[LaW]Maverick January 30, 2008 Share [LaW]Maverick Member January 30, 2008 Just wondering what you guys thought of the 3870 x2. It seems to perform pretty freakin' well, but it's just two GPU's on one board. With nVidia's 9800 coming out, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. The only redeeming grace I can see to the thing is that you get better performance (in a lot of cases, but not all) than the 8800 Ultra for significantly less coin. That being said, the BFG 8800 GTX OC I have right now sells for just a little less and I can overclock it to match the Ultra on air with a stable system. So the question is this: with ATI's recent abhorrent drivers and the fact that they haven't actually launched a new GPU, you think think they're getting desperate or is this just a filler to take back the crown from nVidia for a while so they can work on the next great card? Personally, Tom's hardware says that they've only been behind nVidia since the launch of the 8800, but I am forced to disagree--I think it's more accurate to say that they've been behind since the 7900's. In any case, the last card they sold that was more powerful than the most powerful nVidia was the X1900. Their new drivers are crap as well, so I'm seeing this as more of a desperate grab at the top so they don't lose their share of the market. I think they're in a lot of trouble when the 9800 launches, and I also think that nVidia has something else up their sleeves to follow up on the 9800 when they need to. That's just conjecture, of course, but meh, it's just the gut feeling I have. What do you guys think? Tom's Hardware Conclusion... A little about the 9800 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mookie January 30, 2008 Share mookie GC Alumni January 30, 2008 I'm not really sure why everyone seems so down on ATi. It seems like the newer ATi cards are a much better buy for the money. I'm thinking that some people are overestimating the number of people out there willing to spend cash to have a card that's a little faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfly January 30, 2008 Share dragonfly Member January 30, 2008 Everyone was waiting for the 8800GT, then they waited for the 8800GTS, now it's the 9800. I would like to have an ATI card, but the 3870 is closely priced with the 8800GT and it's outperformed almost all the time. If they keep the new X2 cheaper than the 9800 by quite a bit, then who cares how good the 9800 performs (imho) because even my 8800GTS is good enough for all the games that are out with high resolutions and everything maxed (only exception is crysis so far). It just seems like AMD is a couple months+ behind every launch now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroDamage January 30, 2008 Share ZeroDamage Member January 30, 2008 Just wondering what you guys thought of the 3870 x2. It seems to perform pretty freakin' well, but it's just two GPU's on one board. With nVidia's 9800 coming out, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. The only redeeming grace I can see to the thing is that you get better performance (in a lot of cases, but not all) than the 8800 Ultra for significantly less coin. That being said, the BFG 8800 GTX OC I have right now sells for just a little less and I can overclock it to match the Ultra on air with a stable system. So the question is this: with ATI's recent abhorrent drivers and the fact that they haven't actually launched a new GPU, you think think they're getting desperate or is this just a filler to take back the crown from nVidia for a while so they can work on the next great card? Personally, Tom's hardware says that they've only been behind nVidia since the launch of the 8800, but I am forced to disagree--I think it's more accurate to say that they've been behind since the 7900's. In any case, the last card they sold that was more powerful than the most powerful nVidia was the X1900. Their new drivers are crap as well, so I'm seeing this as more of a desperate grab at the top so they don't lose their share of the market. I think they're in a lot of trouble when the 9800 launches, and I also think that nVidia has something else up their sleeves to follow up on the 9800 when they need to. That's just conjecture, of course, but meh, it's just the gut feeling I have. What do you guys think? Tom's Hardware Conclusion... A little about the 9800 I think Tomshardware is a joke but with that said, I would not say that the card is a terrible card. HardOCP has it doing better than the 8800gtx on HL2 and source based games and just a little slower on everything else. ATI has been on top since the 9700 pro debuted what, 6 years ago until the Nvidia 8800 cards came out. This is the future of video cards I think, especially with ATI now being absorbed into AMD. AMD is in serious financial trouble right now with major losses; they are losing to Intel in the chip field when it comes to performance and their video card market is lacking big in the performance area. Now the X2 puts them back into the game even if it is a little lower powered. The price will need to drop to less than 400 and it will then be a major competitor against Nvidia. ATI's drivers have been top notch the past several years, then again, I am a beta tester and have seen them turn into what they are since 2002. