Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

Wait a second sam. You're saying that the 9800GX2, with 2 cores on 2 PCBs linked togeather would be relying on Sli for use as one?

I heard somewhere that the Ati 3870x2 will have the 2 GPUs linked togeather, thus not relying on CF for them to work as one.Confirmation on this matter would be great, because if this is false then the only advantage of buying 2 of the 3870x2 or 8900GX2 would be to run Quad SLi/CF on a motherboard with only 2 PCI-e slots.

 

The article said it's like the 7950 GX2, so yes it will be relying on SLI.

 

Things may have changed now, but the most popular card based on two graphics cards was the 7950GX2, which the 9800 is a direct copy of, using 8800GT PCBs rather than 7900GT PCBs. That needed SLI to work.

 

First review of the 3870x2 is out!!

http://www.pconline.com.cn/diy/graphics/reviews/0801/1210234.html (Sorry for the Chinese though. You can still read the graphs.)

What do you guys think? 18k in 3dmark06 aint bad... But then again thats about the same that I get with my stuff at stock (except for the CPU).

 

About what's to be expected isn't it? It's pleasing to see that the combination running in a single card hasn't dropped the performance much, if at all. Could you potentially mount a proper cooler on this thing? If you can, and it comes out for £250 or less, it's going on my "to be considered" list...

 

Heres the rundown:

It outperforms the 8800gtx Ultra in alot of benchmarks (not in Crysis)
It will be release in 1stQuarter this year


(posted in the comments)

Performance diffrence in terms of R680 to 8800Ultra
Bioshock 1280*1024 = 4% Slower
Bioshock 1920x1200 = 24% Faster
Bioshock 2560*1600 = 39% Faster

COJ 1280*1024 = 11% Faster
COJ 1920x1200 = 24% Faster
COJ 2560*1600 = 10% Faster

COJ 1280*1024 4AA 16AF = 13% Faster
COJ 1920x1200 4AA 16AF = 23% Faster

Lost Planet 1280*1024 = 27% Slower
Lost Planet 1920x1200 = 30% Slower
Lost Planet 2560*1600 = 37% Faster

Lost Planet 1280*1024 4AA 16AF = 18% Slower
Lost Planet 1920x1200 4AA 16AF = 18% Slower
Lost Planet 2560*1600 4AA 16AF = 10% Faster

Crysis 1280*1024 = 13% Slower
Crysis 1920x1200 = 2% Slower
Crysis 2560*1600 = 12% slower

COD4 1280*1024 = 42% Faster
COD4 1920x1200 = 32% Faster
COD4 2560*1600 = 26% Faster

COD4 1280*1024 4AA 16AF = 27% Faster
COD4 1920x1200 4AA 16AF = 20% Faster
COD4 2560*1600 4AA 16AF = 16% Faster

NFSro 1280*1024 = 32% Faster
NFSro 1920x1200 = 38% Faster

NFSro 1280*1024 4AA 16AF = 72% Slower
NFSro 1920x1200 4AA 16AF = 67% Slower

Serious Sam 2 1280*1024 HAA 16AF = 30% Faster
Serious Sam 2 1920x1200 HAA 16AF = 45% Faster
Serious Sam 2 2560*1600 HAA 16AF = 78% Faster

UT3 1280*1024 = 7% Faster
UT3 1920x1200 = 24% Faster
UT3 2560*1600 = 37% Faster

F.E.A.R. 1600*1200 = 20% Faster
F.E.A.R. 2048*1536 = 20% Faster

taken from asiancoastdj here http://www.incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=18473

Also, if you some of the comments over on incrysis, you will see that they're talking about how the PCI-e 2.0 boards give a better performance boost with this card.

Taken from the forum thread on incrysis.com

Thats what I was thinking... I think I will keep the 3870s, and essentialy they will be the exact same thing right?

Also, I dont think I could upgrade to this card even I wanted to. The 3870 nearly touches my HDD cage, never mind a PCB with 2 cores on it! Not to mention I would need to redo my cooling - if I was going to crossfire these.

Maybe I will crossfire these in the future... Who knows? I WANT MORE BENCHES!!!!

 

Let's see, I play COD4, Serious Sam 2 and FEAR from that list. I'd also probably play Crysis if I had a card powerful enough, so the card's looking good so far!

 

Wow, I don't know how you guys waded through all that chinese.

It looks like the heart of the matter is waymon's question - with two cores, does the 3870x2 need CF? It would seem to me that they would be able to split up the pixels and the game would not know there were two cores.

I believe that is what the original company that nvidia put out of business - what was the name? 3dfx, something like that - that's what they did about 8 years ago when they tried to compete with nvidia by putting two cores on a board - there was no crossfire at that time - so the game didn't know there were two cores.

So it seems to me that the engineers at AMD should be able to split the pixels, maybe by one core taking the top half of the screen, which I think is how 3dfx did it. If that is true, in other words no worries about requiring crossfire support, then that should be a screaming board!

So Sam, Ray, is that what the benches are showing? A board that runs almost twice as fast, with no crossfire support required??

-Rich

 

Ah but it IS internal crossfire.

 

Yeah 3dfx, I remember back when the Voodoo 3 came out - first time I actually heard a brand name model of a graphics card mentioned!

 

Ok, here are some leaked 9800GX2 benches I found:









It gets only 14k in 3dmark06... That stinks. I would've thought it would get at least 18k as it is 2 8800GTX (I believe) in Sli...
Source: http://bbs.chiphell.com/viewthread.php?tid=14847&page=1&authorid=6390

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=229048

 

As far as I can recall it's two 8800GT cards, not two 8800GTXes.

 

its probably, liekt he 7950X" which was two mobile 7950s, two moblie M8800GT .

 

Also you have to consider that Nvidia cards tend to do worse in Synthetic Applications, and ATi cards do very good in those. When it comes to the games themselves though many times the Nvidia cards that did worse in 3DMark will do better in games.

 

Abuzar,

You said "internal crossfire support."

Damn! So the 3870x2 board is simply two boards sitting on one piece of plastic - no engineering to get past the need for the game to support CF to realize the power of two cards?

If that's true, then it's no big deal - I mean, come on. The Voodoo board from 3dfx all those years ago didn't need the game to know that they had two boards combined.

I am a little disappointed if that is true, although I guess as Sam has mentioned, the price point might be even better than two separate 3870s like waymon has, which of course is good.

If crossfire is needed, then no advantage, Ray, over what you already have, except as you pointed out, it would give somebody the ability to run two of those and effectively be getting four 3870s in CF using only two slots - provided their case has the width to hold the monsters.

Anyway, in final analysis, if Sam puts it on his "to be considered" list, that sounds pretty good.

- Rich

 

I think one conclusion that we can easily draw is that crossfire is very easy to get wrong. With any luck the single card that manages it for you should reduce the chance of that happening. I sincerely hope that's the case anyway.

 

Yeah it's basically TWO 3870 GPU on one Card along with double the Ram.

 

:O

Did you see this benchmark?
http://www.fpslabs.com/reviews/video/amd-radeon-hd-3870-x2-review/page-6

 

Yeah I already looked at that. He is the guy who said that AMD is the new King of GFX cards didn't he?

 

Well, I wouldn't go that far, the X2 still gets raped in Crysis, but then everything does. The Call of Juarez bench is definitely impressive. It'd almost be playable at 2560x1600! lol