Zardon

Read The Review Here
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A few weeks ago Nvidia had one of its most successful launches ever with the 8800GT. Reviews across the web, including ours, were incredibly positive with the excellent performance at a midrange price. At the time of our original review the XFX 8800GT XXX edition was not ready and so we featured only the standard edition. It was a competitive part but not as outstanding as we have come to expect from XFX so when the XXX edition arrived we were quick to put it through some benchmarks and today we will be showing just how well it fared.

As always in such a short space of time, the marketplace has changed and the direct competition to the 8800GT is no longer the 2900XT/Pro, it is the Radeon HD 3870. There is still a gap in the ATI product line-up with no single card flagship enthusiast product; instead ATI's stance is to crossfire the 3870's and with a recommended price of $219/£160 each that is not too outrageous.

Our review will be covering comparisons between the 8800GT XXX, 3870, 2900 XT and stock 8800 GT using the latest games and high definition movies. We will also cover 3870 CrossFire, overclocking, image quality and whether it is possible to connect a 3870 and 2900 XT in a working CrossFire system.

josh2thad

awesome review. We all knew the 8800GT was faster...but dang i wasn't thinking that much faster. i wanted to crossfire 2x 3850's but its hard to do that when you can now see that the performance of the 8800gt alone would be about the same as 2 of those cards.

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ChaosMinionX

Great review guys, hopefully with some driver releases the 3870 gets better as well.

Would have been nice if you had 2 8800GT's to compare CF/SLI of the new ones, a couple reviews already show that in multi card setups that the 3870's are scoring better than the GT's.

But none the less was worth the wait to publish the review, and was a good read

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Dark Lord

any chance well be seeing a quad crossfire 3870 review some time soon?

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swimtech

Outstandingly thorough review Veridian3, thank you!

Yeah, it seems the 8800GT is even faster in comparison to the 3870 when more eye candy is applied than is apparent from other reviews. That's a Crysis indeed...

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geraldmango

erm, there were pages of crossfire testing, and even the fact that DH found bugs which AMD didn't and now have even opened offical support tickets on their site, id say it was worth the wait.

I think they didnt include SLI because there was no need, two 3870s in Crossfire had a hard time beating a single overclocked GT in most cases (when they worked).

Veridian3

considering a single XXX is somewhat competitive with the 3870 Crossfire (when it works) i think its pretty safe to assume that the SLI would win.

In the current state 3870 crossfire against SLI in a review would be pointless seeing as many games dont work at all. (See the Crossfire/Ugly page).

ChaosMinionX

A single GT is not going to beat dual 3870s.... just not possible, and in several known reviews of a comparison between the 2 3870s performed better than 2 GT's in crossfire/SLI.

And it was an overclocked GTX not a GT, that was compared to the CF setup.

EDIT:
What driver release was used? I have no problems with HL2 crashing, or any of the source engine with crossfire enabled on 2 3870's. I was using 7.11 with Hotfix installed overtop.

I would link the crossfire/sli review, but I wouldnt want to derail this thread

EDIT2: I am also not stating that a single HD3870 is currently faster than a Nvidia 8800GT, however that crossfire 3870's are faster than crossfire GT's in the majority of games.

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Zardon

chaos, not my review however I will comment on a few things and let stuart reply to the rest. (some of your posting I dont even understand to be honest).

Firstly, i am in no way interested in other reviews on the subject, there isnt a good crossfire review up on the net right now, and the fact we were reporting issues no one else did (confirmed by AMD), which AMD verified due to our thorough testing speaks volumes. Yes AMD found problems due entirely to DH testing. This alone makes you wonder what exactly reviewers do when they "test" these cards to get them published in time for NDA, obviously to get hits.

I made the call to hold publication of the review because we ran into so many nagging problems, even at the expense of big hits on launch day. We ending up working with AMD HQ and the driver development team and finding out just what was going on. Full credit to AMD for opening their doors to us as well.

Your Half life system might be perfect for you, however again with our testing AMD successfully reproduced the problem and opened a report AMD Customer Care. The fact you don't have a problem means really very little in the grand scheme of things and this is why it is a very hard job delivering a great review, you need to go one step further than merely just "playing" a few games to get accurate results.

