That's weird because other sites show solid gains with the 3870X2 over 3870 in games like COH, COD4, ET:QW and etc....

Maybe something is wrong with your setup.

And the multistuttering problem is mentioned where exactly?

Good job! nice article - quad crossfire in month should be even more interesting. 3 way sli vs 2 slot quad is the high light of my year. lets not forget mr nvidia says dual gpu solutions are not as goos as single.

Just as in my comments regarding CPU reviews, I would begin by saying that I trust xbit labs more than any other wanna-bees out there, just because I'm reading those articles for years now and they never used to lie before, at least I believe so.

Of course, a number of trusted sources, like anandtech, posted a different picture of the X2, so I must confess I'm a bit puzzled, too. Not that I would ever go and by a X2 by myself - I'm pretty damn paranoid about the bad consequences of such a made-up design.

To sum up, this is a cowardly solution to me, which, as noted in the review, is intended just to give a little more time for the AMD engineers to come up with something more elegant. For now, I don't see any reasons for buying an ambiguous transitional product as the X2. The past has shown that such sandwiches get blown away by a next generation single-chip designs pretty soon.

But I would buy an ordinary 3870. It's such a bless for non-demanding users, with such a low power envelope... Nice :)

Any chances of getting power readings included in this review too?

Thank you for a good review, this is why I always wait for XBit to publish their reviews before I make any judgment about a new product.

I would however prefer that the following be mentioned:

The problems with Crossfire and Sli's micro stuttering, I have an SLi system myself and I am not very happy with SLI and a card build around Sli and Crossfire with the micro stutter issue is a real deal breaker for me, it makes gaming an irritation instead of a pleasure. Not to mention that Sli does not work in the one game that I spend most of my time in Lord of the Rings Online.

The X2 is not a mature product by any means, I do not think that it can be crowned the fasted card on the market due to its low average scoring. Winning in Synthetic benchmarks is not a champion. Though it did show potential in some games the minimum frames where always lower than the Nvidia parts.

I am however glad that Ati found some sort of bragging rights for the next month or two so that their image is lifted a bit. As mention by some other comments we need strong competition in the market and I am glad that Ati still has some fight left in them.

Again thank you for a very thorough article!

I am so confused... i thought this card was a dual RV680 gpu effort, with pci-ex 2.0 and gddr4... or am i simply going mad? where is the RV680 if i might be so bold as to noob myself here :)

Just like I've been saying from my experience with the X2; inconsistent, unpredictable and not a new champ.

Great article. Which is really too bad for AMD and the consumer. Reality is a harsh mistress.
It does show promise however.

Why didn't they use the Catalyst 8.2 drivers? They were released Feb. 13

Yet another total waste of space unless all you do is bench

i've read the reviews from anandtech.
similar system, very different result.
what gives?

most review sites showed 3870 X2 faster than 8800 GTS and GTX in most scenarios... Is this a driver issue?

I think that the multi-GPU approach to boost performance is cheaper in the short term and long term. Since the majority of costs are in the refinement stages where the very last bit of performance is tweaked from the GPU at the micro-code level. From the ATi perspective, why create a +$500 video card that no-one buys?

I'd rather be able to afford a video card than have some ego trip about how the GPU on my video card is made by the same company as the GPU on the fastest video card on the planet.

want a part 2 of the review with new catalyst drivers.

Useless...
why using 2 differnt systems ?? an old Ati580 chipset, and the latest (working ) Nvidia chipset ??? ever heard of scaling ??
what is wrong with a neutral intel chipset to test both cards ???
to get atleast some fair comparing

or are you eyes here on Xbit gone completely NVgreen ??

stick with cpu coolers testing in the future ,
to avoid becoming the joke of the web..(god knows you do enough every week)

I always wondered why you guys always tested Oblivion without AA. You just have to set HDR in game and force AA from the control panel, most people who are spending hundred of bucks on video cards want to play with AA enabled.

any one who wants a more honest less bias review go to toms hardware

"We cannot compare results obtained on different test beds with different hardware, software and settings."

Keep saying that. If you see such dramatic differences between this review and other reviews, wouldn't you figure out why your numbers are so low in for example call of duty 4?

Instead you keep using these weird results in every review where the 3870X2 is used.

@ Kieran, or go to http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3232&p=3

My personal experience looks much more like that from the link above than what is accomplished here.