Legit Reviews

ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 (R680) Pictured in CrossFire

Did you wake up this morning with a strange feeling? Now that AMD has released the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series to the praise of many critics and review sites the marketing wars between ATI and NVIDIA can once again begin! AMD has shown off their upcoming R680 core for the first time and we bring you the very first pictures of the Radeon HD 3870 X2! Check this out!

Pretty soon enthusiasts with some cash can pick up four of these Radeon HD 3850 or Radeon HD 3870 graphics card and run CrossFireX on their AMD 790FX based motherboard. That was impressive until the rumors of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 or Radeon HD 3890 (the name isn't offical) surfaced. The thought of having the power of a pair of Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards on a single slot solution is awesome. Our friends over at The Inq posted up the details on the Radeon HD 3870 X2 with a digital rendering of the card, which is cool, but where is the real thing? Today, we will do one better than that and bring you the first picture of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 running in CrossFire mode!

Article Title: ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 (R680) Pictured in CrossFire
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/593/1/
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Not work safe!! lol

That is sexy, good to see AMD/ATI pushing the envelope.

Here is another picture that I didn't use as it had glare on it.

sweet! the past year hasnt been too kind to ATI, and im hoping this brings them back as formidable opponents in GPU hardware :D

i love both companies but i just want them to be "perfectly competitive" so-to-speak! i love the concept of 2 processors on 1 card. cant wait to see #s!

The pics alone are worth a thousand words... great review!

Do you folks know if one can use the Radeon HD 3870 X2 for GPGPU roles?
(Like the AMD FireStream 9170 which is powered by the same GPU).

So this is ATI's new high end card?

This reminds me of the brute force approach that 3Dfx tried right before they tanked. Yeah, I know, Nvidia tried it as well. It caused problems with heat, and drivers, and was generally a big mess. So why is it when ATI does this everyone heralds it like "the NEXT thing"?

Ok, let me describe a fundamental problem that the good people at ATI have with their new hardware. They went overboard on their "Super Scalar" design, and that limited the number of stream processors they could fit onto the HD2900XT. Now I hear you say: they have "320" stream processors why would they need more!?! They "need" more because they aren't counting them the same way Nvidia does! What they are saying is "4 stream processors" is really "1 multifunction stream processor" capable of doing 4 different things at once, but not actually very efficient at doing so. That means they really have "80" stream processors consistently in use. If you don't believe me, look at the figures. Both the HD3800s compare most directly, in terms of performance, to the GTS cards by Nvidia. The only real advantage they have, besides price, is that they ATI cards are clocked higher so they can sort of keep up with the GTS and it's "96" stream processors. ATI might have actually worked on getting their drivers to use their design more effectively, but their parent company is so financially strapped they can't afford to really develop better drivers (or they don't know how...).

In the past, ATI won by employing superior engineering, while Nvidia seemed to rely on the "brute force" approach. This "3870 X2" is not how ATI will beat Nvidia. This constitutes playing "Nvidia's game", and they wouldn't have survived if they (Nvidia) weren't good at it. All Nvidia has to do is drop the price, just a bit, on the G98 and the next round will be a repeat of this one. Namely Nvidia in #1 making money hand over fist, and ATI at a fairly distant #2 while making far less money.

I've been reading everyone's comments with these news highlights that this website provides with upcoming hardware and technology, and unfortunately (Like everything else in the world) it all boils down to politics.

Now don't get me wrong. What I mean by that is the discussions IS really politics. Obviously because it's all about marketing strategy and hard to see the actual technological advancement(?) to where gamers can enjoy a brand new game @ 2048 x 17xx something with aa and af maxed to smitherings and getting 120fps in a map outside in some badlands with 20 players in the server.

But I don't know much about how things really do work, like how light goes through them circuits. It could be just some way to attempt to boost hardware performance...

Oh yeah, and budget spending...

top wrote:I've been reading everyone's comments with these news highlights that this website provides with upcoming hardware and technology, and unfortunately (Like everything else in the world) it all boils down to politics.

Now don't get me wrong. What I mean by that is the discussions IS really politics. Obviously because it's all about marketing strategy and hard to see the actual technological advancement(?) to where gamers can enjoy a brand new game @ 2048 x 17xx something with aa and af maxed to smitherings and getting 120fps in a map outside in some badlands with 20 players in the server.

But I don't know much about how things really do work, like how light goes through them circuits. It could be just some way to attempt to boost hardware performance...

Oh yeah, and budget spending...

Cartman, what the hell are you talking about?

What is with this? Development of technology has advanced so far, yet, developers find it cheaper to just allow the card to eat up more room then it should. Those things are huge!

These cards limit the user in terms of chassis to use, and this ticks me off! I want to develop a gaming, HTPC unit for the living room, but how am I supposed to, if we are bombarded with these huge cards?

Oh well, maybe developers someday may look into shortening their cards.

SepheronX wrote:
Oh well, maybe developers someday may look into shortening their cards.

technology continues to get smaller, so i dont see why not, unless they continue only the Performance battle and not the basic "fit the everyday needs" type of cards

SepheronX wrote:Oh well, maybe developers someday may look into shortening their cards.

Short means less stuff on the PCB which leads to lower end cards. They could use a PCB with a few more layers, but it's cheaper to make a long PCB rather than a "thick" one.

new picture:
You can better see the 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power headers on this one.

Apoptosis wrote:You can better see the 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power headers on this one.

...and their horrible layout.

Zertz wrote:

Apoptosis wrote:You can better see the 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power headers on this one.

...and their horrible layout.

how do you have a bad layout on a video card?

these came out right after i bought an 8800 gt

I have no idea why you would complain...the 8800GT is an Awesome card. I would love to have one!

Is there any price information on these and the regular 3870's?

Here is a link to another site that did a head to head of the HD 3870 Crossfire vs 8800GT SLI... http://en.expreview.com/?p=53

wow, i really expected the 8800gt to be a lot better than the 3870 in sli/crossfire respectivly. Seems like it depends on how you game. Because one handles no AA/AF better and the other gets better fps with AA/AF. THey seems to switch just like that, about 10 above them 10 below on that review at least. That was a cool thing to look at.

says in the review that these dont need the 4-pci slots as they are obviously dual gpu cards

but does that mean two of them can run on a crossfire X38 board with 2x PCI-E 2.0 16x/16x in crossfire?