ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 @ [H]

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Amazing to see the 8800GTX still being the performance king. Incredible. Man I feel bad for AMD :(.

Also isnt 4x AA at 1920 x 1200 kinda useless? So many pixels already that it wont make a difference:/
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Good point.

Could the difference in operating system cause a discrepancy. Not sure how NV and ATI's drivers compare for vista 64 or 32.

Is it at all possible since the [H] was using vista 64 that ATI's x64 drivers Sux :D? I know they gave multiple revisions but I believe that the test systems difference or anand running some canned benchies has to be what is going on.
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From my experiences so far with the OS, no big differences 32 to 64-bit. I think the big difference you are seeing is Real World Vs. Canned. You guys are just beginning to see the huge difference between the two. I have watched this for years, the gap gets wider and wider. The canned benchmarking tools getting worse and worse all the time. The fact is that the game devs don't want to put in benchmarks that show their games running slow, do they? It impacts their game sales. They want benchmarks that HAUL ASS even if it in no way reflects game play.
 
haadij404 said:
Amazing to see the 8800GTX still being the performance king. Incredible. Man I feel bad for AMD :(.

Also isnt 4x AA at 1920 x 1200 kinda useless? So many pixels already that it wont make a difference:/
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People seem to think that when you scale res fsa becomes pointless but its not the case, higher res = jaggies become smaller but theres more of them. Fsaa still makes a difference even @ 30" montor res 2560x1600.
 
Gonna be interesting in the morning when people read the reviews and the monkey shit fight starts saying this review "pwns" that one or whatever. Think i'll get the popcorn in early.
 
haadij404 said:
Amazing to see the 8800GTX still being the performance king. Incredible. Man I feel bad for AMD :(.

Also isnt 4x AA at 1920 x 1200 kinda useless? So many pixels already that it wont make a difference:/
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Well the 3870 X2 is way far from being a bad product, and if the price settles out at the $399 level it is going to be a great value for those with less than 24" monitors.

And yes, 4XAA does make a difference at 1920x1200. Being able to run transparency AA at those levels is a BIG deal playing games that take place outside a lot like war games etc.
 
Chris_B said:
People seem to think that when you scale res fsa becomes pointless but its not the case, higher res = jaggies become smaller but theres more of them. Fsaa still makes a difference even @ 30" montor res 2560x1600.
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Makes sense. I play at 1920 x 1200 and in COD4 I set the AA to 2x and the AF to 16x. I don't notice a difference between 4x and 2x but lowering to 2x makes the game much smoother during intense sequences.

It is a good way to bench a card though.
 
POPEGOLD said:
Quick look at anand review and he has the 3870x2 trouncing the 8800gx across the board and with more games. Doesnt look like he ran with AA on howerver
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http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=4

They ran COD4 at 1680X1050 4X AA, 3870 X2 is 45% faster than a 8800GTX
But this site claims the 3870X2 is slower even at lower setting??

well, maybe it has something to do with the "discounts" if you buy nvida cards from site :p
 
I'm not a troll, I simply stated that nVidia is king.
I've said this time and time again, and now my posts are being edited because I am devout to nVidia?

How many people started making 3870 x2 threads saying ATI is back? How many people said "I can't wait to ditch <card here> because this card is going to make me change my allegiance"? Too many.

ATI is a spade, a spade is always a spade. Tell me how their dual graphics foray is going? Remember Crossfire that used an external DVI Dongle? Now they're using an SLI bridge and finally they've stepped into the realm of a single PCB dual GPU solution that CANNOT beat 1 GTX? What's wrong in the world?

Honestly if I'm a troll for being honest and a clear forcaster of this disaster that was to come then I'm out of things to say... Because I don't think I deserved that edit
 
bangmal said:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=4

They ran COD4 at 1680X1050 4X AA, 3870 X2 is 45% faster than a 8800GTX
But this site claims the 3870X2 is slower even at lower setting??

well, maybe it has something to do with the "discounts" if you buy nvida cards from site :p
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The biggest difference that we actually played the game to figure out our numbers and Anand did nothing more that run fraps during a cut scene from the game......they did even use a game demo, which still sucks, but not as bad.

The fact of the matter is that we picked the games we know are the most graphically demanding while also being very popular. And we played them, just like you are going to do.
 
bangmal said:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3209&p=4

They ran COD4 at 1680X1050 4X AA, 3870 X2 is 45% faster than a 8800GTX
But this site claims the 3870X2 is slower even at lower setting??

well, maybe it has something to do with the "discounts" if you buy nvida cards from site :p
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in an earlier post in this thread, Kyle mentioned that anand uses the canned benchmark in COD4, which does not reflect the real meat of the gameplay.
 
