9800GX2-->"Up to a 90% performance increase over the...

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: Blacklash
My first question would be does the GX2 work properly in titles where the X2 does not?

The problem with Crossfire, including on board Crossfire on the X2, is in some games it causes a horrid performance hit that yields performance far less than a single card. Titles I am aware of this occurs in; SupCom, Gothic 3, NWN2, Need for Speed: Pro Street, WiC on the DX10 path with AA, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Tomb Raider: Legend, Hitman: Blood Money, Hellgate: London, and Jericho with edge smoothing active.

Weren't some of your claims about the games not scaling disproved by Apoppin? I think I remember him saying that Hellgate:London and Lost Planet DO work.

I've seen you bring those up in several threads now and several times Apoppin has responded...why do you continually bring up the same games if some of your claims are NOT true? Do you even have anything XFire right now to test out what you are saying or are you talking from very limited experience?

backlash, please quit trolling. If you have irrefutable PROOF that crossfire doesn't scale in EVERY ONE of those games then please provide it. If not, go back to HOCP.

I don't think he's "trolling" he's just quoting his experience with the card and what has already been noted in the XBit Labs 3870X2 review.

Some of the games have been fixed since then, but that doesn't invalidate XBits or his experience.

I think the fact he had a 3870X2, has 3850CF, and is a daily poster on Rage3d rules him out as a "NVIDIA fanboy".

Crossfire not scaling with some games, and having to wait for profiles, has been well documented in reviews for years. That would be a "downside".

Running multiple monitors and mixing cards, like the nice 3870X2 + 3870 combination, would be "upsides".

People can note drawbacks without necessarily being "trolls", it's necessary for a complete picture.

at first, i thought so .. especially because he refuses to discuss it .. and just repeats his same old info in ANOTHER thread -after he is challenged - it actually looks like a 'cut and paste' ... that IS a "troll pattern" and i simply noted it without calling him anything.
--but then i DO notice that a FEW others are reporting similar issues .. .. yet most are not
--So, that begs a rather original question; are some of these X2s 'defective' .. is the inner Interconnect working correctly? or is one of the GPU cores 'imperfectly' working with the other?


i know i can "make" my FrankenFire unstable by fritzing with my interconnects or moving the 2nd card to the primary PCIe slot

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: nitromullet
apoppin: we're cool

I've actually considered that it could be the bridge chip as well... For right now the card is for sale, and I don't want to unpack it to do any further research on it. If I can't get what I'm asking for it, I'll probably keep it and play with it some more. Maybe even add a single HD 3870 to it...

Is there any sort of list of games known to not work with crossfire?

according to backlash, the only game that works with crossfire is "secret of the silver blades".

LOL- I think he likes it more than that.

 

[apoppin]

not the 3870x2
- he kept it, what - 2 days?

3870x2 runs Silver Blades *best* i guess

AMD really needs to play that up!
.. or is it :music:"Silver Bells" :music:

it's 'some kind' of time in the city ...

HEAD'S UP!!!!!!!!!!!

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2162690&enterthread=y

Originally posted by: JAH
30% off all VisionTek graphic card, so I might be able to get the HD3870 for $150.49 before tax. Plus I just got a 12% off coupon in the mail, and if I can stack it with the 30% off...the price could drop to $132.43 before tax.

Of course this is all dependent on my local BB having the card in stock, which I doubt they will.

i think GX2 is still waaaaaaaaaaaay overpriced
:roll:

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: apoppin
i think GX2 is still waaaaaaaaaaaay overpriced
:roll:

Personally, I don't think it's "priced" at all- I can't buy one anyway.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Originally posted by: apoppin
i think GX2 is still waaaaaaaaaaaay overpriced
:roll:

Personally, I don't think it's "priced" at all- I can't buy one anyway.

to the contrary

we are *already* getting reports off our own forum that it IS *priced* on Best Buy Shelves for $679

--do you care to comment about that?


and *you* will never need to buy one
... i'd say your own trade deal with NVIDIA makes Gx2 a really good value for you personally

 

[nitromullet]

--So, that begs a rather original question; are some of these X2s 'defective' .. is the inner Interconnect working correctly? or is one of the GPU cores 'imperfectly' working with the other?


i know i can "make" my FrankenFire unstable by fritzing with my interconnects or moving the 2nd card to the primary PCIe slot

I don't think it's a matter of being defective, I think it's a matter of expectation. You have to remember that I've owned just about every high end card from both ATI and NVIDIA in the last 3 years... The card is completely stable, it runs fine, it just doesn't always perform as well a I think it should. It also stutters occasionally, even the the fps are well above any levels that should stutter. This leads me to believe that it might occasionally spike to a very low fps. This doesn't happen in all cases, and it usually only happens with higher levels of AA. I DO NOT have any reason to suspect the card is defective.

