CF 3870's or wait for 3870x2?

[Albuquerque]

So it turns out my main gaming rig has died (long story, involves re-capping project gone awry) and I'm starting to have gaming withdrawals. As in, bad enough that now I'm using a pretty hefty Dell M90 laptop with a C2D 2.4Ghz and 7900GTX borrowed from the office to fix my cravings (no, not illegally, I'm allowed to have it ... but that's still pretty desperate no?)

The two options I'm considering go something like this:

A. Buy a pair of PowerColor 3870's (the 800/2400 version) on Monday

-or-

B. Wait a few more weeks, hoping the 3870x2's will arrive, and buy one when it comes out?

The rest of the system will be as follows:
GA-X38-DS4 (two PCIE 2.0 x16 slots)
E6850 at 4.?? Ghz
2 x 1Gb set of Crucial Ballistix D9GMH
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB drive
Vista Ultimate 64

The E6850 has been in the hands of a fellow overclocking buddy of mine in Chicago for the last two weeks; he has it running at 4.1Ghz at 1.5v on air, but is bumping to one of the E8500's. I'm gonna throw it in my water loop under an ApogeeGT (replaces the D-TEK WhiteWater I've been using on my Pressy 3.0E at 4.2Ghz)

Whatcha think?

 

[BRiT]

In either case, wait until AMD fixes their drivers. I've seen too many cases where CrossFire setups run no faster or sometimes even slower than single card, even in games as old as Doom3 (CrossFire vs SLI review December 2007). In some cases SLI didn't scale either.

 

[Skrying]

Neither? I mean seriously, I doubt 2x 3870 is going to be that great in performance plus you have ALL of the stupid issues that come with multi-GPU setups.

 

[Albuquerque]

I've seen both Crysis, World in Conflict and Doom3 engine-based games get FAR better results from CF in the 7.12 drivers. Far, as in ~50% or better scaling rather than the benchies shown in that Tom's article.

And while 2 x 3870's may not be the top dawg, they're still cheaper than 8800GT's and, even more, you can do CF on a standard Intel chipset versus SLI on the horrifying x80i chipsets from NV. Further, I want to futz with two video cards. I'd actually rather do SLI if it were a viable option, but it really isn't at $340 for a motherboard and the terrible stability and overclocking problems with them.

 

[AlexV]

Erm, I'd say the 3870x2 cor the cool factor. It simply lookd nicer. And you have the option of doing QuadCF later, option you won't have with 2 3870s on an Intel Mobo. That is if you really want to go the multi-GPU route.

There's also the 9800GX2 to consider, which will probably be faster than the 3870x2, and will work on all mobos saving you from shitty nV chipsets and still giving you SLi. You won't be able to do QuadSLi, though.

Finally, you could wait and get Skulltrail, which will support both CF and SLi. The downside is that it'll cost around 500$, will be a limited edition board, and will force you to get socket 771 Xeons(AFAIR).

 

[Albuquerque]

That, and I'd be waiting for evAR for the Skulltrail (or, at least what seems like forever ) Maybe if I had a competent gaming rig to tide me over, I'd be more apt to wait for months. Trust me, I'd MUCH rather wait for Nehalem versus buy right now. But then I'd have my C2D .2.0Ghz + 7300Go lappy to game with -- yeah, uh, no.

The 9800GX2 is a good possibility, and it should be out pretty soon. Might have to wait it out a bit longer...

 

[AlexV]

That, and I'd be waiting for evAR for the Skulltrail (or, at least what seems like forever ) Maybe if I had a competent gaming rig to tide me over, I'd be more apt to wait for months. Trust me, I'd MUCH rather wait for Nehalem versus buy right now. But then I'd have my C2D .2.0Ghz + 7300Go lappy to game with -- yeah, uh, no.

The 9800GX2 is a good possibility, and it should be out pretty soon. Might have to wait it out a bit longer...

I don't think Skulltrail is that far away...if you have the right contacts. The GX2 will be out in February, it seems, so it the wait won't be that cruel