I've been a huge proponent of the real world reviews since you guys started doing them Kyle. Maybe this will enlighten a few more people.

Thanks for taking the time to give us what we need to make an informed decision.
 
I think the drivers in a few month will help X2 beat the GTX.

How come the ATI cards are always getting owned when AA is on?
 
shraz said:
I think the drivers in a few month will help X2 beat the GTX.

How come the ATI cards are always getting owned when AA is on?
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If you go back and read our original 2900 review, you will see where we basically showed AA being broken. There were a bunch of folks that showed that card "being better" than NVIDIA that day too, but we did not, and it did not shake out that way when it came down to playing games with it. This card is nothing more than two 55nm 2900 on one card....for the most part.
 
I added this to the conclusion of our article.

(Editor's Note: You will see here today that our evaluation of the gaming performance produced by this video card does not track with some other big sites on the Web, and the simple fact is that those sites did not measure "gaming performance." Those sites measured frames per second performance in canned benchmarks and even some of them went as far as to use cut scenes from games to pull their data from. I have been part of this industry for years now and we are seeing now more than ever where real world gaming performance and gaming "benchmarks" are not coming to the same conclusions. Remember that when we evaluate video cards, we use them exactly the way you would use them. We play games on them and collect our data.

Another thing to think about is this. Do game developers want to provide built in benchmarks that show their games running slow? Or would the game developers rather put a game "benchmark" in that shows their game hauling ass? Do you think that slow benchmarks equal more sales?

The "3dfx way" of evaluating video cards is DEAD. It did have its time and place, but we are beyond that now. Any person using those methods to influence your video card purchase is likely irresponsible in doing so. You might even consider them liable. And I think that is going to come bubbling to the surface more and more as the industry matures. )
 
i dont know much about crossfire because im an nvidia guy (im not here to hate)

But i would think that 2 gpus would be better than one. Is this more of a game issue in that the games are not coded to use dual gpus efficiently or maybe a driver issue?

The gains over the 8800gtx does not warrant the purchase of this card for me. (I usually buy the best graphics card for whatever game im playing which is cod4 in this case)
 
You guys also overlooked one big difference between [H]ardOCP's test setup and all the other guy's, [H] was running Vista 64bit. AnandTech was running 32bit and Tom didnt specify.

Could be something to do with it?
 
WhiteZero said:
You guys also overlooked one big difference between [H]ardOCP's test setup and all the other guy's, [H] was running Vista 64bit. AnandTech was running 32bit and Tom didnt specify.

Could be something to do with it?
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THG did not specify shit. You could not even begin to recreate their testing as you have no idea how it was even done.

But I did comment on the 64-bit vs. 32-bit thing above, and in our experience we have not seen it been that big of an impact on games.
 
THG is the site that has been extremely biased and "messed up" for the past few years, right?
 
I knew this was going to happen lol- When i look at new hardware i rely on [H] and Anand and bit tech for reviews- Have for quite awhile,

I knew this card wasn't going to even best 8800 ultras lol.

Seeing this card costs about 500+ here in canada.

Interesting no one reviewd and Ultra to it- Im assuming comparing the two reviews that the Ultra will beat it in most apps and the 3870x2 might be on par or beat the ultra in some specific games- HL2 etc

One odd thing about Anand's review- is this : "It has been far too long since AMD/ATI have been at the top of the performance charts; the crown had been lost on both CPU and GPU fronts, but today's Radeon HD 3870 X2 introduction begins to change that. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is the most elegant single-card, multi-GPU design we've seen to date and the performance is indeed higher than any single-card NVIDIA solution out today."

Yet he didnt review 8800 ultras....ok...

Anyways my contention with these cards was 2X 3870X2's vs 2X 8800 Ultras. And it seems the ultras would crown the former easily.
 
They are making the 3870x2 to be better because if AMD keeps sucking Nvida will own the market!

Let them win!!
 
tvdang7 said:
why does anandtech's kick the 8800gtx's ass? must be using diff drivers
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READ. Kyle used actual gameplay to benchmark the cards, everyone else used canned benchmarks, demos or cutscenes that had little to do with the actual engine of the game being "tested".
 
There are so many mixed reviews. I can't wait till these cards get out into the public for more first hand real gaming experiences.
 
So in Kyle's review both cards didn't have identical rendering situation? If so then this [H] review can be forgotten.
 
Wow, I usually dont even bother looking at H reviews anymore, but this one was particularly bad. They only benched two cards, and over 4 games? Methinks this "bet playable settings" nonsense is so difficult that Kyle got lazy and just drastically cut down the amount of benchmarking he actually does. Most other sites benchmark at least a half dozen cards over 8-10 games, giving much more data. For example, Kyle's review doesn't even tell us if the X2 is faster than a 3870 alone, we just have to take his word for it as he says it. Let alone any other cards. I pity anybody who would try to make a X2 buying decision on Kyle's review alone as it tells us almost nothing. Luckily Kyle must know myriad other sites with real benchmarks are just a mouse click away, otherwise I doubt he would have done such a unenlightening, stripped down review.

