New Drivers Cause HD3870 to Beat 8800GT with High RES & AA

[Cyber-Mav]

The only reason the GT and new GTS are significantly faster over the old GTS is because they have had major changes, the texture units etc... have been increased, the 3870's though are still the same 320 streams, 16 rops etc... exact same as 2900.

yep, you are correct thats why the performance of the 3870 is around the same as a 2900, and thats not saying much seeing how a 2900 is slower than a 8800gt, slap on the AA and the 2900 is slower than an old skool gts 640.

the onlything fishy is the transistor count, 2900 got 700, 3870 has 666, im guessing the reduction could be due to the smaller memory interface and ringbus controller complexity.

either way the 3870 doesn;t have the architectural advantages over the 2900 like the new g92 gt/gts have over the g80 8800gts/gtx.

not sure why these guys don;t understand what your saying loadsamoney, what your saying makes perfect sense, you probably have to dumb it down for the fanboys.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

The only reason the 3870 is better than the 2900, is because it uses a lot less power due to the die shrink, and the quieter cooler as Mav said.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Yes 3dmark means nothing.

why is it all the people who get low scores always say that?

 

[helmutcheese]

@ Snowdog, Severe bad luck m8 , esp problems over and over.

I got zero issues since my GF4 TI 4600 (got it replaced no probs after 1 year), never had issues before or after it with any card.

Anyhow, I said my piece, and unless they same results start to turn up on more sites we actually know, then they are BS.

Back to my game now.

 

[willhub]

why is it all the people who get low scores always say that?

My score is fine at 13298 but It still goes to show 3dmark means nothing.

 

[Soul Rider]

and for those who are not aware the 2900 performance is crap compared to even a 8800gt, thats why the 3870 is slower than a 8800gt.

that site the op linked to just adds another reason why not to trust the germans.

Cyber-Mav

What do you not understand.

Nowhere but in your head has it been said the 3870 is better or faster than the GT.

Nowhere has it even said it is as good as the GT.

Where do you get this from?

The review site doesn't say it.

I didn't say it.

Please explain to me where people are getting this stupid idea from?

I'm am tearing my hair out because people are reading something I have never read.

 

[willhub]

All I can say is lol.

3870XT has the same performance as a 2900XT, who cares what reviews say lets do the benchmarks ourselfs because half of the reviews are total bull.

If ya wanna benchmark do it yerself thats all I can say or wait for someone to on the forums.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Cyber-Mav

What do you not understand.

Nowhere but in your head has it been said the 3870 is better or faster than the GT.

Nowhere has it even said it is as good as the GT.

Where do you get this from?

The review site doesn't say it.

I didn't say it.

Please explain to me where people are getting this stupid idea from?

I'm am tearing my hair out because people are reading something I have never read.

well since you have now edited your posts to hide the mistakes you have made your now trying to play the confused guy role.
you started this thread by trying to find ways to slap the 8800gt and you had to resort to pulling out reviews which arent even in english and from a country which has had a history of starting world wars.
this has just brought down your credibility rating on these forums. i can;t believe there was a time i used to respect your opinion and see you as a valued member on this forum.

gone are those days it seems

 

[badbob]

which has had a history of starting world wars.

Are you ****** serious? What has that got to do with videocard reviews??

 

[Fothsn]

Typical thread derailment you see often in the graphics section funny how it’s the usually folk, now wonder I don’t post much in here

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Im not saying the 3870 is better than the GT, i just want to know why the 3870 has been boosted by the new drivers, but the 2900 hasn't when its the same card.

How come the 2900 with 8xAA is still behind the GT when its a 3870, yet the 3870 is ahead of the GT.

 

[snowdog]

Yes 3dmark means nothing.

Snowdog sounds like if your GTS is overheating on stock fan settings then its faulty what temperature does it get to?

