ATI 3870 - Cheap!, Low Power!, and still has Full Performance!

[SUBMAN1]

I might actually buy this board. It consumes absolutely no power, yet outperforms the x2900 XT! And to top it off, it will come in at about $200!!! THis will kill the 2900 XT market, and considering the screenshots I have been seeing - the image quality is night and day better than the 8800 GT!

The 8800 GT has ugly rendering, especially in games like Crysis as compared to the 3870. THe 3870 has much more vibrant screen geometry, and also fully supports the new DX10.1.

Anyone looking at buying a new vid card should at least consider this 3870 that is due to arrive shortly.

Here is the data slide from ATI on power consumption vs. performance. Notice the power req's of the older 2900.

http://images.vnu.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/14/amd-55nm-gpus-lead-price-attack/rv670-marchitecture-diesize.jpg

-S

PS. I will go find those slides on the image quality difference over the 8800 GT. It's night and day.

[SUBMAN1]

Here it is. Notice how more vibrant the ATI is over the 8800 GT.


ATI rendered scene:

http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/3870crysis.jpg


8800 GT rendered scene:

http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/8800crysis.jpg


We found ATi HD3870 is actually has better picture process while Crysis benching.
Specially the light refraction from water, HD3870 is very smooth but 8800GT is not. It is around frame 500 to 1000.

[Tchocky]

The power aspects look amazing, but I prefer the washed-out feel of the 8800 to the colour-saturated ATI. (that's only going on those screens, I'm sure that can be tweaked)
Let's say I prefer the coloration of Half-Life 2 to Far Cry :)

[kiwi_2005]

I prefer nvidia cards ive stuck with them since the Geforce 2, but if an ATI floats your boat then go for it. I got this old computer up and going and it has a ATI 9600XT which aint bad at all for an old card, It runs COD 4 in low/medium settings at 1024x768 res lol

[JSLTIGER]

There's a review up at Legion Hardware comparing the 8800GT and the HD 3870, and the GT aparently destroyed the AMD offering in every benchmark.

[elite_hunter_sh3]

There's a review up at Legion Hardware comparing the 8800GT and the HD 3870, and the GT aparently destroyed the AMD offering in every benchmark.

err.. proof?? if your talking about the DUAL gpu 3870... :shifty: if its the single gpu 3870 then its probably wrong.. dont froget drivers.. drivers are a part of performance in benchmarks.. get good drivers, and the 3870 will kill the 8800 gt...:arrgh!:

[Nightmare]

There's a review up at Legion Hardware comparing the 8800GT and the HD 3870, and the GT aparently destroyed the AMD offering in every benchmark.

err.. proof?? if your talking about the DUAL gpu 3870... :shifty: if its the single gpu 3870 then its probably wrong.. dont froget drivers.. drivers are a part of performance in benchmarks.. get good drivers, and the 3870 will kill the 8800 gt...:arrgh!:
Article mention by JSLTIGER (http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=703). The article also shows power consumption compared to the 8800 GT.

I'm no NVIDIA fan boy and I ran ATI cards for years. I buy whatever is the best for money when I'm upgrading or doing a new build. Just happened to be the 8800 series was on the top of the heap during my latest build. Been very happy with it so far. It just saddens me to see how ATI has slipped since they were acquired by AMD. :cry:

[elite_hunter_sh3]

i believe that is the single GPU version of the 3870... the X2 version is supposedly 30% faster then the 8800 ultra.. :hmm:

[antikristuseke]

PS. I will go find those slides on the image quality difference over the 8800 GT. It's night and day.
Look at what you post and think it through thuroughly, because you are spewing quite a bit of bull**** here.
Here it is. Notice how more vibrant the ATI is over the 8800 GT.


ATI rendered scene:

8800 GT rendered scene:

We found ATi HD3870 is actually has better picture process while Crysis benching.
Specially the light refraction from water, HD3870 is very smooth but 8800GT is not. It is around frame 500 to 1000.







