X-bit labs

A Lil’ Bit: A Little Faster ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 – MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC Review (page 15)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 04/30/2008 | 11:04 PM ]

Futuremark 3DMark06

The latest version of 3DMark reveals the entire potential of modern graphics cards. MSI’s effort was not misplaced: the R3870X2-T2D1G OC is considerably faster than its opponents right from the start.

The SM3.0/HDR tests are the playground for ATI’s solutions. The MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC is unrivalled here. On the other hand, the factory overclocking doesn’t add much speed to the MSI card in the SM2.0 tests.

The first two tests are generally similar to the respective tests from 3DMark05. Losing in the first of them, the MSI card shows the strength of its 640 shader processors in the second test.

The MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC is also unrivalled in the SM3.0/HDR tests that contain lots of complex pixel shaders. It is 60% and 65% ahead of the fastest single-chip card in the first and second test, respectively. The factory overclocking is valuable here, providing a performance boost of up to 10%.

The victory of the MSI card is logical as the two RV670 chips have as many TMUs as Nvidia’s solutions but surpass them in sheer computing power. It is also faster than the reference Radeon HD 3870 X2 thanks to the ore-overclocked frequencies.