Review: ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 - getting back in the game

by Tarinder Sandhu on 28 January 2008, 10:41

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaleg

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System setup and notes


Hardware

Graphics cards ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 1024MiB ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MiB MSI NX8800GTS-T2D512E-OC ZOTAC GeForce 8800 GT 512MiB AMP! Edition NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB
Current pricing, including VAT £279 £149 £209 £189 £235
Shader Model 4.1 4.0
Stream processors 640 320 128 112 128
GPU clock speed (MHz) 825 777 730 700 576
Shader clock speed (MHz) 825 777 1817 1674 1350
Memory clock speed (MHz) 1802 2252 1944 2000 1800
Memory bus width (Bits) 256 384
CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 LGA775 (3.0GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, quad-core)
Motherboard MSI X48 Platinum (X48+ICH9R) eVGA NF68 (nForce 680i SLI)
Motherboard BIOS P2B2 P31
Mainboard software Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016 NVIDIA device driver 15.08
Memory 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR3-1066 4GiB (4 x 1GiB) DDR2-1066
Memory timings and speed 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1066MHz 5-5-5-15 2T @ 1066MHz
PSU Enermax Galaxy DXX 850W Gigabyte ODIN GT 800W
Monitor Dell 30in 3007WFP - 2,560x1,600
Disk drive(s) Seagate 160GiB SATAII (ST3160812AS)
Graphics driver CATALYST 8.2 beta CATALYST 7.12 NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25 NVIDIA ForceWare 169.04 NVIDIA ForceWare 169.25 (169.21 for XP)
Operating system Windows Vista Business, 64-bit, Windows XP SP2 32-bit (X2 and GTX)

Software

3D Benchmarks Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts v2.103: DX9
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 (demo_00010.dem, map Valley): OpenGL
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition v1.004 built-in benchmark: DX10

Far Cry v1.33: DX9
Quake 4 v1.30 - HEXUS-recorded netdemo benchmark: OpenGL
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 - HEXUS-recorded benchmark: DX9


Notes

We've thrown in a default-clocked Radeon HD 3870 512MiB and a trio of NVIDIA GPUs that dissect ATI's pricing. NVIDIA, too, has refreshed its mid-to-high-end line-up with SKUs that offer GTX-matching performance at a lower price-point. Indeed, the GT/GTS cards are both pre-overclocked by the respective manufacturers.

To see how the 'X2 compares to a two-card CrossFire Radeon HD 3870 512MiB setup, we've included those results, just for reference.

We've also added in our older benchmark suite, to see just how the 'X2 compares against NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTX in non-TWIMTBP-sponsored titles.

Benchmarks were conducted at 1,680x1,050, 1,920x1,200, and 2,560x1,600 with decent image-quality settings to boot.