Err, those two screenshots look to be taken of the same general area, but the 8800gt one is taken from much further away. The same can be seen from the timedemo text, the Nvidia cards screenshot looks so horrendeous because the level of detail displayed is reduced. These two screenshots are misleading at best, flat out trying to look Nvidia worse than it is more likely. But yeah, the image quality on the ATI card will be better because water reflections (and i think light refracting on water) is not rendered every frame on the nvidia card. The difference is nowhere near that great as these two screenshots would have you belive. That being said the upcoming Ati card shows a lot of promisse and at the price point they are dringing it out it will be a great card.

[JSLTIGER]

Thanks Nightmare, for posting the link.

As to what antikristuseke has to say, I agree. First and potentially more importantly:

ATI FPS: 0.06
nVidia FPS: 14.64

ATI is Frame 84
nVidia is Frame 59

Given that the player is skydiving, that fog you see in the nVidia shot obscuring the water and the color is a cloud as the ATi card is taken from a lower vantage point. Unless it's the same frame, the comparison is invalid.

[Rockin Robbins]

Not only is nVidia the performance leader, but I also do not appreciate over-saturated colors masquerading as somehow "better" than realistically rendered ones. But the real deal killer for ATI is the difference in warranty between them and EVGA, arguably the best maker of nVidia cards. EVGA has a lifetime replacement warranty on all, including overclocked (!) cards they sell.

Even if the ATI card were marginally better, if it augers in you're going to wish you had an nVidia card from EVGA. :damn: I just had a nasty experience where 6 the electrolytic caps on one of my 7600GT cards exploded:
http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/Dead%20EVGA%207600GT/100_6177.jpg
Kaboom! That card is toast!. Now this would be considered physical damage not covered by normal companies, but not EVGA. "We'll be glad to replace your card" they said after examining this very photo, which I sent to ensure that they understood what happened. Why would I consider any other company? ATI's out of business in my house.:up:

[TteFAboB]

Any recent nVidia card will give you trouble on some older games.

I have an 8800 on this PC only because there wasn't a comparable Ati product at the time I purchased it, but I'm keeping ATI on my second computer to be able to run all my old games with no glitches.

[antikristuseke]

Not only is nVidia the performance leader, but I also do not appreciate over-saturated colors masquerading as somehow "better" than realistically rendered ones. But the real deal killer for ATI is the difference in warranty between them and EVGA, arguably the best maker of nVidia cards. EVGA has a lifetime replacement warranty on all, including overclocked (!) cards they sell.

Even if the ATI card were marginally better, if it augers in you're going to wish you had an nVidia card from EVGA. :damn: I just had a nasty experience where 6 the electrolytic caps on one of my 7600GT cards exploded:

Kaboom! That card is toast!. Now this would be considered physical damage not covered by normal companies, but not EVGA. "We'll be glad to replace your card" they said after examining this very photo, which I sent to ensure that they understood what happened. Why would I consider any other company? ATI's out of business in my house.:up:

I have had several motherboards from diferent manufacturers with defective capacitors and they all cover that by their warranty, even the x850xt that poped a cap from asus was replaced. Allso dead caps =/= dead card, capacitors are easy to replace.

[Rockin Robbins]

In his review of the 3870, Steven Walton of LegionHardare.com (thanks for the above link) outlines the relative market strategies of ATI and nVidia very nicely. To paraphrase, ATI overpromises and underdelivers. nVidia underpromises and overdelivers. Here's Walton's summary quote.
Perhaps the biggest cause for excitement was in the name, as Radeon HD 3870 suggests that this is in fact a next generation product. Rather AMD/ATI is just trying to stretch the R600 architecture a little bit further. So making the Radeon HD 3870 sound like something it clearly is not, will most likely upset a number of readers. Nvidia actually did the opposite by making the GeForce 8800 GT sound like another run of the mill GeForce 8800 series graphics card that was probably going to be a little bit slower than the GTS version. Of course the 8800 GT was much more, offering games a performance vs. price ratio that was unimaginable only a few months ago.
Nuff said. Another case of selling promises and hype instead of delivering a great product. It's great to have competition, but it would be better have GOOD competition in the marketplace. Come on AMD/ATI! You should do better.:up:

[Dowly]

Err, those two screenshots look to be taken of the same general area, but the 8800gt one is taken from much further away. The same can be seen from the timedemo text, the Nvidia cards screenshot looks so horrendeous because the level of detail displayed is reduced. These two screenshots are misleading at best, flat out trying to look Nvidia worse than it is more likely. But yeah, the image quality on the ATI card will be better because water reflections (and i think light refracting on water) is not rendered every frame on the nvidia card. The difference is nowhere near that great as these two screenshots would have you belive. That being said the upcoming Ati card shows a lot of promisse and at the price point they are dringing it out it will be a great card.

