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R680 / Radeon 3870 X2 detailed pics

JPB

JPB

Diamond Member
Radeon 3870 X2 pics

Warsaw AMD event: A detailed look

We were patient enough to ask the AMD guys to take the cards out and David, the Product manager for this baby, as well as Ian, agreed that we can take detailed pictures of these cards. We managed to get some quite exclusive pictures of these cards, in the hands of Rabah


The two chips have their own memory, two power connectors and each card has a single Crossfire bridge, not two that you can see with 3870 cards, but probably one of the bridges is built in internally on the card.


If all goes well the driver will come in January and so will the cards. The hardware looks quite ready, we touched the cooler, it is not that bad, but we are still talking about 200+W for a single card. Well, that's the power price of performance.
 
Wow that thing is large. Is that longer than a GTX!? If so, good luck fitting one or two of those in a case! 😉

I just hope it has the performance to match it's size! Competition FTW!
 
LOL, I agree. Makes me wonder if the fan on it, has enough spin to blow through two heatsinks. As for performance, isnt it suppose to be just like HD 3870 in Crossfire ? Just on a single card ?
 
Thats actually a one card solution too. Unlike the GX2 NV used.

Price, availability and drivers will make/break this card.
 
Looking at the pics in the first link the card looks like it could be as long as a 8800GTX/Ultra but pictures can be deceiving. You'd think they could have at least mentioned demensions. I hate when they dont provide that kind of info. Nice looking card though. I hope its a winning performer. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Skott
Looking at the pics in the first link the card looks like it could be as long as a 8800GTX/Ultra but pictures can be deceiving. You'd think they could have at least mentioned demensions. I hate when they dont provide that kind of info. Nice looking card though. I hope its a winning performer. 🙂
Click to expand...

i think it is the same length as the 8800GTX, in the second link posted, you can see how far the card goes beyond the motherboard which is the same as the GTX. i guess it looks bigger since its red instead of black/green 😀.
 
nvidia is supposedly planning to release a g92 x2 version to combat r680. they were caught off guard with 38x0, but I suspect that this time amd won't catch them napping. the only advantage that I can see for amd right now is the loser power/heat of the 55nm process might allow them to clock it higher than nvidia's counterattack, perhaps leading us to a reverse of the 2900xt vs 8800gtx scenario. Interesting times are upon us!

funny how the inq mentioned that 2 3870x2's will cost 800-1000. what they failed to mention is that the price depends on how they compare with nvidia. if they're on top they get to set the price (see 8800gt for $300+), but if they're 2nd fiddle again they have to go lower than the top dog. either way, that card should rape, kill, pillage, and burn its way through anything available from either camp right now if it has decent drivers, so we should have some interesting times ahead.
 
I am sorry. When you need to two of your own best GPUs to compete with ONE GPU from the competition, the end is near.

3Dfx redux.

 
GT - you might be right. ATI/AMD's performance has certainly been underwhelming, and the 3850/3870 aren't capable of knocking nvidia off the mountain. Still, they're not bad cards. It's also always possible that GPU development is moving towards mult-die/multi-card solutions at the top end of the performance range on a more permanent basis.

Given just how many different competitive price levels have evolved in the GPU market, a base of three dies (low, middle, high) may have become insufficient to plug each gap profitably. I'm just guessing, but I'd say that grabbing the performance crown by creating a monster card (like the 8800GTX or what the 2900XT was *meant* to be), is probably very cost inefficient: you are stuck with an expensive die that can't be scaled very far down without losing profitability.

I honestly don't know the manufacturing costs, R&D costs, etc., in any detail, but given that the dual-die GPU is something nvidia has already done--and seems to think it will do again in the future--I'm sensing a trend in the industry. As an end-user, it doesn't matter to me if my board has 1 GPU or 16 GPUs, as long as there are no headaches (like xfire or sli).

If ATI & nvidia can work out the engineering (hardware & software) to eliminate headaches, this strikes me as a more efficient way to scale performance.

Cheers.
 
The 3870 isnt that much slower than the 8800GT AND the 3870 isnt supposed to be a high end product its competing for the mid range.

As far as i can tell the dual GPU cards are aimed at the imloadedandillproveitbybuyingthisoverpricetat range.
 
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