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VooDooPC January 31, 2008 Share VooDooPC Member January 31, 2008 I would love for ATI to come back and release a new high end card, but putting two chips on one card looks like a desperation maneuver too me. It's pretty much saying, "We don't have any single card fast enough, so lets put two of our fastest chips on one card to compete with their single chipped cards.", even with this new card they can't keep up. Maybe ATI/AMD has something amazing up their sleeve (GPU/CPU combos?) that will blow us away or they really are doing as bad as we all think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clueless January 31, 2008 Share Clueless GC Alumni January 31, 2008 I'm rootin for em! Have been since my first Athlon 1400+ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[LaW]Maverick January 31, 2008 Author Share [LaW]Maverick Member January 31, 2008 Hey, I owned ATI cards only until my last graphics card--I've always been a fan, but I have to disagree with your assessment of their recent drivers. I think they're pretty crappy. I mean, the ATI control panel is much easier to use than nVidia's, I'll give you that, but the overall driver is somewhat lacking if you ask me. That being said, I'm still an ATI fan and would like to see them make a serious comeback. I think the 3870 x2 is a great idea, but if they truly want to get back in the game and start making a serious comeback the price needs to be down around $360-$380 instead of $450. They also need to get quad Crossfire ready to go, and fast. There isn't a thing nVidia has (right now) that could stand up to two of the 3870 x2's working together right now. I mean, if you had the money to throw down on 3 8800 GTX's and overclocked them to Ultra speeds (which I've done quite successfully) then maybe, but you'd be looking at almost twice the cost. All-in-all, what I'm hoping is that this card is just a way to compete while they work on a completely new chipset. I haven't heard any rumors to that effect, but it's what I'm hoping. My x850XT is still kicking in my friend's computer and he still plays pretty high-end games with the thing. It's one of the best cards they ever built. I really don't care who makes the graphics card in my computer--I care about performance and a price tag I can make myself pay. If ATI loses much more ground, the competition will go down--that means the prices for high-end cards will go up, and that's bad for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo January 31, 2008 Share Cujo Member January 31, 2008 ok, i'll start by saying it sounds like a lot of uninformed conversation going on here. the 9800 gtx or whatever it's called is rumoured to be maybe 30% faster than the 8800gtx putting it on par with the 3870 x2 in most games. secondly, this is in no way a desperation move by ati. they released this card to compete with the 8800gx2 or whatever they're going to end up calling it. yes 2 gt chips will end up being faster than 2 3870 chips but ati is out first therefore is gaining more high end sales. most reviews i've seen put the x2 ahead of the gtx in the majority of games with only the 8800gt in sli beating it. the sli of course costs around $150 more so this makes sense. thirdly, where are you getting this crappy drivers thing from? ati has had stronger driver support than nvidia for as long as i remember. ati releases a new driver monthly vs nvidia which seems to be quarterly. yes, nvidia releases more beta drivers but they are always labelled beta and not meant for regular use. also, the ati control panel is YEARS ahead of the nvidia garbage i'm forced to use. remember nvidia's horrible vista drivers?? it was june or july last year before they had solid drivers out and late summer before they had solid sli drivers. yes, ati drivers may struggle at times but the wait time for fixes is much less than nvidia. ati has been behind for a little over a year now since the 8800 series was launched. they are on currently on schedule for a mayish lauch of their new single gpu board the r700 which puts them a little behind the march launch of the 9800gtx. the x1900 series smoked the 7900 series. the x850 series smoked the 6800 series. ati usually comes out 3-4 months behind nvidia but usually with a better product and more mature drivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroDamage January 31, 2008 Share ZeroDamage