Also, in te Nvidia screenshot, there's a cloud covering pretty much all of the screen. :rotfl:

[Dowly]

Any recent nVidia card will give you trouble on some older games.

I have an 8800 on this PC only because there wasn't a comparable Ati product at the time I purchased it, but I'm keeping ATI on my second computer to be able to run all my old games with no glitches.

No problems here so far. I have the GF8800 GTS and I do play some older games once in a while and have had no problems. Games like Close Combat series, Deus Ex, Homeworld 2, Morrowind and few more. :up:

[TteFAboB]

The games that glitch are X-Wing:Alliance and Rainbow Six Covert Operations. At least that I know of. There must be some misterious way to fix it, like you can fix the Radeon 9800 glitch with Medieval 2 TW by disabling the Smart A.I. feature or whatever it's called. I just never bothered searching for the solution, since I might aswell just play these on an ATI.

[SUBMAN1]

Interesting:

http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/email.gif

That is why you get such a FPS boost in Crysis on Nvidia. :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Read the results here - http://iax-tech.com/video/3870/38705.htm

-S

[Rockin Robbins]

Subman are you trying to help people here or trolling? The answer seems quite obvious. Successful trolling comes from finesse. No biters here. I suggest baiting up at Bass Pro Shop.:rotfl:

The links are in the thread for people to make an informed choice. Even the wrong choice is a good one, so everybody wins. That's supposed to leave everybody happy.:up:

[SUBMAN1]

Subman are you trying to help people here or trolling? The answer seems quite obvious. Successful trolling comes from finesse. No biters here. I suggest baiting up at Bass Pro Shop.:rotfl:

The links are in the thread for people to make an informed choice. Even the wrong choice is a good one, so everybody wins. That's supposed to leave everybody happy.:up:No - I just read a forum full of people saying the 8800 GT kicks the butt of the ATI. That is BS too me due to the fact that every score shows it being about the same.

Then I came across why it supposedly works so much better in Crysis - NVidia (who is know for this sort of BS - they've been doing it for ages) disables something in their drivers to get a FPS increase over ATI. It's an old trick.

ANyway, this now explains my first post as to why the ATI looks so much better. On the plus side, I just found out the 8800 GT is capable of the same visual quality as the ATI (WHich I didn't previously think it was). But on the down side, I found out the FPS increase is due to trickery.

So, that does more to turn me off to Nvidia than the fact that the improvement in quality does to turn me on.

How does that knowledge effect you? It effects me negatively. That is why I posted it.

-S

[Dowly]

TBH, I dont see ANY difference on the water in those two shots. Nor have I noticed any difference on the crysis' forums where there are screenshots of both ATI & NVIDIA cards used. So, this said, what Nvidia did to boost the FPS is perfectly fine with me, like I said, I see no difference between the two.

[SUBMAN1]

TBH, I dont see ANY difference on the water in those two shots. Nor have I noticed any difference on the crysis' forums where there are screenshots of both ATI & NVIDIA cards used. So, this said, what Nvidia did to boost the FPS is perfectly fine with me, like I said, I see no difference between the two.That is because no one gets to sit side by side and play it it on the two different platforms. That is like me telling you that XYZ color exists, but you have never seen it, so you have no idea that you are missing it till someone told you.

It is a lighting / reflection thing. Kind of an important thing in my book. You can have a similar effect by lowering some of your detail settings to medium in game.

You can enable it to take a look by simply renaming your exe. Rename it to something else than crysis, and the NVidia driver won't pick it up. THis way, you will once again be able to play with full quality.

