs best in Spider than in Intel's QX9xxx platform.

[dOm1naTOr]

More images:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/gallery/ces2..._r680_ces2008/

[phreak0ut]

If ATi provided better drivers for linux, I would have gone for that instead of buying the 8600GT. They should invest more on advertising too!

[dOm1naTOr]

@phreak0ut
as of now, ATI dun even haf enf funds for research even. So advertising is otaa qn.
Well, theyll be back in action if HD 3000 series get some gud sales.

nvidia is reducing prices[like 8800GT] only due to the competion in market by ATI. If ATI is wiped out, nvidia can shoot the price as everyone wud have no choice than nvidia.
So ATI to be alive in market is as important as nvidia.

[nvidia]

^^This is bad...
Intel and nvidia are together killing AMD-ATI

[Pathik]

Intel is on its way to Monopoly. We have to support AMD.
I encourage all my friends who want to get a new PC (low budget) to get a AMD based one instead of crying out "INTEL INTEL".

[dOm1naTOr]

Once they kill AMD-ATI, they will kill us
by overpricing

[nvidia]

Im an AMD supporter and a fan. Intel maybe good these days, but AMD is far better....

[Pathik]

^^ Don't be a fanboy dude.
Intel is way ahead of AMD but AMD is better when it comes to Budget VFM configs.

[dOm1naTOr]

8800 was way too costly and had less vfm till now until nvidia were forced to release the 8800GT with lower costs nd better vfm. They were forced due to the release of HD 3800 series.

[nvidia]

^^They all want to kill AMD and have monopoly over the market
We are the ultimate sufferers with very little or no price cuts

[dOm1naTOr]

Guys, got this month's CHIP today.
3850 nd 3870 being 55nmGPU, are highly overclocking friendly. Almost 55% boost in Crysis@1600*1200

[nvidia]

^^Because of AMD-ATI's lack of publicity, nobody knows the true potential of these cards

[dOm1naTOr]

3850 oc is better than 3870 stock. That is a 170$ card oced can compete 8800!!! and beat even 8800 640MB. !!!!

Heard tha 8800GT has only limited ocing with a max of 60~70Mhz in core nd some 100Mhz on memory.

[nvidia]

^^170$
Thats a killer price... Is it available in India?

[Who]

people buy nvidia as the games are usually tweaked for nvidia graphics cards , since AMD is being beaten in both ends , if they don't come up with something good this year , say good bye to AMD but i got to say hats off to both nvidia & intel marketing managers both of them did a great job also they are following a great stratgy first by destroying the AMD with full force then they can do whatever they like...only us customers have to pay if AMD shuts down right now...

So you guys hold the key , decide what you want..

[bikdel]

if we buy one Ati-AMD and another nvidia-intel product alternately... we'll be profited in the end

for now i just wanna ask..

WHEN WILL 3850 REACH THE MARKET AT AFFORDABLE PRICES??... THATS GONNA BE THE GFX CARD OF MY NEW PC..

[Harvik780]

You can buy it at the ITwares i think they have quoted the price as 12k.

[desiibond]

IMHO, If AMD gets the architecture right for processor and GPU's, they can integrate them into fusion and that will turn the tables in AMD's favour. But, when????? Looks like they got the right architecture now for GPU in 3700 series. Waiting for a good processor architecture.

[nish_higher]

isnt the news about 3870X2 ?i dont think its the same as 3870 which is available in india.coz its not a X2.so why r u posting everything related to it?
also that plain 3870 is nowhere near 8800GT.u might achieve 55% overclocking boost with it as written in chip but its still inferior to 8800GT in terms of fps.

[nvidia]

^^It might be inferior, but there is a super value for money