• Black Screen With Active DP on HP LP2065
• FS: Planet Eclipse Etek Ego Paintball Marker
• Looking for a recommendation on two builds
• Help Me Design an Ivy Bridge Rig
• 2x GTX470SC
• CPU-Z - reporting wrong multipler and bclk?

• The Apple-II by Stephen Wozniak: How about a ...
• Hacktivists Claim Takedown of Chicago Police ...
• 19-year-old Egyptian Invents Propulsion Devic...
• Windows 8 Gives Parents a Computer-Use Report...
• U.K. Gov't Proposes New Data Surveillance Pro...
• Time Warner Cable Customers Can Access HBO GO...

AMD's ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2

One of the more anticipated video cards of this year is finally here, AMD is launching the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2. What will two 3870 GPUs on one board do for you in gaming? We are going to find out exactly that in Crysis, UT3, COD 4 and HL2.

Crysis

(DirectX 10)

We are using a retail copy of Crysis. Crysis is a first person shooter that that will bring even the top end video cards to their knees. We will be playing Crysis in the default APIs for our system, which launches automatically in DX10 mode with the 64-bit executable. We have applied the latest Patch version 1.1 for Crysis which is supposed to improve single video card and multi-GPU (SLI and CrossFire) performance.

Our run-through in the graphs below involves 10 minutes of gameplay in “Assault_Crysis” the Harbor map. This map includes the transition from night to day, tons of explosions, particles, physics, AI interaction, and water rendering.

Note that in the graphs, we have lowered our redline to 25 FPS for Crysis. This game is demanding, and low framerates are impossible to avoid, gameplay is also different in this game to where 25 FPS and up feels very playable; likely due to the efficient use of motion blur. Note that the down-spikes to 0 FPS in the graphs are due to the saved game points.

Crysis is demanding on video cards, plain and simple. The new patch version 1.1 opens up some new opportunities for both NVIDIA and AMD’s ATI Graphics to tweak their drivers for better multi-GPU utilization. Prior to patch 1.1 multi-GPU performance was very slow on NVIDIA hardware and ATI’s CrossFire wasn’t even supported. Thanks to patch 1.1 CrossFire is now supported and ATI is hard at work to get their drivers tweaked for this.

When we started our evaluation had an earlier build of a driver for the 3870 X2 that allowed CrossFire in Crysis. However, our experiences with that driver in Crysis left a lot to be desired. We experienced very inconsistent performance; it was as if the second GPU on the 3870 X2 wasn’t doing much. During our evaluation ATI made a “breakthrough” in their drivers with patch 1.1 that resulted in much higher performance on the 3870 X2 in Crysis. We then went back and re-tested Crysis with this new driver that they provided to us and indeed we can give a thumbs up on this driver. We experienced much more consistent performance throughout Crysis, which resulted in smooth gameplay.

While gameplay performance was now evened out, the overall performance in comparison to the GeForce 8800 GTX was still slower in Crysis. As you can see above we found 1600x1200 with all settings on “Medium” to be playable on the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2. We really wanted to have Shaders Quality on “High” but that just wasn’t going to happen. When we tried to raise that setting performance became very unplayable. We also tried higher resolutions like 1920x1200 and even tried turning on Anisotropic Filtering, but none of it was playable at 1600x1200. If you aren’t happy with “Medium” settings and what higher then you will have to lower the resolution to 1280x1024 in order to raise Shaders Quality and other settings to “High” values.

In comparison the GeForce 8800 GTX was overall faster. We were able to run at 1600x1200 with Shaders Quality at “High” and everything else at “Medium.” As you can see in the graph, even with the GTX at higher in-game settings, it is still pulling in overall faster framerates in Crysis. While the GTX is faster, do note that the 3870 X2 is indeed faster than one Radeon HD 3870 video card in Crysis. With one single Radeon HD 3870 we found 1280x1024 playable with everything on “Medium.” Therefore the 3870 X2 allowed us to play at 1600x1200 versus 1280x1024.

Apples-to-Apples

We also did an apples-to-apples test with the ATI Radeon HD 3870 using “High” Shaders Quality to compare directly with the GeForce 8800 GTX. Both video cards in the graph below are at the exact same settings.

As you can see, the GTX is faster using “High” Shaders Quality at 1600x1200.