X-bit labs

A Lil’ Bit: A Little Faster ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 – MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC Review (page 9)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko

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

Crysis

This game being very hard at its Very High level of detail, we benchmark the cards without full-screen antialiasing in an attempt to achieve a playable frame rate.

The MSI R3870X2-T2D1G OC loses to the less advanced solutions based on Nvidia’s chips. The card also has a very low minimum of speed. The two RV670 cores are unable to provide an acceptable average frame rate at the highest image quality settings. The per-overclocked frequencies of the MSI card do not provide a serious performance boost.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

The frame rate is fixed at 30fps in this game as this is the rate at which the physical model is being updated at the server. Thus, this 30fps speed is the required minimum for playing the game.

ATI’s programmers should work on this game, too. The MSI card is only as fast as the single ATI Radeon HD 3870, which indicates that only one of its cores is functioning although CrossFire mode cannot be disabled on the reference Radeon HD 3870 X2. Purchasing a $449 graphics card that would only work at half its potential doesn’t look right. Perhaps this problem will be corrected in the newer version of the driver.