This is exactly why our GFX reviews get such high hits on the net, people wait for them to see the problems/findings we are reporting, because quite frankly very often no other site is capable of finding them. It just shows how thorough Stuart is, and we have no agenda to "kiss ass" with companies either which is abundantly clear with this review. All packages on test today have issues and we made sure everyone knows it.

Will it cause problems for us in the future? I don't care, because everything we published is exactly how we found it. Not how any company would like us to find it.

riles9262

Great review guys, one of the best thus far imo. Very detailed.

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slowhandluke

great review.

ChaosMinionX

Understood, I was just saying it has been confirmed a few places that crossfire was working better than SLI on the 3870s, than GT's... It was a fantastic review and very indepth, I take most reviews from other sites (besides DH and endusers personal experiences) with a grain of salt, but the reports on Crossfire/SLI comparison between the 2 new cards was that the 3870s were faster in a dual GPU setup when compared to GT in dual card on the majority of games and especially with higher filtering added. And I was just wondering about a few things regarding some of the crossfire bugs

I know there has been a thread detailing these differences, GT excels in some games, and then 3870's beat GT in other games. I was just making a case for 3870 crossfire, and it being a great buy for people looking for dual graphics, and that ATI is slowly coming back at Nvidia, while the single card comparison GT is almost always going to beat the 3870 by a few fps, but that a dual card setup the 3870s actually handled some games better than the GT especially with higher AA and AF.

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[hobo]eclipse

Great review, IMHO if the 8800GT had a cooler that expelled the air from the case rather than into it it would be a no brainer, that being said anyone see a drastic difference in the IQ comparison screen shots in crysis? everything looked pretty much identical except for the mountain in the backround to the right in these 2 screen shots. the ATI and the nvidia screen shots. the nvidia shot has the mountain being way lower res it looks like from my standpoint.

brutusmaximus

Are your views colored by the fact your profile has you having two of these cards? Neither CF or SLI has worked out as a good solution for the end user, I think we have users on both sides of the field extremely unhappy with their configurations. if you look on any forum you have nvidia users bitchfesting about SLI in vista, and on the other hand its clear from this review, that unless you play 3 or 4 games, that crossfire has more flaws than selling points. You are even getting LOWER performance with forced AFR in some games without profiles than you would be running it in single card mode. These aren't just personal opinions of the review on DH either, these are findings which AMD has verified !

Yes you aren't alone, I have read many a rushed review on launch day online, but I always tend to wait for DH to report the facts as they frequently seem to miss launch day intentionally to get a more thorough article up. I also have major respect for Veridian3's reviews. They aren't boring like some other sites but they are fantastically indepth in the areas im interested in. Many other sites don't even bother with HD testing which is ridiculous.

Well I have no idea who has said this because its clear there aren't even CF profiles for a lot of the key games, and the fact that a single XXX is beating a CF rig even when its working is quite concerning.

yeah me too, ive been reading the AMD reports detailed on the CFUGLY page that DH published. great work DH saying it like it is, I also hope AMD haven't pulled support here for that, its the first time ive seen a site finding bugs, then reporting them, then waiting on AMD to verify them before publishing. Top drawer stuff and respect needs to be given.

EPR 224330 Oblivion: CrossFire. 2x 3870. Flickering when the game first loads : [COLOR=#ffffff]737-30750[/COLOR]:

EPR 224331 LOST PLANET. CrossFire 2x RV670 corrupt text with CF enabled. Water in caves is also a bit corrupt. [COLOR=#ffffff]737-30751[/COLOR]:

EPR 224344 World In Conflict: CrossFire. 2x 3870. Driver crashes (atikmdag error) [COLOR=#ffffff]737-30752[/COLOR]:

EPR 224345 Half-Life 2: Episode 2: CrossFire. 2x 3870. Random crashes to desktop, atikmdag error [COLOR=#ffffff]737-30753[/COLOR]:


well unless you are playing COD4 or Crysis thats about as strong a case as you will make. Certainly until ATI sort out their drivers and profiles anyway.

seriously, and I mean no disrespect as I watched you in the overclocking thread before but you really have colored views on this man, you always buy ATI hardware and are just defending an unfinished product here perhaps because you spent your hard earned money on it (I can understand this). If you had read this review, thats the only conclusion I can come to. This and the fact my friend had X1900's in crossfire last year and he ended up selling his whole system because all it did was crash in games, and not work.