we are *already* getting reports off our own forum that it IS *priced* on Best Buy Shelves for $679

...Frys... they didn't actually have any cards at the store.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

--So, that begs a rather original question; are some of these X2s 'defective' .. is the inner Interconnect working correctly? or is one of the GPU cores 'imperfectly' working with the other?


i know i can "make" my FrankenFire unstable by fritzing with my interconnects or moving the 2nd card to the primary PCIe slot

I don't think it's a matter of being defective, I think it's a matter of expectation. You have to remember that I've owned just about every high end card from both ATI and NVIDIA in the last 3 years... The card is completely stable, it runs fine, it just doesn't always perform as well a I think it should. It also stutters occasionally, even the the fps are well above any levels that should stutter. This leads me to believe that it might occasionally spike to a very low fps. This doesn't happen in all cases, and it usually only happens with higher levels of AA. I DO NOT have any reason to suspect the card is defective.

we are *already* getting reports off our own forum that it IS *priced* on Best Buy Shelves for $679

...Frys... they didn't actually have any cards at the store.

OK, OK, i *believe* you ... i just don't experience it period!
... and my 2900xt, 8800GTS-640OC and x1950p/512M weren't exactly chopped liver at their time either .. i never "bogged" down my cards ... i just upgraded, as i could. As to "higher levels of AA", i am quite satisfied with 2x or 4x at 16x10 .. so my own requirements may be lesser than yours.

Thanks, Frys ... you think they just Priced it for "fun"?


do you think NVIDIA is smart enough to sell it for less than $600 - unless, it is a *monster*, of course
- i think they are stuck in their past - like intel and AMD were - prerecession -dreaming of their "glory days" and their successful 7800GTX-512MB scam. They seem to have no clue that they lost a bit of their enthusiast market with that one and will lose more with each successive disappointment .... IF it is perceived as a disappointment

i guess their PR will tell us why we need to upgrade, soon enough

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: nRollo
It takes multiple high end GPUs to run current games at high res/high detail now- what will change in this future era? Will devs be going back to Quake2 level graphics so we don't need discrete anymore? Or will GPU design be so advanced it somehow now does the same work in a package that will fit on the same die with the cpu?

That's not even true. My 8800GTS 320mb, a midrange card, runs every game out there at high-res and high settings, aside from Crysis (which nothing can run at those settings).

The one point that both you and Ben have failed to address remains: What will happen to nVidia when their low-end GPU sales are syphoned off by these Fusion-type processors? Most people are casual gamers and are happy if their PC can run Solitare. I'm thinking this is bound to affect them financially.

I thought they already covered this?

In case you haven't been following the CPU scene, AMD is having enough trouble competing (profitably) with Intel on non-Fusion processors. Any "free die space" that AMD gets with a shrinking process and/or other manufacturing advances (in which AMD are perpetually behind due to having only a fraction of Intel's budget) ought to be dedicated to additional logic/cache to make the chip run faster, cooler, or whatever. Or just accept the reduced cost and sell them cheaper with the same profit margins.

Phenom is...well...looking bleak. B3 is not looking stellar... It's more like damage control. AMD lacks the momentum from the enthusiast community. They're low on cash, too. Plus they can never match Intel's budget or manufacturing capabilities, even if the K10/10.5 design is significantly better. And that's assuming AMD doesn't run into another slew of Phenom B2-like issues such as the TLB bug, slow core 3, crippled MMU/cache... Sheesh.

Intel isn't exactly sitting still.

Throwing stripped-down GPU cores into the mix...well...it doesn't make any sense to me. That just increases the complexity, which means higher cost and more chance to make mistakes. When you want to grab market share, you leverage your strengths; you don't drown out your competitors with a constant stream of hype about how one day you'll grind them under your feet with the crushing weight of your own weaknesses.

Aren't integrated GPU profits chump change compared to CPU profits?

Fusion strikes me as marketing mumbo-jumbo, smoke and mirrors to make the company execs look like they know what they're doing or to make the company look good to potential investors/buyers. It's just a first impression. The reason I say this is that the people I see talking about it on the forums don't seem to have any specific idea what it's supposed to do, or how it's supposed to do whatever it is that it's supposed to do. The only thing being mentioned is some vague notion that tying CPU and GPU into one package will result in...something financially good?...for AMD.

IMO an increase in Phenom's die-size is not going to rectify its performance to a large degree. The chip has bugs and is relatively competetive with the C2D clock-for-clock. They simply need to find a way to ramp up the clockspeed, which I`m pretty sure has to do with manufacturing, and with altering the layout of the chip to reduce heat issues and such.

If you look at the A64X2, it manages to generally outperform the Phenom in many cases, with a much smaller transistor count (just as an example).

