PC Perspective - Asus AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2

	Asus AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 - AMD R680 Dual GPU Arrives
	Author: Ryan Shrout Date: Jan 28, 2008 Subject: Graphics Card Manufacturer: AMD

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Summary

The following is a summary of the more detailed analysis of Asus' Xonar D2 and U2 sound cards. For all the in-depth analysis and testing you'd expect from us, be sure to click this link to get all the details!

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AMD's R680 Design

The design of the new AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card, previously called the R680, is really quite simple at its core: take two RV670 GPUs, put them on the same PCB with their own 512MB frame buffers, connect them with a PCI Express bridge chip and enable CrossFire for a better performing single card solution. In reality of course we all have much bigger questions than that and AMD has provided most of the information we were looking for. R680 is indeed a good display of engineering that ties together nearly all aspects of its design into a neat package.

The target segment for the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is the highest AMD has targeted in some time: performance leadership. That's right, AMD is planning on taking the 8800 Ultra and GTX for a ride all while pricing the R680 at $499 - less than current 8800 Ultra pricing and about the same as highly overclocked 8800 GTX cards.

Reference R680 Radeon HD 3870 X2

For our review, Asus sent over their EAH3870 X2 1GB graphics card that is essentially the same as the reference model that AMD sent out across the world. The only difference: retail packaging and a semi-naked woman gracing our fan shroud.

Click to Enlarge

Scantily clad women aside (if you can), the Asus Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card is big and heavy. The cooler is a completely new design from AMD and is actually much quieter than I originally expected. In my experiences it is actually quieter than a single HD 3870 card and definitely less intrusive than a pair of them. The fan is also more efficient in the way you pulls are in as far away as possible and directs it across the entire heatsink array before being expelled out the back of your case.

Let's look at some benchmarks:

AMD was adamant that the HD 3870 X2 was going to be competing for the performance crown against the best that NVIDIA had to offer and it would appear that AMD has done just that. The story isn't as cut and dry as perhaps they would have liked, NVIDIA's 8800 Ultra still wins its share of the benchmarks, but AMD is now closer than they have been in years to having a part on the same level as NVIDIA's best.

Pricing and Availability

According to AMD, the new Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards should be in the channel today, though you might have to wait until next week to actually purchase them. It is possible they'll make it to e-tailers as soon as today or this week but we'll give AMD at least 7 days grace period before railing them on availability. In their defense, there recent product releases of the HD 3850 and HD 3870 have been much more successful from an availability stand point than NVIDIA's recent HD 8800 GT and 8800 GTS launches.

Pricing on the HD 3870 X2 is supposed to fall into the $499 price range, but that will of course depend on availability and demand. At $499 though, the Asus AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 will be significantly cheaper than the best price we can find any NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra cards at - currently no lower than $630 on our pricing engine. The NVIDIA 8800 GTX card is much more reasonably priced, starting at $440 or so for some reference speed models that will be slightly slower than the 8800 Ultra we benchmarked here today. Those might give the HD 3870 X2 a run for performance and value but it all depends on how the availability of AMD's new flagship pans out.

I'll have updates here in this section throughout the week as we find cards for sale.

Update: Newegg has several in stock at the $449 MSRP price to boot!

Final Thoughts

The new AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 is a breath of fresh air for us - competition in the enthusiast level of the marketplace is well overdue and will lead to better prices and performance for everyone in the long run. AMD's Radeon HD 3870 X2 is an elegant design that shows performance meeting or beating that of NVIDIA's current flagship 8800 Ultra graphics board in today's most demanding DX9 and DX10 titles. Its dual-GPU design has its strengths and its weaknesses as we have dissected above but the end result is truly what matters: performance. Put the Radeon HD 3870 X2 on your short list of ultimate performance graphics boards and buckle up: the race is truly heating up for 2008.

Be sure to check out our full, detailed review of the Asus AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card on the following pages!!

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Click here for the Detailed Review