wooww 3870x2 tomshardware review

[Alexrose1uk]

To be honest, the best thing to do is buy 2 cheap ass 3850's and just mod them to effectively be 3870's, and you'll have an amazing crossfire platform for as little as £222 (OCUK prices). 2 Cards each running at 1Ghz (like gurusans) or even at 900Mhz once modded would certainly shift some frames. By the looks of it you'll be saving about £128 to £178 by doing that and most likely getting better performance!

That's a lot of muscle. The cheapest 8800gt on ocuk (512mb) is £164ish. 2 of those are gonna cost you £328i/£330 ish.

Matthew

Ofc not everyone has a crossfire motherboard. Throw in a new motherboard at ~100 and suddenly this card becomes more attractive to a wider audience as it can be used by more people with less changes to the rest of thier systems.

 

[HeX]

so how do you mod 3850`s

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=48544

 

[rippling]

so whats the differance between the 3850 and 3870 ? just the core mhz?

 

[HeX]

so whats the differance between the 3850 and 3870 ? just the core mhz?

Pretty much, and 3850's use GDDR3.

 

[jrodga2k5]

so toms hardware are basically blaming the internal crossfire bridge, no surprise there then, must be why ATi have taken it back a week!

 

[Bleek]

Modding and clocking isn't guaranteed.

You could also argue that if you modded and clocked the 3870X2 is would walk everything else... which it would.

So long as AMD can keep the price down on these parts we should view this card is a positive light pushing nvidia in to second, a healthy competition at last!

 

[Gerard]

i dont get how theyre complaining about it sucking up power, its 2 100w gpu's. With the 2900 1 gpu was sucking up over 215 watts.

 

[rippling]

i dont get how theyre complaining about it sucking up power, its 2 100w gpu's. With the 2900 1 gpu was sucking up over 215 watts.

The phrase picking at straws comes to mind , as i said i dont understand what people waant from a card now , If ATI was to release the 3870x2 at the same price as the ultra as its a new card etc etc and performs better if slightly at some games then no it prob wont be that good a buy , but people this card will be a good 100 to 150 cheaper than the ultra! get a 3870x2 and buy a 3870 with the other 150 and see how well it performs compared to the ultra for the same cash!

 

[HEADRAT]

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/ASUS_EAH3870X2_Photos_&_Specs/5525.html

4 x DVI's on one card is sweet

 

[Scougar]

Modding and clocking isn't guaranteed.

You could also argue that if you modded and clocked the 3870X2 is would walk everything else... which it would.

So long as AMD can keep the price down on these parts we should view this card is a positive light pushing nvidia in to second, a healthy competition at last!

Of course, no mod is guaranteed to work. i.e. no mod on a 3870x2 is guaranteed to work either. I understand you will realistically have to have a proper crossfire board, but then, you are probably better off with a pci-e 2 board anyway for bandwidth whether it's with 3850/70's or the 3870x2.

I can pretty much guarantee though that the smugness factor of having 2 3850's wupping a 3870x2 would be pretty damn high.

Matthew