Comments/Feedback On My Proposed New PC

[photon]

Or lose even more money

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah I really want to know what the price point of the X2 will be at... and how the drivers are. The problem with Crossfire and/or SLI is it isn't supported in all games/apps, and in the ones where it isn't supported the performance is just like having one card, not a great thing. With a single card crossfire engineered by ATI they should be able to get around that, but the question is will they... they certainly didn't the last time they tried this.

If the card debuts at $400 it'd be very interesting, but much more than that and it's silly; otherwise just get 2 3870's.

I just remember the 7950GX2 debacle - two 7800's were faster, and the GX2 cost more, was hotter, and drew more power. Then the first edition 8800 came out and 1 card was faster than the GX2 (and cheaper to boot).

I'd expect basically the same from AMD, with the lone benefit being it only takes up one PCI-E slot.

[Nehkara]

Originally Posted by Regorium

I just remember the 7950GX2 debacle - two 7800's were faster, and the GX2 cost more, was hotter, and drew more power. Then the first edition 8800 came out and 1 card was faster than the GX2 (and cheaper to boot).

I'd expect basically the same from AMD, with the lone benefit being it only takes up one PCI-E slot.

Well, the HD 3870 X2 is louder and draws significant power but it is faster than Crossfire HD 3870s and it is also the fastest card on the market.

Good result for AMD/ATI, esepcially at the $450 price point.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Nehkara

Well, the HD 3870 X2 is louder and draws significant power but it is faster than Crossfire HD 3870s and it is also the fastest card on the market.

Good result for AMD/ATI, esepcially at the $450 price point.

It doesn't draw that much extra power. Less than the 8800 at idle but 20-30 watts more at full load. Not bad consider there are 2 cores in there.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

It doesn't draw that much extra power. Less than the 8800 at idle but 20-30 watts more at full load. Not bad consider there are 2 cores in there.

On the Future Shop web page for this card [$499] it recommends having a 450 watt PSU and 550 watts for XFire. That's not bad.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

On the Future Shop web page for this card [$499] it recommends having a 450 watt PSU and 550 watts for XFire. That's not bad.

This page from [H]ardOCP measures the system power usage from the wall plug.

At idle, the X2 used 207W, the 8800GTX 225W
At Full load, the X2 used 380, the 8800GTX used 322W

So it is 58 more watts, but it is 2 cores and it is much less than 2 cards.

Additionally, the article states that the Crossfire is transparent to the system.

I'd be interested to see how much these test were affected by the 512MB/core. When Sapphire or somebody boosts it to 1GB/core it should be interesting to see the results.

[Nehkara]

I was just thinking that I could stick the HD 3870 X2 in my current machine but I think it might explode. I'm not sure if it would know what to do with that kind of power.

[Nehkara]

Memory Express has the HD 3870 X2 from Diamond for $490.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Nehkara

I was just thinking that I could stick the HD 3870 X2 in my current machine but I think it might explode. I'm not sure if it would know what to do with that kind of power.

Make the neighbouring systems tremble in fear.