# ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 CrossFire Tested



## malware (Jan 25, 2008)

The title says it all. Sounds monstrously, but in reality benchmark results are not so promising. Maybe this is due to the fact that there aren't any official ATI X2 drivers at all, but time will show. Test system: INTEL Core 2 Duo QX9650, MSI X48 Platinum, Samsung M378BZ873CZ0-CF8 2x1024MB DDR3, Seagate Barracuda 10 SATAII 750GB (ST3750330AS/P，7,200rpm), Windows Vista. Read the full story here.



 

 

 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## InnocentCriminal (Jan 25, 2008)

Wicked cool! Can't wait to read this... 

*UPDATE:* That's rather disappointing, but I look forward to the official drivers and a re-run of benchies!


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## Esse (Jan 25, 2008)

Pointless. If there are no true drivers then why benchmark it. Thats like running a car in first gear to find the cars top speed.


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## Aeon19 (Jan 25, 2008)

ok for the drivers, but, how can those monsters only reach 20.70 or 16.28 FPS in Crysis?? Isn't that so poor? Also, are those FPS results?


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## Basard (Jan 25, 2008)

Lol... what a crappy ass review.  They run 3dmark, and Crysis only?  Plus there is no useful information, it's all just question marks, with random words in between. (sarcasm)

Just a single GPU can run Crysis at those frames.  And I think at this point, everybody is sick of Crysis anyways.


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## InnocentCriminal (Jan 25, 2008)

What stupid resolutions to run them at as well.


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## hacker111 (Jan 25, 2008)

so this tested...no bugs or problems with teh software?


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## von kain (Jan 25, 2008)

i have to say "wait people " it is just to soon i guess not good drivers not programs tweaked..etc


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## btarunr (Jan 25, 2008)

von kain said:


> i have to say "wait people " it is just to soon i guess not good drivers not programs tweaked..etc



We've waited long enough for a 'magical' driver for the HD2900 XT to unlock its true potential, wonder where it is. 

While ATI is regular with its driver updates for sure, you can't expect performance-blessing drivers from ATI on a regular basis.

On topic: Can't wait to see this compare to a tri-SLI setup of three 8800 GTX units, I'm expecting this to win.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Jan 25, 2008)

How the hell does the top card get any air into the fan?


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## AphexDreamer (Jan 25, 2008)

Hey can you essentaly have 4 of those X2 HD370 and have like a total of 8 FRAKING GPUS!

Is should be possable should it not?


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## btarunr (Jan 25, 2008)

^Looking at the fact that the card has only one gold-finger, I would say no. The four card jacob's ladder is already built with two cards.


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## rodneyhchef (Jan 25, 2008)

They only have 1xCF connector on the PCB so I think they can only run in dual card mode.


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## Wile E (Jan 25, 2008)

btarunr said:


> We've waited long enough for a 'magical' driver for the HD2900 XT to unlock its true potential, wonder where it is.


The 2900 has come miles from it's launch. Took a few months to get there, but it did. I'd pit mine against a G80 GTS any day.


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## mdm-adph (Jan 25, 2008)

Esse said:


> Pointless. If there are no true drivers then why benchmark it.



To give ATI-haters something to feel confident about?  Let's see if it works.


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## snuif09 (Jan 25, 2008)

3dmark06 is an useless program now. 
now its just an cpu test and the X2 drivers are crap now:shadedshu


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## iamollie (Jan 25, 2008)

visual representation of whats happening
Click herel


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## ShinyG (Jan 25, 2008)

This review smells fishy...
Especially when the result are so poor and one of the main "benchmark softwares" is a game notorious for being ATI "unfriendly".
I'm used to trust Tom's Hardware less and less with each "review" they post since that famous "AMD fries, Intel works even without a cooler" review.


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## DaMulta (Jan 25, 2008)

ShinyG said:


> This review smells fishy...
> Especially when the result are so poor and one of the main "benchmark softwares" is a game notorious for being ATI "unfriendly".
> I'm used to trust Tom's Hardware less and less with each "review" they post since that famous "AMD fries, Intel works even without a cooler" review.


But that was true.

I bet the driver for 4 GPUs isn't even out yet.


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## Disparia (Jan 25, 2008)

Seeing it on that motherboard... they're not as long as I thought they were.


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## mdm-adph (Jan 25, 2008)

Jizzler said:


> Seeing it on that motherboard... they're not as long as I thought they were.


It's because of the camera angle -- what you're not aware of is that the motherboard is actually four feet long.


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## asb2106 (Jan 25, 2008)

mdm-adph said:


> It's because of the camera angle -- what you're not aware of is that the motherboard is actually four feet long.


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## ShinyG (Jan 25, 2008)

DaMulta said:


> But that was true.



I know, I was trying to point out that some of their articles are bordering the pointless.
To explain (a bit off-topic): who cares what happens to your CPU if you remove the heatsink while it's working... To me, that article was just as bad and pointless as a Home Shopping Network ad...
Sorry for not being more specific in the first place!


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## Nyte (Jan 25, 2008)

ShinyG said:


> This review smells fishy...
> Especially when the result are so poor and one of the main "benchmark softwares" is a game notorious for being ATI "unfriendly".
> I'm used to trust Tom's Hardware less and less with each "review" they post since that famous "AMD fries, Intel works even without a cooler" review.



