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The ATI 3870 is a great card...
My graphics card got a static shock and now i have weird colours all over the screen so i needed a new cheap graphics card which will be future proof and a decent performer. Seeing as i'm going to build a total new PC in the future i thought i'd buy a decent enoughc ard so i can have this as a ALT machine.
Anyways i was looking at graphic cards and the 3870 caught my eye and it was only £130 which compared to it's rival the 8800GT which is £220 i thought that was a great deal. It's DX10.1 and shader model 4.1 with 512mb aswel so it's pretty future proof and with my own cooling i'm finding it great to overclock it and keeping the temps down. I'm able to run Crysis on Very high with AA at a decent 40FPS so i thought that was amazing for this little cheap card seeing as everything else is sooo expensive from £200-600 with the 8800ultra lol.
What i also thought interesting is you can 3 way Crossfire it for the price of £390 which is about the price of 1 8800gtx and cheaper than a 8800ultra so again it's very future proof in terms of expanding and performance if you have the motherboard to support that and they don't use much power so not a mega PSU is needed.
Anyways i'm just telling people that if you havn't got alot of money or even if you have then they are great cheap cards and i have to say the main problems were with the drivers but with the 7.12's the performance has gotten better seeing as all the reviews were done on the 7.10's which don't really support it all that well so performance can only get better seeing as ATI have had a bad few months with drivers... i mean the last ones gave a 20FPs increase on crossfire fixing a problem.
I would also like to say i don't notice any perfromance differences between my card and my mates 8800GT and the only differences on our PC's are i'm using dual core and he's using quad core.
Comments
It also isn't as stable as a the nvidia cards as far cooling and power use.
The ATI cards have been known to have more problems and shorter lifespans.
A lot of Nvidia card companies are so confident they have a lifetime warranty on all their products with no limitation besides you didn't overclock the card or something.
ATI still has a lot of catching up to do they used to be good but nvidia rocked them.
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It also isn't as stable as a the nvidia cards as far cooling and power use.
The ATI cards have been known to have more problems and shorter lifespans.
A lot of Nvidia card companies are so confident they have a lifetime warranty on all their products with no limitation besides you didn't overclock the card or something.
ATI still has a lot of catching up to do they used to be good but nvidia rocked them.
I've never had any problems with ATI myself and the 3870 is using depending on how hard it's working between 100-200 watt which is about the same as the 8800GT. Also i admit the drivers havn't been so good lately because they dropped the ball with the 2900 but crossfire seems to have been fixed since 7.12 and of corse some prople will have problems like they do with Nvidia. Also i've had my 9800pro and my x800 and my x1950xtx over the years and they all still work perfectly so i don't see how they have a lifespan shortage. What i find funny is the only cards that have ever died on me were made by nvidia which were the 7900gt and the 6800 i had in the past and the 5 series was just completly crap.
Nvidia made great on the 8800 series but with hardware it always goes back and forth anyways we'll have to see who does great on the X2 cards coming out soon, pretty sure Nvidia will stay in the lead right now. However the 3870 seems like a perfectly card to me with no problems and it's performing very well and it's sooo cheap so i really reccomend it specially for budget builds.
It also isn't as stable as a the nvidia cards as far cooling and power use.
The ATI cards have been known to have more problems and shorter lifespans.
A lot of Nvidia card companies are so confident they have a lifetime warranty on all their products with no limitation besides you didn't overclock the card or something.
ATI still has a lot of catching up to do they used to be good but nvidia rocked them.
That entire post is ridiculus. Crossfire, now CrossfireX with the HD3000 series, is more stable than its ever been right now, and CrossFireX has AMAZING scailing. Of course there are still compability issues, its PC's. CrossFireX destroys SLi, SLi is pure trash, this comming from an 8800GT user. Nvidia distributers often offer extended/lifetime warranties because they have to due to nvidia revising their products so much due to heat/clock issues, nvidia will push out a product no matter how complete it is just to beat AMD to the punch.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
Also a less then 10% performance margin isn't "Destroys". What actually qualifies as "Destroys" is the performance difference between 2 3870's in CrossfireX to any Nvidia card in SLI. We are talking about a 25-50% performance difference.
