|
Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 X2
Introduction
After weeks of game-fueled bliss and a handful of competitive releases, I wondered if ATI's flagship still makes waves. While an HD 3870 X2 is an impressive stretch of hardware, is it really worth its salt? Although, dual-GPU salt's a little cheaper these days... by about fifty bucks. It's a $400 card now, which is a hair more than crazy but still shy of preposterous. So why not just get two 3870s and rub a little CrossFire into your box? There are two reasons, really. For most people, that's just not an option. Dual-PCI-Express can easily tag a Benjamin onto the price of a motherboard, and, in Micro-ATX land, it's a mythical beast that visits overclockers in their dreams. And there's another thing: regular 3870s get the lower-binned GPUs--the faster-clocking chips go into the X2s. But, lastly, the 3870 promises something else: tri- and quad-CrossFireX. But that begs the initial question: now that the release is behind us, how much awesome stuck to the HD 3870 X2, and how much washed away? The Card & Bundle         Sapphire's been ATI's BFF since forever, which is why their X2 gets Ruby's lashed gaze on their hawt stickers. Besides that, it's a regular X2; stock everything. Stock red and black retention plate, stock dual-slot cooling, stock one-aluminum-and-one-copper heatsinks, and stock scary-looking blower. In ATI style, the outputs go DVI-TV-DVI. There's one Composite TV breakout cable, two VGA adapters, one HDMI adapter, one CrossFire bridge, and two 4-pin-to-6-pin Molex power adapters. The power adapters are really a shame since, without an 8-pin plug in the socket, overclocking options are disabled--quite overlooked since many power supplies don't have 8-pin video power cables. The power connectors are along the top edge of the card, which is thoughtful: it's so long that if the cables had to plug into the front edge, it might not fit in your case. Otherwise, there's little to gape at. The heatsink uses up the entertaining side of the card. Underneath it are twin 320-core GPUs with a PCI-Express chip halfway between them. For software, Sapphire skips games and gives you video stuff. Cyberlink's DVD suite and Power DVD 7 (not 8) are handy for the DIY system-builder, since no version of Windows can play DVDs natively. And to make sure that you know, absolutely, that your swank new card rawks,
Page 1: Introduction, The Card & Bundle
Page 2: Specifications and Testing Setup Page 3: DirectX 10 Titles Page 4: DX9, OpenGL, and Synthetics Page 5: Video, Power, and Overclocking Page 6: Conclusion 
Related Reviews Video Cards September 23, 2009
Video Cards June 25, 2009
Video Cards June 8, 2009
Video Cards April 6, 2009
Add Comment
3 User Comments 1 - Posted by
dude81
on June 3, 2008 - 6:07 am "Best, er, only dual-GPU ATI card". What about 3850 X2?
2 - Posted by
Max Slowik
on June 3, 2008 - 11:53 am Yeah, I wrote that before it was released. Kurtis, can we retract that? Also, Diamond has informed us that it was a mis-print that their 1GB 3870 has a 512-bit ring bus; it's still an impressive card, but it's just 256-bit.
3 - Posted by
Kurtis
on June 3, 2008 - 12:00 pm dude81: Thanks for pointing out that error. That (and the 512-bit ring bus error) has now been corrected.
Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
Recent Articles Editorials August 27, 2009
Editorials August 18, 2009
Editorials March 3, 2009
Editorials February 12, 2009
Recent News Inside Bay Area Jan. 29, 2010 - 12:08 am
Ars Technica Jan. 28, 2010 - 11:58 pm
Develop Online Jan. 27, 2010 - 11:48 pm
Rock Paper Shotgun Jan. 27, 2010 - 11:31 pm
Tom's Hardware Jan. 27, 2010 - 11:23 pm
Rock Paper Shotgun Jan. 26, 2010 - 11:56 pm
MSNBC Jan. 25, 2010 - 10:54 pm
cnet Jan. 25, 2010 - 10:27 pm
CNN Jan. 18, 2010 - 11:47 pm
|
|||||||||||||||
