HD3850 v HD3870 with E2180

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi guys,
got 3 rigs semi-built with GA-P35 DS3R's and E2180's, 2gb ram, Vista Home Premium which i will oc as far as possible.
Right, which card do you recommend for gaming at 1440x900 (19" ws tft's)
BF2, BF2142, UT3, Crysis, CoD4, etc etc
The monitors max. resolution is 1440x900 so that definitely is the max we'll use.

I know the 8370 is the better card, but will the difference be noticeable at that resolution? I'm thinking of the graphics hog that is Crysis!

Thanks for your input.

 

[Scougar]

3870 for crysis unless your either prepared to massively overclock the 3850 (with at least an extra 100Mhz on the core), or volt mod to get upto 1Ghz. (or you want cheap crossfire for £200ish )

Matthew

 

[Scougar]

You know what, thinking about it, the 3850 would probably be more of an o/c's card really. I still kinda wish I'd got that and been challenged to get it as far as I could.

Matthew

 

[gurusan]

most 3850s can do close to 3870 speeds anyway on stock voltage....760ish or so core.

And they can all clock the memory close to 1ghz or if they use samsung chips can clock to 1100mhz....

However, the 3870 can clock to 830-860mhz on stock voltage and the 38x series are quite fast above about 820mhz

 

[Scougar]

Nice to know Take more power at same clocks though due to GDDR3 though Doing my bit for the environment with GDDR4 lol.

Still need to have a faff with a multimeter and a pencil (will have to borrow a MM from a relative).

Matthew

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Thanks Matthew.
I'm using Thermaltaake 500w psu's so steady voltage should be ok for oc'ing the E2180's AND the 3850's if need be. Can the 3870's be pushed much?

 

[Scougar]

I think it's like gurusan put it. 3850's may be speed binned chips, and require more voltage to run the same speed that the 3870 can run. So on stock voltage, the 3870 will clock further it seems. With voltage increase it won't really matter, but at the moment that means at minimum, a pencil mod to increase voltage as there are no programs that support increasing voltage on these cards at present.

Going back to your original post, I think you want to get the best bang for buck, so I think I change what I said and suggest the 3850 512Mb instead of the 3870.

Matthew

 

[Banzai_Joe]

Darn it! I made an error in my initial post, its not XP Pro i'm using, its Vista Home Premium (amended op).
This make a difference to choice of card seeing as the fps are usually lower in vista than in xp?