X-bit labs

The Single-Decker Champ: ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 Graphics Card Review (page 17)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 02/18/2008 | 10:44 AM ]

Performance in Synthetic Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark05

At a resolution of 1024x768 without FSAA the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 can’t show its worth, and its advantage over the other cards is small. Anyway, the new card overcomes the 18,000 barrier.

The ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 is hardly better than the single-chip cards in the first test because the speed of this test depends largely on the card’s texture-processing performance. The new card’s texturing capabilities are roughly similar to those of the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS 512MB. Each of these cards has 32 TMUs.

The dual-chip solution from AMD shows its best in the second test that requires high shader-processing performance. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 with its total of 640 ALUs is currently unrivalled when it comes to sheer computing power.

The third test is an in-between situation. The ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 is in the lead, but doesn’t enjoy such a huge advantage as in the second test. The explanation is obvious: this test demands both high shader-processing performance and high texturing speed. Comparing the numbers we see in the individual tests with the total scores, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 feels best at high resolutions as well as in those applications whose overall performance is not limited by the speed of the texture processors.