The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

true, but it means one PCI express 16x connector has to run two cards. Given the peformance of one of the cards running at 4x rather than 16x though, I doubt that's much of an issue, the performance drop was something like 10%. If each card gets 8x, it's probably going to be negligible.

 

http://www.bhfo.org/news/news-articles/hd-3870x2-benchmarked-r680-5.html

 

Shaffaaf,
From what I'm seeing it seems that the HD 3870x2 suffers more than the 8800 Ultra does when all the eye candy is turned on in most games. The performance hit seems fairly high. I also notice that the HD 3870x2 is kind of fussy as to what resolution you use for what game. It's CrossFire doesn't seem to work all that well, as the percentage of improvement is marginal at best over the 8800 Ultra. The HD 3870x2 may be the fastest card, but it should come with an * on that one, as not everything runs faster in the real world! We'll see what nVidia brings to the table in the coming weeks!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Might want to make those images links, they're vast!
I'm loving those benchmarks. As for Crysis, even the 8800 ultra isn't fast enough to make it playable at a decent resolution, so I'm not so interested in that test anyway. Bioshock and COD4 are games I liked though, so the good results are very pleasing.
In fact, by sheer coincidence the games I play out of that list are all the games where the ATI card fares best!

 

sammorris,

I would take that to mean the ATi would be best for your needs, so for you a perfect choice! In other games with all the eye candy turned on, it's a different story. Like I said, Ati can claim the crown, but only with an *! I would like to see another match up once they get all the bugs out of the drivers and bios firmware. There's just got to be so much untapped potential there. Either that or it will become a 1 hit wonder, and back to the drawing board for ATi!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I certainly hope there's more to be had from the X2, but there is a pretty strong chance IMO that slow initial drivers is just a cover-up for the product not performing as expected. After all, it's happened before.
I'm one for turning on all the eye candy in games, but I'm also one for games to look their best, and right now I still think that particular ball is in ATI's court, I'm just left waiting for them to make a card that can keep up when you do choose an image that great. Unless the tweaked drivers are better than expected, I may be waiting quite a while...

 

sammorris,

The thing is, what they're doing has been done before. Multiple GPUs are nothing new! So why doesn't this one work? ATi's done it before with great success, so what's wrong with this one. I just hope I'm right that when they get all the drivers and firmware straightened out, this card should kick ass!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Well, I never recall multi-GPUs being 100% successful in the first place. Given the results I've seen so far, it doesn't look like ATi are doing too badly, certainly not compared to the previous efforts. As you say though, if they can get the drivers sorted out the card could kick serious butt.

 

the latest drivers for the 3870 standard version have improved things on the single gpu front, not by much, but it does seem a little bit more spritely than before.

as for the bios issues, im sure they wont last long, there have been a couple bios updates for the 3870 already, and plenty of 3rd party ones.

I guess the only way we will see who stays king of the hill is wait and see, when a few non biased sites decide to bench them side by side.

As for games that run better on nvidia, havent you noticed its games that generaly have the 'nvidia the way its ment to be played' sponsorship, Ie - Nvidia have supplied the companys with core code for their gpu's so it is optimised for them.

For a performance test it would be better to use open gl over dx9 / dx10, as opengl will rely more on the optimisation of the drivers for the card, than the directx code which tells the system how to access the hardware(meaning the results can be biased)

"Direct3D expects the application to manage hardware resources; OpenGL makes the implementation do it. This tradeoff for OpenGL decreases difficulty in developing for the API, while at the same time increasing the complexity of creating an implementation (or driver) that performs well. With Direct3D, the developer must manage hardware resources independently - however, the implementation is simpler, and developers have the flexibility to allocate resources in the most efficient way possible for their application."

 

Hey guys check out this review on the E8400. I bought this chip when it came out for 189.00 USD. Cant wait till i finish getting all the parts for my rig and mess with this chip. Let me know what you guys think..

LegionHardware

 

4.4Ghz? Wow, that's some impressive overclocking! For £130, the CPU's not a bad deal either...

 

looking through that reveiw the phenom 9900 is looking rather tasty but lacks again when it comes to gaming, but still it was nice to see it having higher scores than the intel at 4.4ghz guess theyre still in catch up, but i dont think they are as far behind as expected now. still that intel does look tasty

 

I actually had bought the E6750. But after i saw this one and when it was coming out i sold the 6750 to my friend and went and purchased the E8400. So i hope i made a wise choice to use this chip to be my first sacrifice seeing as this is going to be my first overclock attemp.

 

reveiw says its only realy worth pushing it to 3.6 as there is little performance increase after that point. dare say you made a wise move

 

lol gotcha there buddy. I keep changing my mind as to what parts i want making building my rig take longer. I have decided to put a little more money into the motherboard and plan on getting the gigabyte x38 ddr2 to put the E8400 into. Im sure it will be happy there.

 

nice mobo, and ideal for 2 x 3870 x2's ;o) lol im sure it would kick ass in benchies then lol

 

Out of curiosity, does quad crossfire exist yet, with the 3870X2s?

 

Yeah not a big PC gamer myself. I just bought the gigabyte version of the 3850 512mb. If im correct you cant crossfire the 3850. I mostly game on console. But no biggie looking to try some pc games though after i build this rig

 

I'm pretty sure you can crossfire 3850s. Most people don't though, as the advantage of the 3850's extremely low price is lost if you buy two.

 

Ah yes but then i can still have a decent set and cheaper still if i should crossfire the 3850 in the future versus the 3870 and so forth. Something to think about i have been changing my mind so much this rig is never going to get built lol.