Any thoughts out there from ATI HD 3870 owners?

Dadofamunky

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Jan 4, 2005
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So I decided to throw AMD a bone while building my new Intel rig, and chose the HD 3870, running under Vista 64. Here are my e-penis (er, 3DMark) scores:

3DMark06: 11,706
3DMark05: 20,206

A big jump from my main rig, which pulled 4400 in 3DMark05 and wouldn't even complete 3DMark06. I have to admit, that Deep Freeze simulation is pretty sweet.

Presently the card is OCd to 840/1321.

512MB of GDDR4 memory is looking very good so far. I'm eventually going to load Oblivion and start taking that for a spin. The system is also Orthos stable.

I know that this card isn't **quite** on a par with the 8800GT, but I did save some cash and thus far I'm quite happy with my purchase. What else are others doing with their HD 3870s, what kind of e-penis scores are you getting, and are you Crossfiring two of them? (I can't on my rig, as it is MicroATX.)

Just wondering what others in the community are doing.
 

Conroy9

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Jan 28, 2000
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I'm getting a 3870 next week to go with my new e8400 build, but mostly for the lower power usage. I'm not planning to try overclocking much, but I'm going to try putting an accelero S1 on it and see how quiet I can get my system.

I wonder if the prices will drop with the new launches on the 23rd..
 

Dadofamunky

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Jan 4, 2005
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Nice. Where are you getting the e8400?

I'm surprised at how quiet the Sapphire 3870 is in my system, even with a decent OC of 840/1311. I think this card could be well suited for an HDTV rig, although its' probably a little overkill. Catalyst cites a temp of 47C at idle. All the way around, my new Intel system is much faster but much cooler than my AMD rig (see below). SpeedFan states my CPU cores are at 17-18C at idle!
 

n7

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Jan 4, 2004
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The 8800 GT is a better card overall, & pricing on certain ones can be found for similar or lower on sales than the HD3780 here, so yeah...

I think one of the big reasons nV has been so popular this year is that frankly, AMD has been so behind.

HD 2900s come out way late, & don't really compete with 8800s.
8800 GT comes out just before HD 3870, & again, AMD is behind the new GT & GTS.

It's disappointing, because we've seen basically zero innovation from nV because of this...:(
 

Dadofamunky

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Jan 4, 2005
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Originally posted by: n7
The 8800 GT is a better card overall, & pricing on certain ones can be found for similar or lower on sales than the HD3780 here, so yeah...

I think one of the big reasons nV has been so popular this year is that frankly, AMD has been so behind.

HD 2900s come out way late, & don't really compete with 8800s.
8800 GT comes out just before HD 3870, & again, AMD is behind the new GT & GTS.

It's disappointing, because we've seen basically zero innovation from nV because of this...:(

I agree with all this, except that the only 8800GTs I saw at the price point I was willing to live with were of the 256MB variety or were off-brand units. Some of the 512 MB GTs are $249 on NewEgg; the 3870 MSRP was considerably below that. what's going on now is vendors jacking up their prices around $50 over the price these cards really should be going for.

Yeah ATI really blundered with the 2xxx generation, didn't they? What a disaster. The 3xxx series look to be going a long ways to redressing the balance, if the street and online vendors would just cooperate. In the place where I bought my 512MB card (Central Computers) the 3870 went for $259 and the 8800GTs were a minimum of $309. Obviously, on Newegg the prices were a bit more in line; but the video card was the one thing I bought on the street instead of online.

They funny thing is, AMD just wrote off over $1.8 gigadollars of goodwill from their purchase of ATI. Without that, their financial results would have been fairly close to breakeven. A lot of analysts actually think ATI has quite a bit of future value to AMD. It's too bad AMD had to endure so much pain due to their overpriced purchase.

I do get the impression that ATI's support for HD video output and video compression/decompression is much better than NV's. Then again, I'm not utterly up to the minute on this subject....
 

imported_Section8

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Aug 1, 2006
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I have not really OC'd the card yet (other than setting the fan speed in Rivatuner to 65%) and my rig defaults to a slight underclock (ram runs at 379 instead of 400 in CPUZ) and I get 10313 in 3dmark06. That said, it runs all the new games like Bioshock, COD4, Crysis, etc with no problems. Not sure of the FPS but it looks very good to me.
 

