Tom's Hardware: Topic 3870 X2 reviewed!
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I'm still amazed new high-end cards are being released with little to no performance advantage over 8800 GTX, a card that's going on 1 year and 3 months old. I don't think I'm alone in saying I have money collecting dust, waiting to be spent on next gen cards 
That said, I do appreciate the 3870 X2's apparent seemless integration of two GPUs on one card. It's just not the right card for the current environment. Still curious to see how two of these work...
| cnumartyr wrote : The initial reports I've seen on the 9800 GX2 are that it's underclocked. That might gimp it, we will have to wait and see.
|
I'd agree with [H] comment in that canned benchmarks are probably not the best way to evaluate "real world" performance (i.e. sitting down and actually playing a game).
However, I can definitely see the reasoning behind using homogenous tests in that they: 1) leaves less room for error, and are perhaps more scientific 2) easier 3) conforms to tests run in other reviews, therefore providing a larger test pool. The last point in particular is important: having a larger test pool of reviews based on similar tests allows you to form an average and eliminate outliers (and possibly identify reviewer bias 
). It's never good to have just one set of results from an individual reviewer - I guess the ideal would be for everyone to run the exact same tests as [H], then we could form an average from all reviews.
Its a situation like X1900XTX vs 7900GTX
if u remember X1900XTX beated 7900GTX in some games and 7900GTX beated X1900XTX in some other games
its the same for 3870X2 and 8800ULTRA, in some games 3870X2 beats 8800ULTRA and in some other games 8800ULTRA wins, but overall the difference isnt much between these 2 cards
from tomshardware:
Even on the level of pure performance, the situation isn't exceptional: the 8800 Ultra, a card available for 8 months now, is only outperformed by 7% (in 1920x1200), the gap being tiny in the other resolutions or even going to the advantage of the 8800 Ultra. Compared to AMD's older high end, the Radeon HD 2900 XT, performances are increasing by only 42%.
From hothardware:
The Radeon HD 3870 X2 proved to be a strong performer throughout our testing. In most of the games we tested, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 was usually the highest performing single-card in the group. It loses some benchmarks to a dual-card Radeon HD 3870 CrossFire setup, and wins others. The same can be said of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 in comparison to the GeForce 8800 GTX. The 8800 GTX was the better performer in Company of Heroes, and at a couple of resolution is Crysis. But the X2 pulls ahead in HL2: EP2 and ET: Quake Wars. The Radeon HD 3870 X2’s video playback performance was also quite good.
So my 8800GTX(Actually 8800ULTRA 
) still shines
but again 3870X2 is a solid performer and there is no doubt about it
Reply to Maziar
| pauldh wrote : [H] has been under alot of fire past year or so and the editors frequent the forums and really go off sometimes. Sometimes I feel they have been way off base with an agenda, other times I agree with them. I grow tired of their judgement on best playable settings though. they seem to push resolution at the cost of details. Like 19x12 medium(crysis) instead of 16x10 high or 14x9 high + fsaa. That's fine I guess, but I wish they took the time to test more settings which would benefit more people. |
Another tiring aspect is their (seemingly) arbitrary choice of which cards go against what competition. In almost every review they have a pared down selection of what cards they choose to test. In this case it is only the x2 and the gtx. When they do test more (say an ultra, GT and a few radeons in the mix) they rarely put the "lower end" ati card in the same apples-to-apples chart as the gtx or ultra. I have seen reviews of theirs that have shown a gt or lower geforce get beat handily by the ati "equivalent" only to get the remark similar to "wow, neat". On those cases when you look at the numbers, and compare to the charts for the higher end it looks suspiciously like it beats or meets the performance of those "better" cards.
Now, I like the graph for the apples-to-apples comparisons much better than the standard average fps that others use for the same test. BUT without showing us how far ahead the Ultra is or where the GT and other radeons are in comparison... there is no context and so the test is an island unto itself. You can't compare it to anything. You do not know if that $700 ultra card is relevant at all compared to a $450 option. If they are even a few FPS from each other in the [H]'s tests then (considering how much they tend to favor Nv lately) I would consider it a win when taking into account other reviews.
As for their "different way of testing"... I get irritated with some of their choices as mentioned in previous posts. If the cards are close, don't give me a 2x increase in AA just so you can declare a winner... If you cannot increase it beyond arbitrary (and largely unnoticed) minor ticks in graphics features, then they are the same. 'nuff said. Example: the CoD4 test... increase from 2x to 4x with the explanation "4X AA smoothes all edges on all textures and reduces jaggies" reads like a description of what AA is, not what the improvement from 2 to 4 gives you... (typo on the word smooths was theirs)
and then of course there is the game selection. Seems like it is made to cater to an Nv machine... almost as if the game selection is made by an Nv owner. No fault per-se there. If I had an Nv based machine I would buy games that played to its strenght. (i.e. last gen I would not buy oblivion, this gen I would buy WiC or something) If that is the case and the games are purchased by the site authors... then let us know. Otherwise, get more games that represent a better cross-section of what we ALL play...
anyway. My point is: there is NO site that does not have bias. We need to take them all together and make a decision based on the whole pic as well as our own wisdom. If you base a purchase on any one site... woe to you.
/rant
Reply to sojrner
| San Pedro wrote : Now, I'm just going to have to squeeze that bad boy in my case. . . |
Easy cowboy!.. I think they have laws against this kind of thing..
Computers, bicycles... the list goes on! Oh what days are these when an honest pervert, I mean citizen 
can't.. ahem
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/t [...] _page.html
(-;
Ryan
No rainbows
Reply to Ironnads
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