I have always said if H wants to do something different than the umpteen sites doing benchmarks, then he should do a similar format to the other sites but use only manual fraps benchies. This best playable setting apples to oranges crap has needed to go from day one.
 
I hate to point this out, but Brent did the review, not Kyle.

:p

And I will take [H]'s word over anyone else's as I know everything that they do to test cards.
 
Well 8800 GTX is the card to compete at the moment. There's no bigger reason to compare it to anything else (with possible exclusion with 8800 GT SLI which could resemble 9800 GX2 performance).

This "best playable resolution" thingy is actually nice one; it tells the actual realistic performance difference between these cards, not just differencies on one particular setting.
 
Rabid Badger said:
READ. Kyle used actual gameplay to benchmark the cards, everyone else used canned benchmarks, demos or cutscenes that had little to do with the actual engine of the game being "tested".
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You're basing this on a pre-supposition, one that is unproven. That being that in engine cutscenes have no performance relation to real gameplay.

I suspect they do, in fact I suspect it's a lot. Certainly it bears a hell of a lot more investigating than is going on here.

Otherwise you're suggesting that somehow the X2 is running the COD4 cutscene much faster than it runs the actual game, relative to the Nvidia card, and since AMD couldn't have known what Anand would bench, they couldn't have optimized for it, so this performance discrepancy of 60% or more would have had to just happen naturally,

Yeah, that's a whole nother kettle of highly unlikely fish.

Oh and I even forgot, have historically Anand and other benches been so far different fro H? I strongly suspect not, so once again one wonders why they are suddenly only now being tabbed as drastically innaccurate...using the same methods.

Also Kyle's entire thesis vis a vis Crysis performance, suggests strongly that AMD is cheating the benchmark. But where is that proof? Shouldn't such cheating be fairly easy to discover if it exists?

We'll never get to the answer here but I suggest we take both sides with a grain of salt..

Oh and finally Anand did at least one game test that fully lived up to everything H demand, A fraps bench of live gameplay, Bioshock, and X2 won handily. Of course since Brent didn't bench that game we cant compare anyway.
 
I wouldn't call it laziness. I would, however, like to see how it scales across multiple resolutions. And a Quad Core test bed would be nice too :)
Would be nice to have both Apples to Apples and Apples to Oranges.
Bottom line though, canned benchmarks suck.
 
Sharky974 said:
Wow, I usually dont even bother looking at H reviews anymore, but this one was particularly bad. They only benched two cards, and over 4 games? Methinks this "bet playable settings" nonsense is so difficult that Kyle got lazy and just drastically cut down the amount of benchmarking he actually does. Most other sites benchmark at least a half dozen cards over 8-10 games, giving much more data. For example, Kyle's review doesn't even tell us if the X2 is faster than a 3870 alone, we just have to take his word for it as he says it. Let alone any other cards. I pity anybody who would try to make a X2 buying decision on Kyle's review alone as it tells us almost nothing. Luckily Kyle must know myriad other sites with real benchmarks are just a mouse click away, otherwise I doubt he would have done such a unenlightening, stripped down review.

I have always said if H wants to do something different than the umpteen sites doing benchmarks, then he should do a similar format to the other sites but use only manual fraps benchies. This best playable setting apples to oranges crap has needed to go from day one.
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Thanks for coming out! and being a good ol fanboy. LOL

Ive been reading [H] reviews for god knows how long- but just became a forum user this week LOL

Now let me ask you- why exactly is it stupid the benched two cards? This is stating simply that ATI did not catch up to 8800 GTX or 8800 Ultra (somehting that came out a year and a half ago.
 
so many of you are telling me the "cut scene" runs fast while the actual game play is slow. WTF does that even make sense? im so confused

well is hard using the same driver as anandtech does?
 
Mehen said:
I wouldn't call it laziness. I would, however, like to see how it scales across multiple resolutions. And a Quad Core test bed would be nice too :)
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More benchmarks on other resolutions and more games would've been nice. Article seemed kind of short.
 
tvdang7 said:
so many of you are telling me the "cut scene" runs fast while the actual game play is slow. WTF does that even make sense? im so confused
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Dunno, cut scenes generally take control away from you and show you only what the game wants you to see, suppose scenes like that in some games could be dumbed down to keep a consistant frame rate and keep the characters mouths in sync with the audio maybe?
 
So [H] receives comission for selling Nvidia cards? What can you expect in that kind of situation :rolleyes:
 
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