Member January 31, 2008 Cujo is pretty much dead on. I just did not have the time to go into the detail he put in. I do not dislike the nvidia driver control panel though. I do think it is more responsive than the ATI control panel which requires .Net 2.0 but they are updated more often (monthly) and are typically rock solid, even with Vista. I cannot say the same with Nvidia drivers which in combination with Vista being garbage (currently) I went back to XP after a few months of Vista. I do not call the new ATI card desperation, I call it a wise move. Desperation is Nvidia releasing the 5800 Ultra (anyone remember that thing) with a super loud fan combo that deafened everyone who used it, put off a massive amount of heat and still could not compete with the 9700 at the time and Nvidia had to cheat at 3dmark at the time. Now Nvidia is in the lead with a card that I consider to be the modern day 9700 pro and that is the 8800 gtx. Whoever bought that card when it came out could basically stick with it 2+ years and still have top level performance. The 9700 pro at the time was the same way. I got it when it first came out and avoided the 9800 pro and 9800 xt because the 9700 was on par or just barely slower than those refreshes. From my understanding (and I could be wrong) the new Nvidia 9800 cards are only going to be refreshes of the 8800 series cards and nothing spectacularly new in regards to technology. Not like the ATI 8500 to 9700 update of the time or the resent update from the 7x00 series from nvidia to the 8800. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clueless January 31, 2008 Share Clueless GC Alumni January 31, 2008 I think Tomshardware is a joke Why do you say that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[LaW]Maverick January 31, 2008 Author Share [LaW]Maverick Member January 31, 2008 The 9800 gx2 or whatever it's called is most likely going to be two of the G92 8800 GTS cards on the same board. Should smoke the 3700 x2, and rumors are putting the price point at $450. I am not sure that'll happen though because the 8800 GTS's are still going for $350 (the g92's) What I mean about ATI is not their support for drivers (they're fast with the updates) but the drivers themselves. They seem bloated and there are ambiguous operations running in the background that ATI never full explains. They do things like this and this. That's not cool at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mookie January 31, 2008 Share mookie GC Alumni January 31, 2008 (edited) this. LOL idiots. Mav this is like the time you posted about the water-powered blowtorch that runs hotter than the sun. Edited January 31, 2008 by mookie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stutters January 31, 2008 Share stutters GC Alumni January 31, 2008 you think think they're getting desperate? desperate is releasing a non-innovative mp3 player that can't even make phone calls! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo January 31, 2008 Share Cujo Member January 31, 2008 mav, i'm sure i could find similar issues with nvidia drivers. the mom issue was only in that driver release and the vista issue is just that, a vista issue. nvidia drivers could be used the same way. that article just focused on the ati drivers. i recall and issue from back in the summer where ANY driver from ANY company could be compromised the same way. zero, i've used extensively both the ati ccc and the nvidia control panel. the ati version is far easier to use and loads at least as fast as the nvidia one. .net i agree is a pain to download for one app though vista comes with it installed (i'm pretty sure) so it's less of a pain on vista. as far as toms being a joke. toms is known to be one of the most "owned" review sites on the web. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clueless January 31, 2008 Share Clueless GC Alumni January 31, 2008 What is the best review site in your opinion? I always research before I buy and have always checked out toms...I have never felt like i have been led wrong as far as anything i have bought anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroDamage January 31, 2008 Share ZeroDamage Member January 31, 2008 I like a few. HardOCP in that they do not just bench based on FPS but do so playability. Toms used to be good in the beginning but turned into a pro intel, pro nvidia puppet and now their site is hideous. I cannot remember the card but back in the day they had an nvidia card blowing away an ATI card when it was obviously dead wrong and the opposite of every other review out there (I think it was the 5800 Ultra if I recall). I like anandtech although they are not as good as they used to be. The top of my list is arstechnica, xbitlabs, and hardocp these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[LaW]Maverick January 31, 2008 Author Share [LaW]Maverick Member January 31, 2008 Hard OCP is pretty sweet, I agree with ZD there... And the water powered torch does actually work. And I still don't like ATI drivers, with the last install I did, which was a different release than the one that article "MOM.exe" was still running in the processes (it was a fresh install of Windows too, so don't go blaming a shoddy uninstall of the previous drivers." That being said (which most of you don't seem to notice me saying) I STILL LIKE ATI! Sheesh....All I'm saying is that with my own personal experience, I like the ATI control panel better, but the drivers are less stable and more bloated than the nVidia drivers I have used. This is on a spread of 8 systems or so, 7 of which have had ATI cards at one point or another. Is it anecdotal, yes? But I'm not the only one in the world that feels ATI drivers have not been so great as of late. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clueless January 31, 2008 Share Clueless GC Alumni January 31, 2008 I will chime in and say that I have had trouble with ATI drivers in the past..granted, the last card I had was a x800xt pro....but I found myself using 3rd party drivers because everytime I used ATI...I had weird issues from crashes, freezes, to graphic anomolies. But I still love ATI and AMD and will buy from them as long as they continue to put out good product. As far as crap running in the background...I remember that as well...bunch of different .exes that I had to manually shut down all the time...but the card still performed great..just an annoyance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uther Pendragon February 1, 2008 Share Uther Pendragon Member February 1, 2008 Did anyone go into the forum discussion on [H]ardOCP when they did the review of the HD 3870 X2? 37 flippen pages! Definetly a lot of passionate people out there. I saw a picture in one of the replies that talked about the NVidia X2 solution that looks like two boards layered on each other (aka daughtercard). Not very well engineered to me. I like the ability to do quad GPU in two slots. 8 screens if you are so inclined. If the drivers can reach a good stage of maturity, combining performance, stability and functionality then AMD will have a winner, even if it is NOT the absolute top dog for performance. I got started with ATI line using the All-In-Wonder cards. If I transition to the TV Wonder cards I will use AMD video cards to minimize problems and so I have one vendor to get support from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfly February 1, 2008 Share dragonfly Member February 1, 2008 I like ATi's drivers, hate their control panel. I like nVidia's control panel, I hate their drivers. Time to buy a mac and give up video games I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo February 1, 2008 Share Cujo Member February 1, 2008 hardocp for me mostly though the last 3 or 4 reviews have only featured 4 games or so which is quite disappointing. i also read anand cause i like their graph layouts. of course gotta represent so i read hardware canucks as well. xbit is good but most of their reviews are dated. any site where the graphs don't start at 0 i refuse to read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clueless February 1, 2008 Share Clueless GC Alumni February 1, 2008 I know that I am most likely going to build a top-end system this year...I dont really need it, but I have always built "last years" good system, never had a current big dog, so I guess I wanna know what it feels like to have the best....at least for 3 months until it is outdated, lol. I would love nothing more than to have AMD and ATI gracing the interior of my case...hope they get it together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[LaW]Maverick February 1, 2008 Author Share [LaW]Maverick Member February 1, 2008 AMD processors are in some hot water. There newer Phenom stuff is pretty sweet, and reasonably priced, but it still doesn't perform as well as the Core2Quad's. I'm a little disappointed after so many years of AMD beating the crap out of Intel. I had a lot of driver-crashes when playing CS:S with my ATI drivers when I was still running them--with their more recent sets, they seem to have fixed that issue, but there's more random crap running in the background. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cujo February 1, 2008 Share Cujo Member February 1, 2008 this looks promising: http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20080201PD211.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VooDooPC February 1, 2008 Share VooDooPC Member February 1, 2008 HardOCP shows it being slower than a 8800 GTX in everything but HL2 and Tomshardware shows it being on par or faster than a 8800 Ultra. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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