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just arrived..my personal review of 3870x2

bimmerboii

bimmerboii

bimmerboii

Associate
Joined
4 Nov 2006
Posts
974
OCUK never fails to deliver on time. The package arrived safely with no damages.


Upon opening the box, you will see the HIS box.. Its pretty plain
front:



back:



Now time to remove the contents from the box:


There's a liitle note slipped inside the box which contains the following:

Vista Driver Installation
You may experience a black screen during the Windows Vista driver installation in some system. The process may appear to stop responding but the installation is still going in the background. In such cases, you are recommended to wait at least half an hour. Then you can turn off the power supply and restart the system again.
In the Window Error Recovery Screen, please select "Start Window Normaly". If you cannot find the ATI Icon in the system tray after Windows Vista completely boots up, please shut down the system normally and restart it once more. The driver will be installed successfully.

Well i did find this note useful, as I am running Vista Ultimate 32. I waited for around 20mins when I restarted my PC and everything went fine.

Edit: This may also be a proof that drivers for this card still need a lot of working

What's inside?
HIS graphics card
crossfireX bridge
DVI-HDMI adapter
DVI-VGA adapter
HDTV adapter
driver CD
installation guide
free steam game (lost coast)
HIS tool with a little flashlight and level



Now, a comparison with my old x1900xtx:





This is one big graphics card. And it feels rock solid in build and weighs about twice my old 1900. I love it.

Fits perfectly inside my midi tower case:



I am using a Gigabyte P35C-DS3R mobo. You will notice it almost blocked the sata connections cos of the gigantic cooler.



When I first turn on the system, the 3870x2 powered up at full speed, (100% fan speed i think) and oh yes the noise it makes is like a mini vacuum cleaner.
It will speed up only for a few seconds and return to idle. which is completely silent.
 
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Now time for what you all been waiting for.. 3d Mark 2006.

Since I am pretty new in the benchmarking thingy, I simply downloaded the free version of 3d mark 06, installed it, and ran the programme without changing the settings.

My system (specs in sig)





I was surprised when I ran 3d mark 06, I didnt hear the noise of the fan at all.

Maybe it wasnt using 100% of its power?

Next stop Crysis bench

***UPDATE***

Here's the benchmarks for Crysis unpatched.

Edit: also had to downclock my cpu to 2.8 my ram is having problems running crysis at 3.2

1680x1050 ALL SET TO HIGH. NO AA


1680x1050 ALL SET TO HIGH. 2XAA


Edit: after a good 30mins of playing Crysis, the graphics card cooler started to spin up. and yes, it is noisy.

Edit: **Another update** used fraps to monitor actual game play. played for 15mins around the beach area during the early part of the game. was averaging around 37FPS . Not bad as all is set to HIGH with no AA @ 1680x1050
 
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Never got mine today, the knuckle draggers at citylink have somehow managed to misplace it. Im told its in a van but theyre not sure which one, and to call back after 6 to find out if its found and to reschedule delivery. Been calling for the last 10 mins and nobodys answering the damn phone.



:mad::mad:
 
Gerard said:
Never got mine today, the knuckle draggers at citylink have somehow managed to misplace it. Im told its in a van but theyre not sure which one, and to call back after 6 to find out if its found and to reschedule delivery. Been calling for the last 10 mins and nobodys answering the damn phone.



:mad::mad:
Click to expand...

sorry to hear about that.. i thought mine wouldnt arrive today. usually when i buy from ocuk it arrives before 12pm. this one arrived at 4pm
 
I was really unlucky. I had included a Noctua fan in my order, which was showing as in stock. However, when I didn't receive my shipping confirmation email yesterday I called OCUK to find out what was going on, and was told that the Noctua fan was actually out of stock, and as such, my order was on hold. Suffice to say I ditched the fan, but it meant that I won't now get the card until tomorrow.
 
Christ almighty, still trying to find it and can i call back in the morning. Its not bad enough that virtually anything i order next day service comes in a day late and i dont see any sign of refund coming from anywhere now theyre managing to lose parcels. :mad:




On the radeon front though bit strange that black screen installation thing. Think im just gonna try the 8.1 drivers and the hot fix instead of the cd drivers, theyre bound to be ages out of date.

Heatsink has no gawdy sticker on the his version which is nice, would look better if it retained the 2900xt flame heatsink effect though.
 
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I wouldn't expect massive improvements in crysis tbh, that seems to be the main game ati and nvidia are having trouble making work well with dual gpu's. :(
 
Nice review and pics :)

Ive got the P35C board as well and my GTX also almost blocks the SATA ports, a bit of a pain really :)

EDIT : Have you plugged the PCI-E power into it as theres no plug in it on the pics?
 
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