X-bit labs

Started by: Qualtai | Date 03/24/08

Comments: 32 | Last Comment:  05/01/08

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1. wow. a first comment :) Great article. I'm sticking to my 'old' good HD 3870. At least for now.

one thing that bugs me why is this called an 9800 GX2 when its 2x 8800 GTS cards ? should be called 8800 GX2 as the real 9800 GTX card may be faster then this card (going from my 7950 to an 8800 GTX just blows the onld card away) the 9600 GT has half the SP (64) then an 8800 GTS and it comes close to beating it

and i wish thay stop Miss selling products that say thay have more ram then thay do yes it has 2x512MB in SLI mode its Not 1gb as anandtech stated 512mb can only be used

2. Excellent review. Very long, informative, and detailed. I think its the first quad 9800gx2 review out not. Im planning in getting a 9800Gx2 to replace my aging 8800/640MB.

Quad 9800 is like a mixed bag, sometimes you get good performance and others its not worth it. I was looking forward in seeing crysis playable in very high settings. I guess we have to wait for nV/AMD's next gen gpu to see better results.

great review.

correct "first quad 9800gx2 review out not".

I meant "first quad 9800gx2 review out now".

3. I've not been impressed with a lot of the tech coming out this year, personally, this is just another disappointment.

4. So, simply put NVIDIA 9800gx2 is garbage which costs $600 a piece. If you join them you get $1200 even worse garbage. Impresive!

5. excellent review but wid some mistakes on the 3dmark06 page
for instance 3-Way CF passes above 8000 points bit 4-Way CF...

*not the $4-Way CF

Thanks for sharp eyes. There was a typo in 3DMark06. We have corrected that.

6. As other people properly stated, the card is kind of a mixed bag, or even straight, a garbage bag. As the 3870X2 came out, It seemed plainly stupid to me, but now I must confess that the engineers at nVidia have managed to come out with an even more ridiculous product, simply beyond the imagination.

It's loud, hot, often slower than single GPU solutions - I don't see anything to like about it.

It's so absurd, it's an engineering disgrace.

God, aren't nVidia benchmarking their own products?! If they do, how could a piece of crap like that slip into the market... The most shocking about it is that there are still plenty of children eager to spend their parent's hard earned money on something so... useless.

7. Surely there must be something wrong with those 3dmark06 numbers.. I have a C2D and a 8800GTX and i get just under 13K with that in "pure speed" test.. and i've seen people with stock E8500 and 2x8800GT on a 680i board getting over 15K with default settings.. how can these setups only be getting around 13k ?

There was a typo in 3DMark06. Now it is corrected.
Overall results are accurate, but you should keep in mind that we still use dual-core CPU, which limits certain results.

8. I'm fed up with articles testing every single video card only at resolutions higher than 1600x1200 and i am glad you are an exception!Ok so they try to exploit their performance differencies but what's the benefit for the enduser?I wonder how many gamers out there own a display with native resolution as high as 1920x1200 or 2560x1600!And i bet the last thing they want to buy right now is a 24'' TFT!

9. Can we get the all important power readings put in this article please?

10. Quote from page 6:

" We disagree with this statement, though. Yes, with this design, each GPU heats up each PCB only, but they also heat up each other through the common heatsink, which negates the possible positive effect. As indirect proof of our point, the new card’s clock rates are reduced considerably relative to the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, let alone GeForce 9800 GTX. The achievement of a higher memory frequency through optimal PCB wiring doesn’t sound like a hefty argument, either. Yes, the memory frequency of the reference Radeon HD 3870 X2 is clocked at a lower frequency, but PowerColor’s version is this card features GDDR4 clocked at 1125 (2250) MHz, and the single-PCB design was not a problem for it."

Both chipsets in ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 share one common heatsink too, but what I believe in is that ATI used more layers for the PCB which helped in the wiring of the card or something that made them able to raise the clocks and that has nothing to do with the HSF cooling system they used.
Also, the G92 core dissipates more heat than the RV670 but as long as the card doesn't lock up and it does its job well then there should be no worries.
You also overclocked it and it was stable, so no matter how we slice it, it just works as advertised, noise is a problem I agree but who can get this can get a water cooling solution once they are available, it's just all in the same one category, extreme gamers who can afford !
I like the design of the X2 more than the GX2 in general but anyhow they have the same driver dependency issue, so as long as 2 things have the same negatives you either avoid them both or just go for the faster, at least me think so, at least in this price category where performance is what matters only !

Note: finally an article at the same day the NDA is lifted -I'm talking about Quad SLI of course-, too bad nForce 790i Ultra/SLI couldn't made it though !

11. KPD Radeon HD 3870 the best!!
Thank you for good testings/

12. Call of duty 4 and Quad-SLI is hot!

So where is the bottleneck with the rest of benchmarks, or is COD just better programmed?!

its an port from an Xbox 360 game so must be the way it was made

13. good review. but i think that lab team have to change a cpu!!! and it very important for the more accurate mesurements.
cause such cpu as "Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800" is do not allow to open "full power" of such kind vga-adapters.
may be, Core2 Quad QX9650 is better? results will be more interesting, i think.

14. When will we ever get Multi-monitor support?

I think the 3870x2 already has that. FOOL!

15. Hi guys, nice review!

I wonder about the Crossfire CoD4 results. From reading HardOCP, i remember there is a bug in the AMD drivers when high water quality is selected. It kills the performance in multi GPU configurations. Perhaps you could retest the crossfire solutions with low water quality. Performance per Radeon GPU should then be at about 70% of a Geforce GPU.

16. AWESOME review on Quad GPU results from ATI and Nvidia. Looks like this review will be the highest rated review ever?

It certainly shows that unless you only play like 1 or 2 games that really benefit from quad-GPU setup, you would be a loser with the rest of other games that probably will never fully benefit from Quad GPU's.

17. On any other computing system with vendor optimized firmware and drivers - especially one where the driver encapsulates the hardware - a thirty percent improvement for double the hardware would be laughed out of the room.

Video, GL/DirectX are perfectly suited for scaling, and the entire driver & hardware pipeline is within NV & ATI control. These numbers are a joke, and the price to performance ratio are awful.

The only good ratio here is the profit ratio.

18. Overall good review, however i just don't understand some of the numbers on the Radeon HD 3870.
I have the 3870 card and in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. at 1650x1050 with max settings i get between 30-40 fps on Core2 6750.
Also in Half Life i get twice as much (around 60), and in COD4 with same WS res. i get around 50.
Kill me i just don't get how those xbitlabs guys get some of their benches.

We cannot comment on benchmark numbers obtained on different test-systems, under different settings and conditions.

19. Wow, you guys went all out on this story, A+ and beyond. Great to know to stick with my 8800 ultra :P

20. yah, ternyata dual GPU tidak menjamin game akan berjalan dengan mulus dan menghasilkan frame rate yang ideal, contohnya crysis, lost planet extreme condition tetap tidak menghasilkan frame rate yang memadai apalagi ideal
Ihix ihix
Moga next generation of GPU bisa memenuhi kehausan kemampuan komputasi direct X 10 yang luar biasa rakus

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