****ATi 3850 & 3870 Ramblings****

[RavenXXX2]

^^ It has the same AA performance as the 2900, going from a 2900 XT i know how good the GT is compared to a 2900 and as the 3870 is a 2900 performance wise, AA still sucks.

 

[The Asgard]

The 8800GT is noticeably faster for games. It's main weakness is the poor cooler, but it is single slot so will appeal to more people.

The cooler on the GT is fine. Its quiet and cools the card to reasonable temps. 700/2000 Overclock on the standard cooler. What are you expecting ??

Now if it sounded like a 2900XT I would agree with you.

 

[SimonMaltby]

At the above, have you remaned the .dll file like you have to for the 2900's to get 06 to run.

Thanks for that - did the job

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Thanks for that - did the job

Np.

 

[willhub]

Whats there aa performance like on these as it was totaly appauling on the 2900 pro @ xt i had, noticed a huge difference when i got a 8800gt.

Now I know I was not the only one who thought that

 

[something_totally_different]

Im resisting the latest Nvidia offerings to see what AMD can pull out of the bag.

Would rather go AMD to be honest as never been a fan of Nvidia driver support.

Blind loyalty, maybe.

lol, i love ATi myself but dear god you should have seen their driver support a few years back, it was bloody terrible

 

[vorm]

Nearly as bad as support for mobile GFX eh?

 

[something_totally_different]

Nearly as bad as support for mobile GFX eh?

but thats because people with mobile graphics solutions are not important.

 

[SimonMaltby]

Ok things now seem a whole lot better.
Suddenly Xfire started working properly in Vista (not really sure what i did).

My basic findings

Setup: Q6600 G0 at 3.6 400x9 rest as sig
Changed from 8800 Ultra Superclocked - single card to xfired 3870xt's
Cards not overclocked.

XP Pro: 3dmark06 came out at 18.8k (was circa 15k on the Ultra)
Vista 64 Ultimate: it came out at 17.6k (was circa 14k on the Ultra)

I have tried all of my games now and report the following...

Crysis (Full retail product)...
This seems to be running in Crossfire mode, its hard to tell if there is any optimisation, what i can tell is that compared to the Ultra the frame rate is poor... However, i note that i was running the Nvidia 'Cheat' drivers (i thought it strange that crysis defaulted to maxed out textures on the Ultra). I have had to knock the optimisations to 'High' from 'very high' and reduce from 1600 x 1200 odd to 1200 x 1000. If i am honest the image looks better on the ATI and it is now just as smooth.

UT3, Bioshock and Call of Duty 4...
These all run better than the Ultra maxed at 1920x1200... Very sweet.

Crysis is sofar the downside... everything else seems possitive.

So imo - xfired 3870 are better overall than a single 8800Ultra

 

[Tunez]

Can anyone tell me how a 3850 will run on a 22" resolution on games like crysis, COD4 and bf2? Im thinking of gettin both, and would like some money left over to get some recent titles.

Thanks

 

[Lightnix]

3850 seems to have met my expectations in benchmarks to be honest, still gonna get one unless the 256MB GT comes out and is a reasonable cost (none of this £140-50 crap). Roll on, December (when I should get money).

 

[marscay]

Ok things now seem a whole lot better.
Suddenly Xfire started working properly in Vista (not really sure what i did).

My basic findings

Setup: Q6600 G0 at 3.6 400x9 rest as sig
Changed from 8800 Ultra Superclocked - single card to xfired 3870xt's
Cards not overclocked.

XP Pro: 3dmark06 came out at 18.8k (was circa 15k on the Ultra)
Vista 64 Ultimate: it came out at 17.6k (was circa 14k on the Ultra)

I have tried all of my games now and report the following...