The Fusion idea does have a great deal of merit, as well. As I keep saying, it will save people $$$ on a graphics card. It also will do a great deal to improve notebook battery life, and again it will lead to cheaper laptops.

If you think about how wasteful graphics cards actually are, you can begin to see where Fusion will make computers so much more efficient. The entire PCB and memory chips on graphics cards will be done away with, and there will really be little or no performance impact when it comes to a low-end (and perhaps midrange) situation.

Even if they give some of Fusion`s die space away to make room for GPUs, it won`t come in the form of cache; they will simply reduce the number of cores. I personally don`t see much need for any more than two CPU cores at this point, and we`re soon approaching the time when we will have 8-core chips. Imagine the equivalent of quad-SLI along with a quad-core CPU, all on a single chip. Plus, your entire platform would have super-fast DDR3 memory.

I`m personally excited about ideas like Fusion. It gives us all more options, if nothing else. :beer:

 

[McCartney]

It seems Apopping is the only one that has a huge problem with HardOCP's testing going as far to call them "hardfud" in another post.
He really does piss me off being an ATi Fanboy

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: McCartney
It seems Apopping is the only one that has a huge problem with HardOCP's testing going as far to call them "hardfud" in another post.
He really does piss me off being an ATi Fanboy

AMD *also hates* the things i say about AMD that paint them in an unflattering light
.. how am i an AMD fanboy?

... more like unpaid consumer advocate

and perhaps you'd care to Re read the forum rules about "name calling" - it is 'stickied right on top of this forum

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: McCartney
It seems Apopping is the only one that has a huge problem with HardOCP's testing going as far to call them "hardfud" in another post.
He really does piss me off being an ATi Fanboy

Apoppin isn't the only one here who has a problem with hardocp. Many, even, I dare say, MOST of us here have a problem with them. What is scientific about running benchmarks that nobody else can run? When AT or almost ANY OTHER site for that matter runs a benchmark, they tell everyone EXACTLY how they do it and people with similar hardware are free to attempt to repeat the test (and results). When hardocp runs a benchmark, they meet in the dead of night in some dude's basement and make shit up. You're right, it's the same thing.

 

[bryanW1995]

it's only libel when it's untrue...and I think that apoppin (along with eveyrone else here) has trashed amd enough lately to disqualify himself as a fanboy. I, however, do get free fashionable apparel from them...mccartney, do you want my "9800pro FTW" tshirt?

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995
it's only libel when it's untrue...and I think that apoppin (along with eveyrone else here) has trashed amd enough lately to disqualify himself as a fanboy. I, however, do get free fashionable apparel from them...mccartney, do you want my "9800pro FTW" tshirt?

thanks, Bryan ... it appears we are now somewhat related ... except i *don't* get anything from AMD -except from grief from their fanboys.

How do i get into your program? ... all my clothing is all surf-related [from sponsorship] and are getting really old ... or has Hector Ruiz never forgiven me for calling him [sorta, ahem] a 'fibber' about a year ago on this forum? He did come as 'clean' as i ever saw a CEO respond to criticism a month later and i applauded that [even if i am still suspicious]
:Q
i want your r700 t-shirt .. come to think of it, forget the shirt, i just want r700.


ANYway, i did NOT head over to his forum and start a war with Kyle. It is pretty clear that he was responding to my posts as his most vocal critic of "real world" testing ... and he unprovoked attacked our fearless leader, Derek, to give his article an attempt at "credibility".

now, i explained that his explanations are *bogus* and there are many way to fake real world testing - not that i said he actually fakes benchmarks ..

SO .. in all fairness, i issued a *challenge* to Mr B to open his real world testing to "scientific evaluation" by his peers. That we *see* his FRAPS benchmark run on a video, that he give us his save for us to attempt to replicate his benches.

i KNOW he got my *challenge* - when others passed my 'message' to him he got pretty P.O.'s and locked his own thread when he realized it was going very badly for him.

So, HardFUD seems appropriate as a way not to refer to Mr B, not to refer to his site or the hard workers or some of the cool people at his forums - no, HardFUD refers to his "real world" benchmarking - until that day that he opens his benchmarks to evaluation .... not smoke and mirrors with BS explanations that smack of PR.

 

[McCartney]

Well apoppin was the one who was so quick to declare the 3870x2 the new king of the hill.
I wish I could find that thread's subcaption. It was something like "ATI is the best again!"

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: McCartney
Well apoppin was the one who was so quick to declare the 3870x2 the new king of the hill.
I wish I could find that thread's subcaption. It was something like "ATI is the best again!"

RotFL ... find it ...

i never said anything other than quote review sites ... and i gave my own delightful experience with FrankenFire

.. if it WERE true why did the AMD boys jump on me 'cause i say i am disappointed with it ? ... that is it currently overpriced at $479? ...