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3870 X2 does things in pairs
AMD's Radeon HD 3870 X2's landed on the scene today, a graphics card that includes two Radeon 3870 chips on one PCI Express 2 board.
The concept has been done before on Nvidia's Geforce 7950GX2 and some experimental Radeon 1950 Pro Dual's, but this time the card feels like a more manageable size.
It's currently running through its paces with the latest ATI drivers on our Intel rig. We've snapped it with a regular XFX 8800 Ultra (the black card), where you can see the 3870 X2 is just a fraction shorter.
The 3870 X2 toppled Evga's Geforce 8800 Ultra Superclocked, our previous top dog in the majority of tests, with a score of 18261 in 3Dmark05 - 800 points clear of the Evga's 8800 Ultra.
That was also accompanied by a score of 13261 in 3Dmark06 which beats the 8800 Ultra by 650 points.
We're not entirely convinced by the 3870 X2's performance overall though, since our World in Conflict benchmark averaged 56 with the minimum being 1fps (where the textures load at the beginning of the map) and maxing out at 149fps. Other cards don't show such a big spread and we suspect the drivers need some improving to ensure consistency in games.
Sapphire has released a version based closely on the reference design. Both its GPUs run at 825MHz, with each GPU having access to 512MB of 1.8GHz GDDR3 memory. Sapphire informs us that early drivers have some problems with the internal crossfire enabling and disabling dependant on which game is running.
Drivers also don't let two Radeon 3870 X2's work together, so having four way crossfire isn't an option… yet.
But at £305 inc. Vat undercuts every 8800 Ultra on sale and looks like an attractive proposition for high resolution gamers.
We'll be publishing a full review soon with a range of scores showing if it has, or hasn't, taken the crown for fastest single graphics card in PCW's Labs.
Posted by Emil Larsen on January 28, 2008 | Permalink
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