Crossfire relies on the drivers, and ATI's drivers are not good in dual card mode. thats basically all it boils down to. Until they start spending more money working with game developers and improving their driver development team, nothing will change. It has been this way for two years so I see no reason why it should miraculously and suddenly change. I'll be happy to be proved wrong though.

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drakesteakn

I have always enjoyed the reviews at DH and always wait to see what problems the reviewers of DH find and report with detail. This review was excellent. Thanks

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IamLakota

My hats off to all the reviewers here on DH.Great read fellows,and thank you to all of you,for taking the time to do the testing the right way and for reporting the Facts.

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ChaosMinionX

I realize that both platforms are not where they should be, but you still cannot deny that they are a premium configuration with the money invested in that sort of thing, and people will bitch when they spend lots of money on something when it doesnt work 100% with everything. And SLI has a few games where it bugs out as well, so its apparent on both sides.



The reviews testing Crossfire vs SLI on both 3870 and the GT were done several days after launch, and there is a large discussion about it and nobody is disagreeing with it. Like I said earlier, drop me a PM if you would like to see the results, or start a new thread to get all the information into one place, I did not want to derail the scope of this thread.


I really cant comment on this, speaks for itself from testing. However the issue arised with a comparison between the GT and the 3870 in certain games did better than the GT and the GT did better in certain titles, especially when higher levels of AA/AF were applied, the GT takes a larger hit to performance in most cases.

Also the power consumption and price of the GT in CF is higher than 2 3870's and the fact that you have to use a chipset thats a year old to use 2 GT's, where you can use Intel's X38/48 or any other chipset thats nicer than 680i or any of its derivatives.

Not to mention to drag into another subject, you might not even see Intel 45nm clocking on an Nvidia platform unless some serious work is done...but thats a different story.

I have no bias toward ATI, what I do have a bias against is using lower end hardware just for SLI. Not a monetary issue either, I know all to well what to expect of these cards, and the previous HD2900's that I had and I still bought them, and I like to play with new things.

They do good in most of the games, but the newer games have been a little slow and especially vista crossfire and SLI has been very slow to get up to speed, so both companies are guilty of this. Like you said you can look at Nvidia forums, and you can look at ATI forums both Multi GPU solutions have their drawbacks, and their positives.

I am not a unreasonable person, if I am shown proof of something than I will gladly reevaluate my stance on a topic, however since DH didnt do any GT/3870 multi gpu setup testing, my comments dont hold much beyond my words without showing the other threads going on about on another major tech site.

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brutusmaximus

No, people will bitch when they have to wait on driver support for possibly months, have problems with forced AFR and have at least a 30% success rate.

SLI is flawed on vista as well, i already said this, but Nvidia do tend to have better drivers because they work more and spend more money tying in support with game developers. There is an interview on Driver Heaven with Roy Taylor a while ago which I think you should read. It explains quite a lot.


What? that in 2 or 3 games CF runs slightly faster? what about the other 50 with no crossfire support at all or the ones which run SLOWER? Most sites missed this through sloppy testing and if you are quoting a site I think you are, they were one of the idiot publications that recommended the nvidia leaf blower a few years ago. You need to seperate company loyalty from products which are good value to the buying public. The 3870 is an incremental improvement on the 2900 with lower power consumption and a few other tweaks, it is not a 8800GT beater, this is clear to anyone. Nvidia seem to be a step ahead of ATI lately and they release faster cards months before ATI.

I already have seen the results, why are you assuming this is the only site I visit because it is one of the few sites I value as being thorough in their testing? As for derailing the thread, you already have, and im surprised as you are a moderator on here.

Even with the performance hit, the crossfire setup doesnt have a driver profile, so the NV solution is faster ! there are maybe 2 or 3 games out of 1,000 in which CF wins. the other zillion don't have driver support !

I doubt anyone cares about 40w, and its amusing that you are finding this a selling point when the 2900 you previously purchased consumed over 200w each !

