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i just got gigabyte 3870, any beter than a standard 3870 ?

something_totally_different

something_totally_different

something_totally_different

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http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1253/17/page_17_final_thoughts/index.html

picked up a 512mb HD3870 Ultra Durable 2 by gigabyte off an auction site for £95 (100 inc del) today, just wondering if all the fancy durable bits actually DO anything ? :confused:

hopefully one of you has one and can enlighten me :)

EDIT: that reminds me, must pay by credit card... much safer.


locutus12 5/02/08 said:
well, just to add a twist to this... i didn't get the gigabyte one in the end.

the seller on ebay had only 8 feedback, 2 e-mail addresses, 2 paypal accounts and 3 names! in the end i went and found a good seller, got an MSI RX3870XT GDDR4 OC edition! for £125
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The durable stuff is the new ferrite cores, lower rds and solid capacitors. in the pic you can see them at the back of the card.
 
Not really, I think may just last longer, it wont overclock anymore than standard I dont think, all 3870's overclock different but I think they average at 860?
 
my HIS 3870 is crap at overclocking on its stock cooling. Overdrive says 875 core and 1380 mem should be ok. try using these and system black out within a few seconds of launching game. 860/1200 initialy seems stable but vpu recovers can kick in at any random time (cats 7.11) or just blue screen/system reset (cats 8.1) after a lot of faffing about it seems the card is only 100% stable at its default clocks. even small adjustments will cause vpu error at some point. atitool gets yellow dots in cube test just budging mem 1 notch (although seems fine in game upto 1200) upto the point of a random crash.

Overclocks last long enough to benchmark, but not fun to have a game crash due to it. so I dont think its a good idea to buy these cards based upon someone elses overclock ability since they look stable but in fact are not.
 
Looks like a nice card:

Manufacturer Link

Big pic

It's a non reference design so I'd be wary about flashing the card's BIOS and I don't know if you'd be able to get around the 865Mhz core lock. Let us know how far you can take the card and how the Zalman cooler performs when the card is under load!
MadMatty said:
my HIS 3870 is crap at overclocking on its stock cooling. Overdrive says 875 core and 1380 mem should be ok. try using these and system black out within a few seconds of launching game. 860/1200 initialy seems stable but vpu recovers can kick in at any random time (cats 7.11) or just blue screen/system reset (cats 8.1) after a lot of faffing about it seems the card is only 100% stable at its default clocks. even small adjustments will cause vpu error at some point. atitool gets yellow dots in cube test just budging mem 1 notch (although seems fine in game upto 1200) upto the point of a random crash.

Overclocks last long enough to benchmark, but not fun to have a game crash due to it. so I dont think its a good idea to buy these cards based upon someone elses overclock ability since they look stable but in fact are not.
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Of course overclocking varies from card to card. I have had Overdrive take my card up to 950Mhz on the core before crashing and necessitating a driver reinstall so the best way to overclock is manually.

The fan needs to be set to 70% to keep temps down, as I think the card is pretty sensitive to heat. I try to keep mine around 50 degrees when under load and I am still on the stock cooler.

A BIOS flash may help you get better clocks; I am running the Sapphire Atomic BIOS on my card, which has clocks of 825/1200Mhz. I've not yet tried overclocking any further with this BIOS and I'd be wary of trying to flash the BIOS with your card if you can't get over stock clocks successfully.
 
I think you'll find a lot of the problems with 38xx series stuff is the variability of the voltage supplied to the card. Unfortunately its seems that they haven't got the best voltage regulation as standard and drops below the 1.3v needed :( Give it a tiny bit more (like 1.325v) and it will overclock like a dream :)

Matthew
 
Was looking further into this Gigabyte card and it appears that it comes with GDDR3 instead of GDDR4. I wonder how that might effect its overclockability?
 
roadie said:
Was looking further into this Gigabyte card and it appears that it comes with GDDR3 instead of GDDR4. I wonder how that might effect its overclockability?
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thought all 3870's were DDR4 and that 3850's were DDR3, with the exception of the 3870x2 :confused:
 
Bradmax57 said:
thought all 3870's were DDR4 and that 3850's were DDR3, with the exception of the 3870x2 :confused:
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That's what I thought too but the manufacturer link explicitly states GDDR3 and the picture in the Tweaktown article confirms it. In theory, the chips used in the 3850 and 3870 are the same and support both memory types so I don't know why Gigabyte chose GDDR3.

Gigabyte UK Link

Picture of RAM
 
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The two main problems with the 3xxx series are the bios PLL VCO bug that is essentially a multiplier they (deliberately?) messed up to not allow overclocking beyond 862Mhz, and that the 1.33v needed by the 3870 card is often not accurate (i.e. some cards are less than 1.3v which is bad news). 1.4v Would have been nice as standard and would have overclocked fantastically.

Matthew
 
roadie said:
Was looking further into this Gigabyte card and it appears that it comes with GDDR3 instead of GDDR4. I wonder how that might effect its overclockability?
Click to expand...
GDDR3 @ 2000Mhz vs GDDR4 @ 2400Mhz is practically identical. The lower latencies on the GDDR3 make up for the diifference in Mhz.

I saw a thread on another site that compare a 3850 and 3870 with the same GPU speeds (800) and memory speeds of 2000 / 2250 respectively. The difference was less tha 1% in all cases. I think the 38xx series cards are GPU limited and memory increases make little difference.
 
well, just to add a twist to this... i didn't get the gigabyte one in the end.

the seller on ebay had only 8 feedback, 2 e-mail addresses, 2 paypal accounts and 3 names! in the end i went and found a good seller, got an MSI RX3870XT GDDR4 OC edition! for £125 :)
 
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