MarcVenice

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Apr 2, 2007
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Heh I was under the impression you got those scores with your main build, which freaked me out, coz my 8800gts 320mb only does 8k or so, with a x2 3800+ @ 2.6ghz and 2gb of ram. Nice scores though, next time you should mentioned SM2 and SM3 scores too though, since the CPU plays such a big role.
 

rstrohkirch

Platinum Member
May 31, 2005
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I'm happy with mine

I got it for $215 shipped on sale and that was after I spent 4 days looking for a 8800GT that was reasonably priced. I couldn't find one from a brand I'd actually buy for less than $270.
I decided to keep my $50 and lose the whole 10% performance difference.
 

nullpointerus

Golden Member
Apr 17, 2003
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I have a HD2900XT that I'm fine with, except for my current driver issues...

Anyway, I'll be looking for the 3870 X2 that's supposed to be out soon (Jan. 23). CrossFire has always been interesting to me, but I've never had a chance to check it out. I don't have a system board that supports CrossFire; getting two GPUs on one card would be cool.

The power usage and heat output are not expected to exceed the HD2900XT...
...which shows just how far ATI has come in the past few months. :thumbsup:
 

boatillo

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Dec 14, 2004
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Bought a Gigabyte 3870 here, flashed the bios to an Extreme PC XXX Edition and its running sweet!

If I could go back in time I would buy the Visiontek 3850 512mb card that comes stock at 700mhz :(
 

ElFenix

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Super Moderator
Mar 20, 2000
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Originally posted by: n7
The 8800 GT is a better card overall, & pricing on certain ones can be found for similar or lower on sales than the HD3780 here, so yeah...

I think one of the big reasons nV has been so popular this year is that frankly, AMD has been so behind.

HD 2900s come out way late, & don't really compete with 8800s.
8800 GT comes out just before HD 3870, & again, AMD is behind the new GT & GTS.

It's disappointing, because we've seen basically zero innovation from nV because of this...:(

i'm hardly disappointed, these are the best days for graphics cards since the voodoo3/tnt2 days. nearly top end graphics cards are within the financial reach of mere mortals.

innovation is harder to do now that MS controls so much through DX10.
 

Dadofamunky

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Jan 4, 2005
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Originally posted by: rstrohkirch
I'm happy with mine

I got it for $215 shipped on sale and that was after I spent 4 days looking for a 8800GT that was reasonably priced. I couldn't find one from a brand I'd actually buy for less than $270.
I decided to keep my $50 and lose the whole 10% performance difference.

That is a seriously smokin' deal.

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Heh I was under the impression you got those scores with your main build, which freaked me out, coz my 8800gts 320mb only does 8k or so, with a x2 3800+ @ 2.6ghz and 2gb of ram. Nice scores though, next time you should mentioned SM2 and SM3 scores too though, since the CPU plays such a big role.

Heh. I know, now my main X2 rig is wheezing a lot harder to my eyes than it did just the other day before I brung the New Beast home. :)

I've finally settled on the following settings:

CPU: 3.46 GHz (8x435), @ 1.4125 V before vdroop, dual Prime stable overnight
GPU: 850/1336

Final 3DMark06 score: 11758 (havent done '05 yet).

Not bad, an 800 MHz stable OC on a microATX board! This little Asus is the best mobo I have ever used. Over the weekend, I'm gonna take a shot at Oblivion.

Originally posted by: boatillo
Bought a Gigabyte 3870 here, flashed the bios to an Extreme PC XXX Edition and its running sweet!

If I could go back in time I would buy the Visiontek 3850 512mb card that comes stock at 700mhz :(

That's interesting. I'll check that out. (I might not be up to flashing my card's BIOS though, I'm a little concerned about creating a $270 paperweight.) What are your card's settings?
 

rgallant

Golden Member
Apr 14, 2007
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Originally posted by: n7
The 8800 GT is a better card overall, & pricing on certain ones can be found for similar or lower on sales than the HD3780 here, so yeah...

I think one of the big reasons nV has been so popular this year is that frankly, AMD has been so behind.

HD 2900s come out way late, & don't really compete with 8800s.
8800 GT comes out just before HD 3870, & again, AMD is behind the new GT & GTS.

It's disappointing, because we've seen basically zero innovation from nV because of this...:(

Do you think the 8800GT would have come to the market ,if the 3870 did not come out
as it is just a crippled 8800 GTS 512, is it known for nvidia to cripple a chip on first release and not release the full chip( uncrippled ) first. I think a lot of 8800GT owners should thank ATI for the 3780, as they didn,t do a good job of crippling the 8800GT, .Nvidia was in too much of a hurry to release a card that was 10% faster than the 3870.only to match the 3870,s price point, with a lot faster card than expected,did they lose money on the 8800GT?