Ok well many reviews have been posted about these 2 cards and i find it funny when the varibles change from every game to favor a card. For example we all know ati has issues with AA for a reasson i dont know why. (if anyone knows please post) also many reviews change AA settings of and on to favor a card. for instance Half life 2 the 3870X2 beats the GX2 with aa off then drops with aa turned on. then the review decided to turn aa on to show how powerful the gx2 compared to the 3870X2... if there is a site out there that does apples to apples please tell me where. Because all i c in nvida fan sites kissing nvidias ass..

please do not post about o he is a ati fan boy as i said before i own ati and nvidia cards and im just tired of reviews fing the people over.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/0 [...] index.html

tom's reviews are pretty good i find

As far as I know the 3870X2 and the 9800GX2 perform very similarly. It is my understanding that nvidia has better driver support, which explains why the anti aliasing feature is much better supported in nvidia cards.

I think I would like to clarify some things about anti aliasing though. Most people I think have no clue what anti aliasing (AA) actually is, but for some reason like toss the term around when discussing benchmarks.

Aliasing is a phenomenon that causes different continuous signals to become indistinguishable. For example, if you have extremely poor vision, then everything 20 ft in front of you may look exactly the same, like one big blur. This means you have very low visual acuity, and are unable to discern objects from what they really are. You would have aliased vision.

The anti aliasing feature applies an algorithm to correct objects that may look indiscernable, in effect it is applying a higher level of detail. I supposed you could think of glasses as a type of anti aliasing.

In the gaming world, anti aliasing helps us see a much higher level of detail. 90% of the time, I will not notice this detail. I usually leave anti aliasing around 2x (Currently I am using a Sapphire 3870).

Benchmarking programs such as 3dmark06 have their purpose, but mean very little. A certain number of marks does not really correlate meaningfully into how much we enjoy the graphics of a game. So where does this leave us with 3870X2 vs 9800X2?

Assuming we are using a resolution around 1200 x 1000, whatever it is, or so (like the vast majority of us):

Well if you take anti aliasing out of the picture (because it really does not make a difference during actual game play), then you will see that the 3870X2 may perform slightly better, although mostly the two cards mostly perform the same. The real topic to discuss is, how good are my graphics for a certain price? Well it looks like the 3870X2 is going to be somewhere between $150 to $200 cheaper. Performance wise they are the same. Go with the 3870X2.

I think toms reviews are more intuitive, but sometimes lack variety. The anandtech review had more to choose from, they had a 9600gt sli setup that showed it runs with the 9800gx2 in alot of areas. I think you can't base anything off just one review. You have to read a few and build your own conclusion.

My conclusion is an SLI setup is cheaper and would out perform the GX2 and its a waist unless you are stuck with a non sli board.

agreed was just showing him a descent review

After reading some of the anandtech review I can say one thing, I don't like their test set-up. Using fraps with 20 second demoes. I just don't think 20 seconds is enough to get an accurate feel for how well a game will play, especially for the 3870x2 which can get some low intial FPS when first loading scenes into memory. All the reviews probably use extremely short demoes though, even though no one plays a game for twenty seconds.

Toms does a nice apples to apples comparison. They test 8 games at 4 different settings and the last page of the review shows the average frames at all 4 settings for each card, theres no "varibles change from ever game to favor a card". You can see that the average frame rates for all 8 games, the GX2 beat it by 32% with no AA and 57% with AA at the lower res. The GX2 beats it by 37% with AA off and 40% with AA at the highest res. Reviewers test the games with AA turned on, not to show AMD in a bad light, but because no one buys a $600 card to pay at 640x480 with no AA or AF. Just because AMD cant handle the AA doesnt mean that reviewers are shilling for Nvidia they turn AA on.


http://images.tomshardware.com/200 [...] 2/avg1.png
http://images.tomshardware.com/200 [...] 2/avg2.png

EDIT: I also want to note that I dont really like the GX2. Its about on par with the performence I expected but hearing all the ATI fan boys talk about how the X2 would still beat up on it was driving me crazy. I like the fact that it does beat up on the X2 and takes over the "fastest single card on the planet" title, but its not worth the money.

Once both cards are ironed out they should be pretty close. I dont doubt Nvidia will pass the ATI in performance slightly. Its expected. The only real issues here to think about is the cost of the card and compatability. I still lean to ATI for dx10.1 support and better over all xfire support and MB performance on xfire systems. If you change your gpu every year it realy doesnt matter. By the this time next year you will be using the latest hardware. For guys like me that like to keep my hardware for 2 years +++ and do the minimal amount of upgrading the ATI is the clear pick.

I changed my cards after two years, 7900GT's for 8800GT's nVidia being the clear pick . So what's all this about DX10.1?, what games will utilize it?, when will it be released to the masses? and don't say 'soon' because that's getting old now.

I think this DX10.1 will not be an issue untill alot of cards can use it.
No game will require it unless most of the sold cards can use it.

Voodoo 3000 FTW!!

Vista won't even have DX10.1 until SP1.

Not really. The 9800GX2 is a notably stronger card, but the 3870 X2 is cheaper...

Nvidia and Ati both have great driver support, Ati's slow AA in this generation is due to a hardware limitation.

So, what you are saying is that Vista supports DX10.1? In case you didn't know, SP1 released today.

I can sell a Voodoo3 3000 perfectly working and with all accessories if someone is interested.