Unreal Tournament 3 on HD 3870

no offense but your a noob  

3870 is actually not that good of a card by todays standards... as the value card for this generation is equal to the 3870... which gets crushed by 3 nvidia generations... gt 200, 9800, and 8800...

if you think ram speed REALLY affects your game performance, your sorely mistaken as the amount is much more important unless your latencies are like half a second...

Also, UT3 isn't really a demanding game graphically... unlike other titles... it was optimized to run on most hardware extremely well...

Sorry for noob bashing  

it's funny how people who like to portray themselves as being "smarter" or "better" if you will, then other people will actually make themselves look retarded by saying things like "no offense..... but ..." thogrom my comment to you is this: I may be a noob by your standards but you make me laugh by your pathetic efforts to make yourself appear better then me..... oh yeah.. sorry for the bashing.. hahahahaha

-Jagnet

Hi. That's good you enjoy your gaming.  

What's your processor?

Anyway, yep, it would be good for Vista if you have 4GB of RAM. As Vista has an extra overhead with RAM compared to XP and DX10 even using more resources compared to DX9 on max settings. (duh) So yeah, if you're going Vista it's recommended you use 4GB.

thanks for sharing yur experience OP...and u r right use vista to get dx10 workign and enjoy the full potential of that card...

Sorry jagnet but thogrom has a bit of a point there.

Anyway, the 3870 is good for running UT3 just keep in mind it may slow down a bit in DX10. The 3800 series of cards can run some DX10 games well, like UT3 and hell gate London, but don't expect more than medium settings at 1680x1200 in more demanding games like Crysis. If your motherboard is capable of crossfire, then buying another one down the road and running it in crossfire it will give you slightly better performance than a single 4850. Of course I would only do so if you can get it relatively cheap. Right now new egg is having a sale on a sapphire 3870 (the GDDR4 version no less) for like $75 with a mail in rebate and promo code. I'm personally gonna hold out a bit more till the next generation of GPUs, when my over clocked 3850 probably won't be able to cut it at medium settings.

Ok... just a thought. The OP never ever ever ever said anything that could be misconstued as saying that the 3870 is the card to go out and buy so that you play UT3 with great graphics. What he said was that he has a 3870 and the graphics on UT3 look really good with it.

Benchmark:
http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd-4870...

I'm still using an ATI x1950 Pro card, and it has handled every game i have thrown at it at 1440x900. Not a huge res but that's with just about every setting up to HIGH. Crysis and FarCry2 included. Think I'm goin to go for the 4850. Think I will see a noticeable improvement? ;P

doormatderek......ull proebly get more then three to four times the performance with a 4850 compared to the x1950pro ...literally

heh, the one setting i usually haveta crank down is shadow filtering. Once you drop under HIGH it just doesn't look as good as the rest of the game. But it's been good to me 

i love the people who try to make themselves look smarter by making statements like you just did...

"no offense" but your an idiot in my eyes

EDIT: had something else but was too... not acceptable for these forums so i apologize

You talkin to me? or the originator of the post?

OP

BTW great avatar  

yes, it has to be one of my favorite pics i've EVER used yet  But give the guy a little credit... You dont need the top of the line to be happy with what you got. He's got me beat, but I would never consider buying that card myself  
But ya, probably a waste of a post...  ))))

Exactly... hes acting like the 3870 is gold even though he didn't explicitly say it, thats what he implied

and you don't go around advertising the X1950 as being all that

it was back then but not now, and the 3870 wasn't EVER all that

that is good to here. unreal engine is very efficient. the 3870 is a decent card one thing i dislike about is that it isnt great when enabling aa but its good card overall with moderate settings. 4000 series fixed the issue ati back in the game.
=]

The single most important reason 3870 handles UT3 so well is because UT3 (or any game that use UT engine, such as Bioshock) does not support AA. The engine is designed to look smooth without AA.
http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd-4870...

Without AA, 3870x2 performs about the same as 4870 (3870x2 is slightly faster, but the amount is insignificant). It drops back with AA turned on.
http://en.expreview.com/2008/06/24/first-review-hd-4870...

LMAO!!!!! that is why i was NEVER able to find that option!!!!! hehehe seriously. I didn't look that hard cause, it did look VERY good anyways  ))I think Bioshock was one of the last games I paid for...   Gotta love Steam. Reformatted so many times, and was able to reinstall it i don't know how many times over. F@CK DRM!!!!