Legit Reviews

I was messing around with CrossFireX today and sadly they won't go in CrossFire with the latest drivers... It was worth a shot though right?? The drivers are slated for a Feburary release, but I want it now! Wonder how these four cards will perform and scale! Here are a few pictures of them on the MSI 790FX board.







If anyone finds leaked drivers send them to me and I'll post numbers for sure!

You sure know how to make us green with envy don't you.

Dan

DMB2000uk wrote:You sure know how to make us green with envy don't you.

Dan

Don't cha just want to hit him sometimes?

Digital Puppy wrote:

DMB2000uk wrote:You sure know how to make us green with envy don't you.

Dan

Don't cha just want to hit him sometimes?

Hit him and steal all his cool toys

Dan

I have a question.

I saw your review on HD 3850 Crossfire and the picture you showed of Overdrive showed a possible GPU core clock of 770. I am on Vista x64 and have an MSI HD 3850 that comes @ 690 on the core. When I install and unlock the 7.12 driver I can only set up to 730 max in Overdrive. Any idea what's up? You fellows used Vista x64 and had much higher options in OD.

EDIT: Never mind I figured it out. The "good folks" at MSI have their BIOS programmed to limit OD to 730. I flashed in a Powercolor BIOS now I am doing 760|1029-

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/2332/hdocvj4.jpg

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4459470

4x 3870 IMO :D

any word yet on the price of a hd 3870x2?, i got about 400USD and am wonderin if ill need to dish out more

maj0r_pawnage wrote:any word yet on the price of a hd 3870x2?, i got about 400USD and am wonderin if ill need to dish out more

I'd guess $400 to $500

One of our front page readers sent me an e-mail and attached a picture of his rig... It's sweet, so I thought I'd post it up in the forums for all to see. A big thanks to Jim for sending me the note and the pictures of his four water cooled Radeon HD 3870's! It's a tight fit, but he got them all in there and I think that is a sound card between them all.

I just read your review on the 9900 and you said you wanted to do water cooling. I am, but I only have a 9600 right now.
I also have 4x 3870 water cooled, memory water cooled (2 sticks stable at DDR2-800 3-4-4-15-1T-2.4V, but 4 sticks is not stable at any memory timing).

dunno lol, that water is going to be pretty warm after passing through the third card and going into the fourth, hows overclocking gunna go when cards are all different temps lol, nevertheless still a crazy setup and probably dont even need OC with that power

Slightly overboard with the watercooling? Can one radiator (even a 360mm one) handle that much heat effectively?

Must be awesome to have a system that cool and quiet though.

Dan

DMB2000uk wrote:Slightly overboard with the watercooling? Can one radiator (even a 360mm one) handle that much heat effectively?

Must be awesome to have a system that cool and quiet though.

Dan

more like just quiet

haha yeah.

I guess even if it is just as 'cool' as air cooling, it would be still worth it for the reduction in noise alone.

Dan

Hi, here are some additional pictures...
The idle temp measured after the last video card and before the splitter is 100F at "office" level stress.
Unfortunately I have Vista Enterprise x64 SP1 RC installed, and the Catalyst Drivers say they want to do Crossfire but they are not. Whether the checkbox is on or not I get the same 3dMark06 score. With a single card I got the score to 11885 in 3dMark06.
Tomorrow I will probably try Windows XP install on the rig and see if it works there with at least 2 cards.
Suffice it to say, quite frustrating when you spend this kind of $$ and see a web site like http://www.crossfirex.us and realize it doesn't even work yet.
I'm quite excited to see how far I can push the video cards. I haven't even gotten to overclocking them yet, but I suspect on the 55nm process I have some headroom especially with this level of water cooling.

The fan runs at A2 or A3 most of the time which is very quiet overall. CPU temp recorded by Everest doesn't break 117F under full Prime95 stress after 15 hours. Idle CPU temp is 94F. If you have any other questions, ask away! (Yes, I broke a 3870 by accident during the build. I was NOT happy!)

Pictures:

the same water is being used to cool four ram sticks, an overclocked quad core, two hard drives, and four video cards ?lol

If it were possible to hide all the power wires somewhere, I bet you could tour with it and charge people to come and see your PC.



Dan

Thant's a pretty gaming system you've got over there, i really envy you guys, me and my old X1900GT.

I was wondering if the new X2 card will be considered as crossfireX or just crossfire if you put 2 of them on one board.

I read that the X2 is seen as one card by the system.

Hopefully we'll see some review soon, but first some drivers...

Wow, this look really hot. I must admit my gtx feels a bit jumped on by this sight.
Too bad they dont have drivers out for it yet, this will be awesome for benching and also give good fps in games if it utilizes all the cores.

god that is sweet, how are you liking that MSI board?

I plan on running two 3870x2 for quad-fire but if I go single again I probably will do Tri-XFire as much as I would like to due quad Im somewhat limited in my case.