just arrived..my personal review of 3870x2

[bimmerboii]

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.

 

[bimmerboii]

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

 

[bimmerboii]

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.

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

 

[bimmerboii]

What's been blanked out on the back of the box?

i dont know.. those are black stickers.. havent removed them yet. maybe some specs they wanted to hide before NDA?

 

[bimmerboii]

Pci express 2.0 references. One of the sites peeled those black stickers off and thats all it is. Cards 1.1 or so because of the bridge chip.

ahh i see. hehe. gona peel mine off

 

[bimmerboii]

im just installing crysis now.. and downloading patch 1.1
will post results asap

 

[bimmerboii]

nice PJ's

those are actually shorts, and the design arent flowers but a beach

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?

yes i have both 8 pin and 6pin now plugged in. although its not shown on the pics

Whats funny is with all those great pics the burning question I have is are you married? Just because a grown man with flowers on a bedspread makes me chuckle =P

Great pics btw I love a nice slide show of computer tech

Im not married, im still in uni but on my final year now and just had some free time to do some upgrades. and those flowers on the bedsheet belongs to my gf

When its doing the crysis bench please have a listen for the card, if it is quiet i'm soooo tempted to grab one...

Only thing stopping me was the reports of it being loud under 3D...

I have done the benchies.. will be posting them on the first page as an update so that all benches stay together. and to answer your question, i didnt hear the fan at all. all i heard was my 3x80mm fans!

Edit: After a good 30min play of Crysis, the graphics card cooler fan started to spin up.. and yes it is noisy.

Are you too busy playing? Come on get the Crysis review up...

had to eat dinner, had to do laundry my crysis benchmarks are now done.. will post them on the first page.

HOWEVER, the benchmarks i have done is on the unpatched crysis (ie not the 1.1). my internet is taking ages to download the patch (140mb size) and my download speed is only 5kb/s!! will leave this downloading before i sleep so i can update again tomorrow.

also had to downclock my cpu to 2.8 as my ram is having problems when running crysis at 3.2

 

[bimmerboii]

and another thing.. why is "VERY HIGH" setting still greyed out on my settings screen? How do i choose DX10?

 

[bimmerboii]

crysis benchmarks DX9 or 10?

DX9.. settings used are all set to HIGH. the "VERY HIGH" setting seems to be greyed out.. dunno how to fix that

any chance you can run the ocUK crysis benchmark so we can compare it to the sli's in the chart ?

sorry but what is the ocuk crysis benchmark?

 

[bimmerboii]

The very high settings and dx10 are only available with vista.Win xp is dx9 only.

i am using vista ultimate x86

 

[bimmerboii]

Using cat 8.1 and the hotfix.

nice score mate! i hate mine.. cpu bottleneck i suppose

 

[bimmerboii]

long time since i last posted on this thread.. just ordered the e8400 wolfdale (hoping it arrives tomorrow), clock the hell out of it and see if i get better scores for my benchies.. anyone tried to oc the x2 apart from using overdrive?