Hardware RV670: AMD ATI Radeon HD 3870

Only sucks in CrossFire when there isn't a profile....

 

Very nice review, are you going to make the power consumption standard, it's the first time i've noticed it and I think it'd prove to be extremely(!) helpful.

 

does the fact that the 8800 sli was only 3fps slower at 1900x1200 than at 1280x1024 indicate there was a CPU bottleneck?

 

So, with that in mind... If you are already the owner of a GTS640 with a reasonable OC and an SLi capable (but not 45nm compatable ) motherboard (glances at rig), would you advise picking up a cheap GTS640 (which obviously would get the same OC treatment) for playing Crysis on very high with reasonable frames?

 

thw powerplay stuff is amazing
with the same cooling my x1900 idled at around 30C compared to 19C on my 3870
load temps never went above 50 on x1900 but never go above 40 on my 3870

i need to flash the bios on my to get past 860 core tho, theres a shitload of headroom in the core for overclocking on this card

 

Interesting budget choice indeed.

BTW, is it only me that had problems with the index on the first page not working?

 

agree. specially the news post on Geforce9 coming next Feb LOL

well, some of us (not me) have the eVGA 90-days step up program (or step-down if u wanna look at it financially lol wonder if evga would credit us if we "step-down")

 

Forget just having GPUs talking via a HyperTransport-like bus. I'm guessing that the moment we see bandwidth between CPU and GPUs becoming an issue, AMD will rebuild their PCI-express controller onto the CPU, so when you plug an AMD video card into an AMD motherboard, rather than talking via PCI-express, they talk across HyperTransport. HyperTransport proved itself to be vastly superior to slower, northbridge-handled data transfer in the dual-core CPU wars, and I'm betting that AMD is smart enough to pull off a similar coup in the video card world the moment it becomes worth doing.

 

HT was (is) superior to PCI-E v1. V2, though, I'm not so sure about.

Still, it's disappointing that the very best ATi can come up with is beaten by the "Lowest of the high-end cards" from NVidia. And with GeForce 9 on the horizon, which you can bet has good power management, and DX 10.1, and wipes the floor with the current generation of cards from both players (Unless, of course, they make another GeForce FX mistake), things aren't looking good for team red... erm... green... erm... whatever colour AMD/ATi are these days.

Mind you, we've also yet to see NVidia's answer to Spider, what's happening with SLI (Will Quad SLI make a comeback?), How NV is going to handle PCI-E2... There's a lot of maybes at the moment, and I'm (still) going to play "Wait and see" 'til I decide who's won. This round, though, has to go to NVidia. the 8-series is dominating, and the promise of more will always whet the appetite of the enthusiasts out there.

 

shame about the steam updates preventing source engine based games, and possible future benchmarks on them... on a different note, hear in nz the 3870 and 8800 gt are within 5 dollars difference

 

So... a crossfired ati is almost as fast as a single 8800GT in most benches. Great find Tim! But jokes aside, i loved the whole dx10.1 vs dx10 story. Awesome writing.