I love playing with new things myself, this is not relevant in this thread, we are discussing if the 3870 is a massive improvement and if it is a good value for money product. It isn't, its another failure by AMD to catch up with Nvidia. Sure the cards are relatively cheap and offer decent HD acceleration .... but who is going to pay £160 for HD acceleration when you can buy a card at £90 for that, knowing that the GT is faster if you want to game as well. the £200 for the GT XXX in this review is much better value than the £300 for a crossfire setup, it beat the CF system in everything even when dual card mode worked. Surely you aren't that biased to say thats great for ATI.

No, they don't

You mean like gears of war which I beat 3 weeks ago, still has no driver profile and actually runs slower with forced AFR on? Why would anyone pay £300 for a dual card setup which runs slower than if you had spend £150 on one card? What about world in conflict which crashes? Lost planet garbled text? no AA support in DX10?

Yeah "a little slow" - I guess thats another way to put it

positives being both companies get twice the money for crap driver support. negatives being everything else.

I guess the fact the site you moderate for having a 27 page article and doing testing other sites didn't tackle isnt enough, you want to send me links to other sites which show less accurate but more favourable testing to the hardware you bought? is a better way to handle it ?

I am sorry but you are representing Driver Heaven here in a very poor way, virtually dismissing this article and wanting to refer your public to other sites.

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digitalwanderer

Loved the whole crossfire section, it was fantastic. Thanks Veridian, I've been looking to see how a 2900 & 3870 played together.

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Veridian3

Chaos/Brut, its been an interesting conversation for sure. If there are any more comments to each other can you keep them to PM now. Thanks.

Zardon

ATI have reproduced the DIRT issue we reported and are working on that also.

737-30852: Colin McRae: Dirt: The game crashes to the desktop with an error messages stating that DIRT.exe has an unexpected error.


AMD Customer Care

ChaosMinionX

I have issues with STALKER not loading properly at all with the 3870s, Xray engine just crashes and I have tried everything I could think of and got nowhere with it.... you guys happen to have a copy?

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Veridian3

Do you have AA forced in your control panel?

Tril

There's a typo on page six or you used words I don't know.

It was an interesting read. I was recently wondering how the new ATI/AMD cards would fare against NVIDIA cards.

ChaosMinionX

Nope, I usually set app prefered on all, with AI on standard... tried a combo of stuff STALKER just does not want to run at all, even with a format it wouldnt run... I will have to play some more... I tried every patch as well it all just goes to an X-Ray engine failure.

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brutusmaximus

isnt this a documented issue with STALKER and Crossfire? im sure i read about it on another forum.

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DivotMaker

Zardon,

Great review and I was surprised to see Tiger Woods 08 included. I did want to mention to you that Tiger 08 does not do well with CF nor SLI as it they are disabled or unsupported in-game. There is mention of this in the readme. I wonder if ATI and/or nVidia could enable CF/SLI through a driver update?

Lastly, I am running the game at 1920x1200, but it took a workaround from Widescreen Gaming Forum to be able to run at this resolution. If you ever do another review with TW08, I would be glad to help you with this.

Veridian3

Hi, we are aware of the lack of CF compatibility with Tiger Woods, the point is that it shouldnt decrease in performance like it does... how ATI achieve that is up to them (i assume they will use catalyst AI to disable CF when running the game).

As for resolutions, thanks for the offer but we are ok on that one. I have the instructions to enable higher res but for this review it wasnt really needed. Higher spec cards I would probably use it but not these.

Zardon

yeah, great feedback divotmaker, some good points too.

With regards to the resolution as stuart said, we tend to leave 1920x1200 to the high end cards, as we dont really feel for the mid range market that people will be gaming at this resolution.

DivotMaker

Wasn't sure if you guys were aware of the CF limitation. Is there anything ATI can do to fix this through the drivers or Catalyst AI? The game runs very well for me with a C2D 6850/2GB DDR 6400/HD2900XT/Vista 32 at 1920x1200, but would really love to have the opportunity to use CF in the game to run up the AF/AA modes. The game really is much better looking at 1920x1200....remarkably better, IMO.