LOW , it crashes games after a few hours or a few minutes on stock fan settings randomly, even thoough it didn't get more than 86-88 C was it or something, well I'm pretty sure it's overheating as since I started manually settings the fan speed to 80% the crashes are gone, the card temp also is 46 C now under load. I know the temps aint that high, and still within specs, but since I started pushing up my fan speed to a reasonable ammount ( 70% also works ) the temps have halved and the stability has returned.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Im not saying the 3870 is better than the GT, i just want to know why the 3870 has been boosted by the new drivers but the 2900 hasn't when its the same card.

if you had a 2900 that sucked up crazy power would you got to a 3870 which sucks up a lot less power but offers no performance advantage? probably not.

but if you see the 3870 has a small speed bump too, then you may be convinced otherwise.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Are you ****** serious? What has that got to do with videocard reviews??

lol im just being sarcastic.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Definately sounds like another faulty one im afraid, shouldn't be crashing on auto fan setting as said above, its not a BFG is it.

 

[snowdog]

What negative is there to the 3780 tho mav?
Here the 3780's are 200 €, thats 60 € than the first shop that has an 8800GT in stock.
If it performs less: okay, less ocable : okay ( I'm bit afraid to oc gfx cards anyways sicne my last 2 cards crashed on even 10 mhz OC), but it costs a lot less, is there anything fundamentally wrong with them, I know the game performance leaves something to be desired compared to an 8800GT, but you can't believe how annoying texture shimmering is, it has rendered LFS pretty much unplayable for me as it annoys the hell out of me, is there any reason I shouldn't have spent 60 € more than the GTS and got 2x 3780's in crossfire instead ?

Definately sounds like another faulty one im afraid, shouldn't be crashing on auto fan setting as said above, its not a BFG is it.

Gigabyte, how reliable is their RMA ?
Problem is that in a cool room it can be perfectly fine, but on closing my window (of my room) DIRT has crashed once within 30 minutes, and I've had a TDU lockup after 2 hrs once, and a supcom crash after 3 hrs once, GoW and UT3 also locking up twice after about 20 mins of playing.

Then I tryed higher fan speeds and guess what, not a single problem since .

 

[Soul Rider]

the onlything fishy is the transistor count, 2900 got 700, 3870 has 666, im guessing the reduction could be due to the smaller memory interface and ringbus controller complexity.

Your guessing.

Great.

I link to a site that does a REAL test on REAL hardware, and you can only disprove it by guessing.

The haven't made wholesale changes to the core on the die shrink, they have made MINOR adjustments.

It has not become faster than a GT, but a die shrink would mean just that.

700Million Transistors in a smaller package. not 666 Million Transistors.

I have not changed my opinions in any of my posts, I just have to correct spelling mistakes because I'm anal like that. For you to accuse me of that is blatant BS, and from all posts of yours I've read around the forums, you've never respected anyone's opinion.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

I forgot, the GT and new GTS have also had their stream processors upped as well.

Heres the specs of the old GTS and new GTS (ive highlighted new GTS in bold)

Old 8800 GTS new GTS

Stream processors 96 128

Texture Address Units 24 56

Texture Filt. Process. 48 56



Now heres the 3870 specs over the 2900's (2900 in bold)

3870 2900

Stream processors 320 320

Texture Units 16 16

Render back ends 16 16

Now, which looks more like a newer card, and not just the same card with a name change.

The 3870 is a 2900.

 

[Monkeynut]

Hm, maybe since the 8800GT is quicker it fell over at the ultra-high res and 8 AA because of a driver bug? 99% of gamers in average joe public still game below 1680X1050 anyway probbly so they woudn't really care because almost no-one would notice.

 

[ShinOBIWAN]

you knew very well what your were doing when you created this thread based on dodgey information at best. you were the one trying to accomplish 2 things with this, you were either trying to create a flame war, or you were trying to create a fool of yourself. either way you succeed.

Hardly dodgy info. I've been gaming all day playing around with the new drivers with various settings and can see the improvements.

The two 3870's I use are quicker that a similarly priced GTX so I'm happy in that respect and even more so when 8x AA is enabled with the new driver. I don't think a single 3870 is enough to cut it with 8xAA and 1920x1080 resolution. But with crossfire working its more than enough performance for everything but Crysis ATM.