Crysis (Full retail product)...
This seems to be running in Crossfire mode, its hard to tell if there is any optimisation, what i can tell is that compared to the Ultra the frame rate is poor... However, i note that i was running the Nvidia 'Cheat' drivers (i thought it strange that crysis defaulted to maxed out textures on the Ultra). I have had to knock the optimisations to 'High' from 'very high' and reduce from 1600 x 1200 odd to 1200 x 1000. If i am honest the image looks better on the ATI and it is now just as smooth.

UT3, Bioshock and Call of Duty 4...
These all run better than the Ultra maxed at 1920x1200... Very sweet.

Crysis is sofar the downside... everything else seems possitive.

So imo - xfired 3870 are better overall than a single 8800Ultra

expected as much tbh, i sold my GTX with the intention of going GT SLI but i actually think i'm heading 3870 xfire just because of chipsets. plus i really don't think the 3870 is far behind the GT @ all and especially in a month or two - we know ATI are famous for pulling cards up with drivers.

i just don't like the price gouging right now so i'm waiting a little bit for my 2 3870's, it'll pay for my mcw60's

 

[gareth170]

Can anyone tell me how a 3850 will run on a 22" resolution on games like crysis, COD4 and bf2? Im thinking of gettin both, and would like some money left over to get some recent titles.

Thanks

if u overclock it then i guess it should be ok..

 

[bidermaier]

Its a pity that crossfirex does not work with intel chipsets. It would be great if i could buy an affordable 3870 now that i have to pay all the computer parts and a 3870x2 latter when i wanted to play Crysis in very high settings.

Mmm if the Phenoms do not dissapoint i might get a 790FX mobo instead of a X38

 

[gjc10212]

From Anandtech
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=10


'The other problem with CrossFire is that it simply doesn't always work, so a pair of 3850s is not necessarily a better option than a single 8800 GT or GTX. Case in point would be the two other games that we wanted to include here: Quake Wars and Call of Duty 4, both gave us lower frame rates with CF enabled than without. AMD's release notes for the Radeon HD 3800 drivers informs us that some applications may show a performance decrease with CF enabled, so we're not too surprised.'

So whats the answer? New drivers (maybe the new GTS due in Dec...?)

 

[gareth170]

So whats the answer? New drivers

which takes ati time to do them.. just like Medal of Honor Airborne it took 3 months for ati to add it to the driver, and 2 months for bioshock.

 

[Scougar]

Whats interesting is that have just read a review (uk site so I can't say where), and SLI was outperforming X-fire on every occasion with GT's. Fair enough 3 games were "the way they are meant ..." games, and the other nvidia the primary developer assist, but 3870 got spanked, and the crossfire implementation wasn't exactly very special. SLI got almost double figures from what I saw, which is what I wasn't expecting, as I thought Crossfire was far better than sli performance wise?

Matthew

 

[J.D]

Whats interesting is that have just read a review (uk site so I can't say where), and SLI was outperforming X-fire on every occasion with GT's. Fair enough 3 games were "the way they are meant ..." games, and the other nvidia the primary developer assist, but 3870 got spanked, and the crossfire implementation wasn't exactly very special. SLI got almost double figures from what I saw, which is what I wasn't expecting, as I thought Crossfire was far better than sli performance wise?

Matthew

Interesting this. I do think Crossfire will get a boost with a driver release or something as I'd be surprised if Nvidia just magically stepped up SLI to x-fire performance level and then some on top hmmmmmmmm. I'll wait and see on this one.

 

[Foxor`]

Reckon its worth changing the thermal paste to AS5 on one of these? im gettin one 2morrow and i wanna clock the ****** off it

 

[Final8y]

Whats interesting is that have just read a review (uk site so I can't say where), and SLI was outperforming X-fire on every occasion with GT's. Fair enough 3 games were "the way they are meant ..." games, and the other nvidia the primary developer assist, but 3870 got spanked, and the crossfire implementation wasn't exactly very special. SLI got almost double figures from what I saw, which is what I wasn't expecting, as I thought Crossfire was far better than sli performance wise?

Matthew

Well the cards have just come out so give them both time to get the most out of the cards & their multi gpu implementations on the current versions of hardware.