HD3870 Crossfire Vs. 8800GT SLI review

http://en.expreview.com/?p=53


Im surprised the Crossfire did so well! I was expecting it to suck as everywhere I read they say the drivers need improvement? 100+% scale in 3dmark? Anyone care to question the validity of this review?

*please no price gouging comments

F&#*$ price gouging... heh, j/k

Seriously though... I didn't expect such gains from Crossfire vs. Single. Crossfire even faired pretty well vs. SLI.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151

2 3850s = the performance of 1 8800GTX 768MB/384-bit
179.99 x 2 = $359.98 $500.00

I am going to put 2 3850's for my last upgrade on my A8R32-MVP Deluxe (S939) AMD Opteron 165 @ 3.0ghz & 4gigs of Patriot CL 2-2-2-5 1T and see how it handles Vista & DX10 (I hope physics processing will be possible..)

I wouldn't question the vaidity as it seems similar to what many others were reporting, but it is still a semi-iffy site, but there's nothing gravely out of whack, the single numbers on the HD3870 are still lower than the single numbers on the GF8800GT, and the Xfire numbers are a little better but nothing wildly so with the GT doing better in some and the HD3870 doing better in others. I'd want a little more supporting evidence before formulating opinions in general, but interesting none the less.

I'm with Paul about the stabilty/compatability issues with such setups though, still a bit iffy.

Aww, C'mon!

Surprising performance by the 3870 to me.

Crossfire really flexes it's muscles with AA and AF. I dunno 'bout you guys, but that makes me a lot more inclined to get two of those cards.

This review definatly made me happy, As a X38 owner the only option for multi GPU's is with crossfire. Im glad that the cards are doing well as I already have a 3870 on the way. My plans are to get the second whenever the prices return to normal.

*THAT does not count as a price gouging comment!

I dont think people realize that the bench marks of two cards, and not of CF and SLI. The fact that a Slower card (3870) is in most cases keeping up, and sometimes beating a faster card (8800gt) show how much better CF is. The 8800gt is supposed to be somewhere around 20% better than a single 3870. But when you have a dual setup, the 3870's are on par with 2 8800gt's. And knowing that SLI is limited to only 2 cards, and CF can have up to 4 helps even more. 4 3870's would be faster than 2 8800gtx's.

I wish SLI and Xfire were both cross-compatible since I'm on a SLI board. I still wouldn't get 2 3870s though but it sure looks enticing.

Link is down.

I have read other reviews and from what I can tell Crossfire seems to scale just a little bit better than SLI. As usual, it depends mostly on the game, with some games actually taking a performance HIT. Because of this application-dependent nature I still don't count either solution as being practical or cost-effective.

I will give my blessing to the first multi-GPU solution that scales almost linearly in EVERY application. I have read that ATI is working on an alternate frame rendering mode that is supposed to be application independent under DX9. I don't think it's ready for prime time yet though.

If you look hard enuff youll find that the 3870 is more like 9% slower, tho Xfire is faster by 5% than sli, bringing them close, and if you use dual+ gfx setups, Xfire is a cheaper solution per the perf

crossfire has always been useful to me ever since i got it over a year ago, where does all this perception that crossfire is still somehow catching up with SLi come from?

I'll Get me 4 3870's on spider in January and nothing current will touch that rig.

I am very interested in using 4 gpus as well but I think Im going to crossfire 2 for now and wait for the 3870x2's before I do 4. Beside by then the drivers will be mature(er) and I only have 2 Pci-e slots on my x38 maximus formula. So I can then get 4 gpus in 2 cards! I cant wait! muahahahha

Oh btw, Anyone know if Crossfireing 2 3870's of different make being a problem? (sappire and a HIS)

Seems the only problem with this is that you have to use AMD CPU which atm are loosing to intels, and the fact they have to get 3 and 4 scaling as well as 2GPU's might slow things down. I have also noticed that most "pre-production" motherboards on the 790 spider arent making enough room for 4 dual slot GPU's does this seem stupid to anyone else? The other worrying issue is ATX specification only allows up to 7 expansion slots. http://www.formfactors.org/develop [...] atx2_2.pdf "The ATX form factor supports up to seven expansion slots. " Makes 4 dual slots go out the window on a "normal" ATX case and mobo.

Thanks for the HD3850 Crossfire link Kohlhagen

So wait... how about 2 3870 X2's wow..

Can someone post links to any X2 info. I havn't seen much

Just search yahoo or google for the 3870 X2. you will find a lot.

I think a single r700 die might have only 300 million transistors. So the r700 mobile solution will have around half the transistors as 8800GT or 3870. Will this be fast enough?
I don't see how a single r700 die will have the same performance as the HD3k if it has half the transistors.
"Radeon R700 will be targeted to launch on a 45 nm fabrication process [5]. Each GPU core is reported to have 72 mm² die size, with slightly less than 300 million transistors [6]. All cores support DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 [7] "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R700
When you think a mobile GPU will have 700m+ transistors without frying your nuts?
(what do I know?)

Yes,
I expect ATI will have at least one card with 4 r700 dies.
Lets hope 1 die ~= a RV670.
The 8800GT just burned a hole through my wallet. I hope this can last until the r800 / g100.