ATi Radeon HD3870 Review and Impressions!

gareth170 · 15 Nov 2007 at 00:37

easyrider said:
Sorry for asking but.

Just finished work...

Does it work in crysis?

In Xfire?

Feed me please.

crysis isn't crossfire yet..

helmutcheese · 15 Nov 2007 at 00:37

/me Gives "Easyrider" the left overs from that £14 Special Kebab (me and ZAK (German Shepard) are full)

paradigm · 15 Nov 2007 at 00:41

Crysis was getting 40-50FPS in medium settings on my machine @ 1680x1050.

High drops to 20-35

easyrider · 15 Nov 2007 at 00:46

helmutcheese said:
/me Gives "Easyrider" the left overs from that £14 Special Kebab (me and ZAK (German Shepard) are full)

That must have been a momma kay bab! lol

Quixote · 15 Nov 2007 at 01:22

For what it's worth, the CCC has failed to work on about every other release & i'm on XP. It appears to install but does nothing when run. Thankfully the drivers themselves work. I generally tend towards official & default settings on everything, but I've adopted tray tools permanently because CCC seems to often not work, even with the required net framework installed. I don't mind it being slow but I do need it to work.
BTW I think people underestimate just how greatly the power consumption has been reduced. The 2900's are the most power hungry graphics cards ever released, to the point where that alone ruled them out for me. These (38xx) cards are the first to massively reduce power consumption in 2D mode & they finally come well within the acceptable range in 3D mode. For too long, graphics cards have been increasing their power consumption while most other parts of the PC have become more efficient. About time is all I can say.
And by the way, thanks for the review, I'm seriously considering one of these acrds.

david25 · 15 Nov 2007 at 08:31

Another review from tom, interested CF results

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34861/118/

david25 · 15 Nov 2007 at 08:42

Another new review

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...870-review-crossfire-performance-preview.html

david25 · 15 Nov 2007 at 09:04

Another one

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151

3850 vs 8800gt power usage;
http://iax-tech.com/video/578/01.htm
3580 only uses 19 watts at idle (this is the card for me) or cheap CF setups where 2 3850
cards uses less at idle than one 8800gt card

3850 review
http://iax-tech.com/video/3850/01.htm

3870 review
http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/38701.htm
with updated 8800gt no cheat results

(Thanks richdog)

Richdog · 15 Nov 2007 at 09:09

david, you can edit posts to add stuff you know.

knowledge123 · 15 Nov 2007 at 09:13

Wow! Some pretty awesome results so far! :cool:

In some games it beats the GT. in others it doesn't. Fair play to both sides for good cards.

Richdog · 15 Nov 2007 at 09:23

The Anandtech review didn't crossfire the 3870's...

2x 3850 is also a lot more than an 8800GT cost-wise too... and considering they only just beat an 8800GTX in most things I don't see them as a viable price/performance upgrade when crossfired.

EDIT - With the 3870 i'm seeing some decent improvements over the 2900XT though...

Emlyn_Dewar · 15 Nov 2007 at 09:36

Yeah, the 3850 is a decent performer and if I was looking at spending £100 it would have to be one of those, you'd be off your trolley to buy 2 at the same time though.
Could be an alright option adding another a while down the line when their value has dropped significantly, just to drag out some life. I'd be interested to see some more benchmarks of the 3870/3850 mixed xfire setup.

david25 · 15 Nov 2007 at 09:38

Richdog said:
The Anandtech review didn't crossfire the 3870's...

2x 3850 is also a lot more than an 8800GT cost-wise too... and considering they only just beat an 8800GTX in most things I don't see them as a viable price/performance upgrade when crossfired.

Try the iax pages they do crossfire, at least for 3dmark.

willhub · 15 Nov 2007 at 09:42

I'm surprised the 3850 dont get crippled at high res with that 256mb memory.

jrodga2k5 · 15 Nov 2007 at 10:26

Wrong thread

paradigm · 16 Nov 2007 at 20:47

It was definately my CPU causing all the trouble.

Did a complete format, totally performance orientated, still got 12,000. Bunged a Q6600 in today and now I'm up at 15,000.

Am I best off on the drivers on the CD or are there any others around yet?

HaGG · 16 Nov 2007 at 21:23

jrodga, please could you benchmark crysis again with the new hotfix? as others have noticed an increase in fps, the site says it's for your card but it may have come with the driver's on the CD??

Thanks

gareth170 · 16 Nov 2007 at 21:30

HaGG said:
jrodga, please could you benchmark crysis again with the new hotfix? as others have noticed an increase in fps, the site says it's for your card but it may have come with the driver's on the CD??

Thanks

the card came with 8.430.0.0000 driver. which the crysis hotfix is 8.430.1.1000. so is different

oweneades · 16 Nov 2007 at 21:30

willhub said:
I'm surprised the 3850 dont get crippled at high res with that 256mb memory.

If you read the techreport review it does get crippled. (In most cases performing worse than a single 3850)

Whether this is a driver glitch or something else I don't know.

I must say I am sorely tempted by the powercolour 3850 extreme 512mb model with the Zalman cooler however as I have a SLI motherboard I keep getting drawn back to the 8800GT.

Obviously the 3850 is cheaper by roughly £30-40 depending which cards you get however if I went for a dual card setup I would have to get a new motherboard for the CF setup. Considering this would cost roughly £80 for a decent model that puts it at roughly the same cost as the 8800GT SLI setup and therefore not worth it at all.

Of course if I had a CF motheboard then the CF 3850 would be much more attractive.

Vir · 16 Nov 2007 at 22:26

Asus Radeon HD 3870 TOP Edition Unveiled

source: http://forum.donanimhaber.com/m_19094153/tm.htm

New top edition, looks promising if you ask me