The reviewer in that site does not have the Quad CFX drivers.  Those are currently internal only and there are no reviewers (as of writing this post) that has them.  Terrible editor and terrible review.


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## CDdude55 (Jan 25, 2008)

Thats pretty g@y. And you guys (that posted the article) need to change the Intel Core 2 *Duo* QX9650 to Intel Core 2 *Extreme* QX9650. Is has more then two cores.


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## happita (Jan 25, 2008)

malware said:


> Source: Tom's Hardware CN



I definitely do not think that is the FPS in the GPU Test section. It's probably just a number that indicates the cards score.


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## Assimilator (Jan 25, 2008)

Wile E said:


> The 2900 has come miles from it's launch. Took a few months to get there, but it did. I'd pit mine against a G80 GTS any day.



And you'd still lose.


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## erocker (Jan 25, 2008)

Assimilator said:


> And you'd still lose.



Nope.  With the stock coolers, perhaps, but on water or anything better the 2900XT is the clear winner.


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## asb2106 (Jan 26, 2008)

Assimilator said:


> And you'd still lose.



have you looked at any of the 3dmark forums?  G80s are long behind 2900's and 3870's.  My 3870 OCed will out perform an ultra.


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## Wile E (Jan 26, 2008)

Assimilator said:


> And you'd still lose.


lol. Only if the GTS was clocked, and mine wasn't.

But it doesn't matter, my 8800GT spanks them both.


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## Dr. Spankenstein (Jan 26, 2008)

There is nowhere (that I can see) in the screenshots that shows there is Crossfire enabled.
There is only a picture at the very end that shows the cards in a Crossfire config.
All the CCC shots and GPU-z say no Crossfire.

What gives?

nvm, I plugged the link into Google Translate and (as stated earlier in the thread) the drivers offered no increase with the addition of a second card.


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## imperialreign (Jan 26, 2008)

happita said:


> I definitely do not think that is the FPS in the GPU Test section. It's probably just a number that indicates the cards score.



i agree with you, man - except for the "very high" setting, my single 1950 PRO on this P4 setup pulls those same numbers at those same resolution in "high" with no AA/AF.  My 1950s xFired return better scores than that.

Somethings odd about that review, IMO.  We don't even have official drivers for the 3870x2, and no one was even sure if the card would support 2 card Crossfire, and all of a sudden a review pops up . . .


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## phanbuey (Jan 26, 2008)

imperialreign said:


> i agree with you, man - except for the "very high" setting, my single 1950 PRO on this P4 setup pulls those same numbers at those same resolution in "high" with no AA/AF.  My 1950s xFired return better scores than that.
> 
> Somethings odd about that review, IMO.  We don't even have official drivers for the 3870x2, and no one was even sure if the card would support 2 card Crossfire, and all of a sudden a review pops up . . .



Yeah hahaha... totally true.  This is what happens when reviewers get too excited... >>> OMFG!!! Its SLOW in CF (b/c it does not support it yet...)


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## phanbuey (Jan 26, 2008)

asb2106 said:


> have you looked at any of the 3dmark forums?  G80s are long behind 2900's and 3870's.  My 3870 OCed will out perform an ultra.



Yes... Yes it will... it will also annihilate an Ultra in any game that supports advanced features like VLIW and tesselation... unfortunately for the HD line, no  games really do...

as for the X2... it is OK... but the problem with it is ... in a best-case scenario, it absolutely mashes an Ultra or two. In the worst case, however, its slightly slower than an 8800GT.  Ultimately, in a game like Crysis (which is coded like dogs&*t) any of the 8800 series will come on top, because they always perform 112 or 128 or 96 shader operations per clock (@ 1500MHz), where as a HD 3870 can do 64 - 320 per clock(@ core), buuuuut mostly  around 64 since VliW is not supported by dogsh*&y games.


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## fullinfusion (Jan 26, 2008)

i hear 4 gpu's only = x8 versus 2@x16


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## asb2106 (Jan 26, 2008)

fullinfusion said:


> i hear 4 gpu's only = x8 versus 2@x16



depends on the board, an x38/x48 will run dual 16x


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## niko084 (Jan 27, 2008)

Either these drivers are WICKED horrible, or these guys CAN'T setup a computer....

My single HD3850 @ 1280x1024 in Crysis GPU bench does 28 fps 1280x1024 very high, no AA/AF


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## kinc (Jan 29, 2008)

These reults are whitout crossfire. Only ONE 3870X2 working. System detects two cards but crossfire is not working with the drivers they use.


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## adrianx (Jan 29, 2008)

the driver have problems?

the 3870x2 say... that the card will work on pci-x x16, and the chip from the card will make crossfire for that two gpu from the pcb. Also the chip dont need a crossfire mainboard in order to activate the crossfire mode.

soo the chip is ...between the pci-x slot and the two 3870

I belive that the next step will be... a dual gpu on die (like a X2 cpu or core duo)


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## erocker (Jan 29, 2008)

adrianx said:


> the driver have problems?
> 
> the 3870x2 say... that the card will work on pci-x x16, and the chip from the card will make crossfire for that two gpu from the pcb. Also the chip dont need a crossfire mainboard in order to activate the crossfire mode.
> 
> ...



Read here: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=50989


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## adrianx (Feb 4, 2008)

erocker...  

you are more fast that me... or my internet connection is low


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