-S

[Nightmare]

You can enable it to take a look by simply renaming your exe. Rename it to something else than crysis, and the NVidia driver won't pick it up. THis way, you will once again be able to play with full quality.

-S
I'm not even really sure you'll need to rename the exe. In the Nvidia control panel you can specify different driver settings per exe file. The latest drivers added a Crysis profile. Tweaking that profile can probably turn the "optimizations" off.

I don't currently own Crysis so I can't test this theory.

The difference in quality between ATI and Nvidia; I have compared the image quality between my friends AMD rig running a x1950XT and my current machine with the 8800GTS at the last LAN meet I was at (running side by side). The image quality in Half Life 2, Doom 3, and FEAR was almost identical with the exception that I could push the AA and AF harder on my machine than he could.

[Dowly]

Here's a quick test I made with the original Crysis.exe & renamed one.

Settings were all on 'High', 1280x1024 with 8xAA

Original on top, renamed on bottom.

http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Normal1.jpg
http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Renamed1.jpg


http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Normal2.jpg
http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Renamed2.jpg


http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Normal3.jpg
http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Renamed3.jpg


http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Normal4.jpg
http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Renamed4.jpg


http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Normal5.jpg
http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/Finnish_Ferret/Renamed5.jpg


The only thing that was different (that I noticed off) was the sharpness. With the optimized drivers the game was abit more blurry. Oh and my fps was 2-5 better with the renamed drivers, so whatever Nvidia tried to do with the optimized drivers, it didnt work. :p

[Nightmare]

Anandtech has their review up here (http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151). While they had better results than the previous article, the GT is still the faster card.

The Final Word section sums the whole thing up nicely. Here's a snip:
Without a doubt, AMD is back in the graphics game. When the Radeon HD 2900 XT launched, we couldn't be more surprised at how poorly the product did. The lack of competition allowed NVIDIA to sit back and relax as the orders for more 8800-based product kept on flowing in. While the Radeon HD 3870 isn't faster than the GeForce 8800 GT, if AMD can hit its price point, it is a viable alternative if you're looking to save money...

[SUBMAN1]

That about sums it up too. Now off to play the retail version. Just picked it up since I was driving by a Best Buy. Bought the extra version since it has a sound track. I can probably use the sound track with the game The Movies when I get around to it.

-S

[elite_hunter_sh3]

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/593/1/

AMD Has R680 Running Stable in CrossFire



these are the current 3870s. SINGLE GPU, that card is the one that is performance wise weaker then the 8800 gt by around 4-7 fps average in most games.. what most of you havent seen (not 100% sure if everyone here knows..) is that there is a DUAL GPU version called the 3890 (unoffcial) or some people call it the 3870 X2,



this picture shows 4 3870s (single gpu version) on a motherboard with 4 pci-e slots enabling quad crossfire.
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/593/amd_crossfirex.jpg

THIS however is the dual GPU version, since it uses a DUAL SLOT cooling solution
only 2 video cards can fit, BUT rumours are in a company is planning on making a motherboard that can enable 4 of these monsters in Crossfire
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/593/ati_radeon_r680.jpg
that is the DUAL GPU version, notice the mounting brackets where the GPUs are located, and the memory chips beside them.
the X2 IS THE 8800 killer :yep:

[JSLTIGER]

Not when you consider the fact that the X2 is basically the 3870 in Crossfire/SLI mode. The real question is then whether the 8800GT in SLI mode outperforms the 3870 X2. If it does than the 8800GT is the better performer. If not, the 3870 X2. However, to compare a single vid card to one that is essentially two vid cards is an unfair comparison.

[elite_hunter_sh3]

the X2 is 1 video card, but with 2 gpus... a video card is a video card.. and from what ive heard the X2 is faster, then the 8800 ULTRA, and 200$ cheaper...

[JSLTIGER]

Two GPUs means that there are two processors. You cannot compare a card with one processor to a card with two processors (which, by the way, are independent, each with their own RAM, they just happen to be on the same PCB). In order for a fair comparison, you need to compare a 3870 X2 with an 8800 rig in SLI.