The 3870's in CrossfireX beat anything Nvidia can offer hands down. This is the only reason Nvidia has pushed "3-way Sli". Too bad SLi is trash.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
As for the static discharge. It's entirely normal for some hardware, no matter if it's a GPU, CPU, RAM, and etc, to bite the dust after that. The artifacting due to damage from the discharge is irreversible and you can't work around it. It will get worse, but ATI chips are not any more prone to it than Nvidia chips.
As for performance. ATI's last iteration of their cards were horrible in regards to heat output and power requirements versus Nvidia's for similar performance. The HD3000 line is the first step in fixing that, although the fan controllers in most known 3870s have issues with ramping up at the proper times to wick away excess heat. Beyond that, the power consumption, and with an aftermarket cooler, a 3870 is about as good as an 8800GT for a similar price.
-- Brede
Crysis very high /w AA on a 3870 and 40 fps...riiiiight...maybe on 640×480
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
actually I have a free 8800 gts 640 i oc'd that i run crysis on high @ 1280x1024 with very high post processing and edge aa x2...if 3 8800 ultras in SLI can barely do it, i seriously doubt the little 3870 chump card can. crysis has enough performance issues as it is.
Actually, the 8800 GTS line is an OLD chipset by comparison to the GT line. So, comparing it with the 3870 or even the 8800GT in regards to single card operation is going to show lower than expected results. Even in SLI mode, twin 8800GT's out perform 8800GTS's.
-- Brede
i never said the card was amazing, did i? no. i was responding to the assumption that i was mad my "740 dollar ultra" couldnt run the game...my gts was given to me like 4 months before the gt was even announced...and the G92 GTS chipset is actually faster than the GT...does it have a good price performance ratio? no i'm not arguing the fact...my gts maxes any games besides crysis, so I don't really care how old it is
plus, I wasn't comparing them. how does a 3870 get "40 fps very high /w aa" when 3 8800 ultras barely manage to push 35? theres no way, and don't even give me the garbage "zomg sli bad performance crysis needs to be patched blah blah" of course SLI isn't AMAZING, and of course its not worth anyone's investiture, but the fact that even 2 ultras compared to 1 yield a 73% performance increase says something.
I have a 8800GT, I get 30-45 FPS in Crysis in 1680 x 1050 on high settings. This test rig you are using as a base must have been a piece of crap. Crysis is not as demanding and "awesome" as all these review sites are making it out to be.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
Two things that can make a GPU result in lower than expected gains.
1) Poor heat management (this one is very easy to pin down so I don't suspect it).
2) Inefficient bus and pipe-lining on the motherboard (this one depends on the brand and model of motherboard. For example, my Gigabyte motherboard is fairly decent for the price versus performance, it's no top of the line Asus or Abit, but it does the job with zero issues between games of different kinds.).
I suspect 2 in your case, it could be a bad version of your BIOS, or maybe you forget to change a setting or two (for example, check memory timings and so on).
-- Brede
what are you talkin about? i have nothing wrong with my system. my 8800 gts is of the g80 line...i'm not expecting it to run crysis on max with AA on very high lol. also, what do memory timings have to with a gpus performance? you're telling me that if someone had an issue with gpu performance, you'd tell them to check their timings? so, if someone's factory timings were 5-5-5-15 what would you do tell them to loosen or tighten them? lol...
btw, what "test rig" are you talking about spathotan? of course your 8800gt gets decent frames, it's a good card.
On the timings. If you have DDR 800, go for 4-4-4-12 2T at least (that's what I have with mine).
[quote][i]Originally posted by Dark-Asylum
btw, what "test rig" are you talking about spathotan? of course your 8800gt gets decent frames, it's a good card.[/b][/quote]
You said that 3 8800Ultras can/cant get 35fps, you are obviously refering to some build you read online.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett