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ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
It really is two Radeon HD 3870s bolted together, but ATI reckons it's got 1TFLOP of processing power
People laughed at the 3dfx's dual-GPU Voodoo5 5500 when it came out, but it looks as though it may have just been ahead of its time. Not only did Nvidia release the GeForce 7950 GX2 with two GPUs back in 2006, but now ATI has followed suit with the Radeon HD 3870 X2; its first official dual-GPU card since the Rage Fury Maxx back in 1999.
As its name suggests, the 3870 X2 is basically a huge PCB featuring two 55nm Radeon HD 3870 GPUs, which gives you a huge total of 640 stream processors, 32 ROPs, 1GB of RAM and two 256-bit memory interfaces to allow the GPUs to communicate with 512MB of memory each. These memory interfaces can cope with either GDDR3 or GDDR4 memory, as with those on standard 3870 cards. However, given that GDDR4 memory isn't exactly cheap, a standard X2 card will only come with 900MHz (1.8GHz effective) GDDR3 memory, as opposed to the 2.4GHz GDDR4 memory found on standard 3870 cards.
To make up for this, the clock speed of the two cores has been increased from 775MHz to 825MHz, and AMD reckons that all of this now makes the Radeon HD 3870 X2 'The industry's first graphics processor to break the Teraflop (one trillion floating point operations per second) barrier.' Of course, it isn't a graphics processor; it's two, but that's still an incredible achievement for a graphics card, referring to its Multiply-Add processing rate.
As well as this, the cards will also feature two independent display controllers, allowing you to have two monitors with different resolutions, refresh rates and even different video overlays. ATI reckons it's the best graphics card system out there at the moment. Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of AMD's Graphics Product Group, AMD said that 'with this launch we reaffirm our commitment to enthusiast performance leadership and send a clear message that the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 is the new gold standard of the PC gaming world.'
This is the first time that ATI's gone for the top of the graphics world since the Radeon X1950XTX, as both the 3870 and 2900XT were pitched below Nvidia's GeForce 8800 Ultra and GTX cards. This time, though, it's confident that the X2 will trounce the Ultra, and ATI has issued quite a few benchmark results showing that the X2 beats the GeForce 8800 Ultra in many games, including Bioshock and Call of Duty 4, at 1,920 x 1,200 and 2,560 x 1,600.
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Toss in that NV can't make them on one PCB, duals are expensive, as are board cut-outs, and you have a huge price premium over the 3870X2. Add in that OEMs hate dual PCB boards, and you are looking at another losing streak in the making. Are we staring down the barrel of another 7950? NV could not show working boards at CES, so, like Hybrid, things are looking grim. So the 3870 X2 looks like it will hold the crown until maybe the forth quarter and about time ATI.. think NV neeed to get there Thumbs out of there bum's to challenge this card...
Comment by jaygoku22 at 11:10am 21st February 2008
"they cheated the benckmarks" "this card is crap" "cant play crises" [yeah... just like every other computer out there right now] "I'll swear at this card and maybe it will go away" "AMD arent good so Ati cant be either" I'm quite amazed by the needlessly violent reaction by some people to Ati releasing a card that suddenly performs really quite well...
Comment by NotFred at 11:11am 8th February 2008
what's good about 2 gpu's if you can't use them both . SLI or crossfire might work but you would be better off with 1 GPU if unable to do so . X2 beats the GeForce 8800 Ultra in many games, including Bioshock and Call of Duty 4, at 1,920 x 1,200 and 2,560 x 1,600. but what about games that don't run sli or crossfire .
Comment by j7dunwiddie at 2:29pm 1st February 2008
sry i forgot about last high end gen cards like the 1900 and the 7800 my bad. load of rubish what i wrote below this :P
Comment by megapig at 12:40pm 1st February 2008
9800gx2 looks like it will beat this card but this is the fastest card at the moe and it cheeper than the 9800gx2 but i am not crazy enough to spend over 100 pound on a card .... even tho i did :P 107 pound on a 3850 512 :P it is the OWNAGE hehe. I am not an ati fan and I am not a nvidia fan. I was going to get the first 256bit card under 100 pound :D which was the 2900gt but i was hungry so ate the cake :P 8600gt seems to newbish needs more power and does the 3650 beat it ?? i think it should.
Comment by megapig at 12:22pm 1st February 2008
good work ati its an awsome card for that cash,my pockets are still reeling from my 8800 fetish lol
Comment by jmcgartland at 8:40am 1st February 2008
with decent spelling and maybe punctuation ?
Comment by bluetuba at 6:02pm 31st January 2008
with decent spelling and maybe punctuation ?
Comment by bluetuba at 6:02pm 31st January 2008
a complete and utter jelous Nvidia Fan... oi Nvidia has had a whole year of glory just let the ATI fans have a litle bit of fun at the top and then you can windge when ATI have been on top for a whole year... Again and i think this will just spark up a war to get us better graphics cards by the day and better graphical games up until the point where consoles cant handle them (come on pc's)
Comment by smiler at 4:39pm 31st January 2008
Ati will set a 'new gold standard of the PC gaming world.' just after the 2nd coming of Christ.
Comment by bluetuba at 5:18pm 31st January 2008
Warrior is spot on its a aload of crap... AA demolishes these cards, which is exactly what we want in our graphical glorified monster rigs ! 32 ROPs ? Finally the more of these on a card the better, but this isnt many more than ye olde x1950 cards a couple years ago.... YAWN
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 4:58pm 31st January 2008
So let me re-phrase my last statement. "This card is crap". "It STILL can't play Crysis". "It STILL can't do AA". "There are no games that use DX10.1". "It's STILL not better than a GTX". "What the the heck AMD"?!!
Comment by Warrior24_7 at 3:52pm 31st January 2008
a complete and utter jelous Nvidia Fan... oi Nvidia has had a whole year of glory just let the ATI fans have a litle bit of fun at the top and then you can windge when ATI have been on top for a whole year... Again and i think this will just spark up a war to get us better graphics cards by the day and better graphical games up until the point where consoles cant handle them (come on pc's)
Comment by smiler at 4:39pm 31st January 2008
This card is bullshit. It still can't do AA, still can't play Crysis and still isn't better than a GTX! WTF AMD?!!
Comment by Warrior24_7 at 3:35pm 31st January 2008
OOOooooooh i see a bit of jelousy there... do you want your dummy back mate!!
Comment by smiler at 10:48am 31st January 2008
AMD are incapable of making a decent CPU to compete against the Core Duo so why do the Ati Fanboys think they have magically invented the worlds greatest graphics card ?
Comment by bluetuba at 6:54am 31st January 2008
Well 1 things for sure, that card's going to be easier to water cool compared to the GX2 if it's the same as the old 1. Hell I could have 2 of those feckers right there :D
Comment by Elemental_Dragon at 12:13am 30th January 2008
Well 1 things for sure, that card's going to be easier to water cool compared to the GX2 if it's the same as the old 1. Hell I could have 2 of those feckers right there :D
Comment by Elemental_Dragon at 12:13am 30th January 2008
it is true there is only 1 but that dont matter its still gonna get the games playing how they should have all along ATI the real way its meant to be played!!!
Comment by smiler at 11:59pm 29th January 2008
Don't know about you lot, but it looks to me like there is only one crossfire connector on top of the card. That would mean that you will be unable to have 4 of these in one machine... 4 GPUs but not 4 separate cards.
Comment by RedHotsRule549 at 1:17pm 29th January 2008
Maximum PC has an interesting article about this card and it's "real world" performance. Everyone should read this and decide for yourselves what you believe! http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ1NCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
Comment by Warrior24_7 at 10:40am 29th January 2008
i said the same on the gx2 review page now that this is coming out weve finally got the wars back so the market is like a premiership again and its entertaining to watch again and i cant wait for the cpu's to be the same because im sick of seeing the whole thing being based on just 1 manufacturer per product (cpu and gpu) now we will have a long and hard think again (sorry if that sounds gay by the way lol) and with the wars going back the way they are supposed to be crysis will be getting easier and easier to play at very high settings and now that seagate are slowly getting better than western digital they will up there game so there will be less loading time finally cause i hate waiting for crysis to load and also i think that may be due to me only having 2Gb of ddr2 800 but you can see the responce to that with all of the ram manufacturers releasing 4Gb of ddr2 1066MHz and as goes for ddr3 its to expensive so far i think AMD are doing the right thing with the am2+ platform and leaving ddr3 well alone for the time being with it costing so much and the elixor ddr3 is actually slower than the ocz 1066MHz ddr2 (surprising i know but true i think if custompc review that i might start buying the mag again)
Comment by Sc0tsg1t at 10:05am 29th January 2008
Folding??? Are you mad??? So the latest and greatest best way to spend £300 on playing games and you cant wait to get it FOLDING. Oh dear.
Comment by pveater at 7:50am 29th January 2008
the cards have one 8 pin and one 6 pin, just like the HD2900XT and Pros. so the power demands arent that bad. the same as an 8800Ultra, from the looks of it (in terms of connectors). so you'd only need a good PSU from someone like coolermaster if you were running this card (which you'd have anyway if you were going to use a card like this).
Comment by rickykemp at 11:50pm 28th January 2008
With ATI cards of late needing quite a bit more power than nvidia rivals I would love to see what they recommend for a psu? And how many 8 pin connectors you need for crossfire, never mind quad crossfire!
Comment by andreinuk at 9:12pm 28th January 2008
From the benchmarks I have seen on many sites, this out performs the Ultra in the majority of games. Pretty good for a card 2/3rds the price! (Cant wait for CPC benchmarks). The best part for me is the multi-monitor support. SLI take note, Crossfire suddenly makes you look very silly...
Comment by NotFred at 8:28pm 28th January 2008
This will be a FOLDING monster!!! Imagine 4 of these in one PC, thats 8 GPU's crunching WU's all day... Look out CPC folders!!!
Comment by CPC_RedDawn at 7:38pm 28th January 2008
that although this card is as long as my forearm, i will be getting one. the price is RIDICULOUS, especially if it offers performance close to an 8800 Ultra. we can only hope.
Comment by rickykemp at 5:50pm 28th January 2008
Jesus that IS cheap, although scan appear to have bumped this already to £268! In stack already apparently at overclockers! Incredibly tricky call. I doubt the 9800GX2 is going to be any less than £300 - scaling the price of the 8800GT as has been done with the 3870. However I'm not convinced on the benches - need to see evidence accross the board especially with AA enabled.
Comment by combatus at 6:25pm 28th January 2008
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