So, do we know anything about RV670 yet?

[_xxx_]

I'll be damned if Joe Sixpack walks into a store and buys a ~$250 dx10 card over a ~<$200 dx10.1 card. I bet they print 10.1 in big-ass letters on every box.

I'll be damned if Joe doesn't buy the GT with a big chart on the box saying "30% faster than RV670"

 

[nicolasb]

The Inquirer reckons RV670 will have a low-noise cooler. (There are some pictures at the linq).

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/08/hd3850-3870-finally-quiet

THE RADEON HD 3850 will come to market with a single-slot cooling setup, outputting only 31 dBA.

This is closer to silence than 8600GTS or 8800GT, boards with which this card will undoubtedly be compared.

[...]

A Radeon HD 3870 will follow with a dual-slot cooling setup, heatpipes and everything. This setup will output 34 dBA, more than 3850, but drastically less than 2900XT or a direct competitor, GeForce 8800GT.

According to our data, 8800GT produces 43 dBA of ambient noise, and during our testing, Gainward, XFX and Zotac all had similarly tuned fans, quite loud ones - once that 3D load ramps up, that is.

I had been under the impression that 3870 was also single-slot, but maybe not.

 

[nagus]

 

[nagus]

 

[Geo]

"3870 X2". Well, that seems to settle that.

 

[Kaotik]

Sooo, "775MHz+" - still undecided, or something related to the new "selfadjusting clockrate"?

 

[Lux_]

Thank you!

From the slides - in 3DMark the 3870 is 2% faster than 2900XT. Which brings us back to question: for what was 512bit external interface of 2900XT actually intended for? Uber-resolution gaming with insane amounts of AA?

Edit: I don't really understand why clockrate 775MHz makes sense for 3870. 780Mhz would probably still be about 35dBA, but "500+ GFLOPS".

If the claims are correct and clock-for-clock performance is identical to 2900XT then we can predict: 800MHz is 8% faster, 825MHz is 11% faster. At least it isn't slower, as I feared!

 

[Stenis]

Two 3850's in Crossfire should work just fine with the aging RD580 chipset right? That would be a sweet upgrade and should last a while. Still on 939 with an X1900XT here.

Thanks for the slides.

 

[nagus]

unfortunately no word on performance improvements with AA. 3DMark is relatively meaningless.

 

[Jawed]

"3870 X2". Well, that seems to settle that.

At least that name will make sense, even if the X remains.

Those CrossFire scores aren't much to write home about, and the lack of AA in the CoJ test doesn't bode well. AFR coming undone?

Will the drivers get substantially better? Will AMD delay X2 until the driver is decent?

Jawed

 

[Arty]

I'll be damned if Joe doesn't buy the GT with a big chart on the box saying "30% faster than RV670"

The funny part is Joe will have no clue what RV670 is ..

unfortunately no word on performance improvements with AA. 3DMark is relatively meaningless.

True. The only thing I found interesting in those slides are X2 and the die size of RV670. Gosh, AMD have a 70% die size advantage this round.

 

[AlexV]

Thank you!

From the slides - in 3DMark the 3870 is 2% faster than 2900XT. Which brings us back to question: for what was 512bit external interface of 2900XT actually intended for? Uber-resolution gaming with insane amounts of AA?

Edit: I don't really understand why clockrate 775MHz makes sense for 3870. 780Mhz would probably still be about 35dBA, but "500+ GFLOPS".

If the claims are correct and clock-for-clock performance is identical to 2900XT then we can predict: 800MHz is 8% faster, 825MHz is 11% faster. At least it isn't slower, as I feared!

Bear in mind that the 1Gb 2900XTs(I know, fairly rare), at least Diamond's ones, are already at 825 GPU-clock(as per Diamond's site). So the 775Mhz clock is even less impressive, IMHO.

 

[Arty]

When we first heard of the 775MHz clock, there were two possible explanations. To keep the stock cooler single-slot or to hit lower price levels. I was in the latter category, now it looks to be the case.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

It would be great to see some benches comparing R580 to this card (or any RV670/680 based card) in F@H. But then it wouldn't be the marketing we've come to expect, would it.

It would be, except F@H does not yet support anything beyond RV560/RV570/R80.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Bear in mind that the 1Gb 2900XTs(I know, fairly rare), at least Diamond's ones, are already at 825 GPU-clock(as per Diamond's site). So the 775Mhz clock is even less impressive, IMHO.

It's half the price and half the power consumption, with less noise and far less heat. How is that anything but impressive? Sure, it's not twice the speed, but it's just a refresh.

 

[ECH]

With proper cooling I wonder how well the 3870 will scale in performance when oc'd?

 

[Lux_]

With proper cooling I wonder how well the 3870 will scale in performance when oc'd?

I'd consider 10% normal, 15% good. I'd expect a whole lot more, of course, but these kind of expectations are often called dreams.

 

[AlexV]

It's half the price and half the power consumption, with less noise and far less heat. How is that anything but impressive? Sure, it's not twice the speed, but it's just a refresh.

Let's discover a new concept:IMHO, it's unimpressive. I should've pointed that out. Because I really dont care all that much about power consumption, noise&heat(watercooling is my good friend). I'm more into performance types of things...or features-the RV670 brings neither(DX10.1 solving Global Illumination-yeah, sure, now why didn't we figure out ages ago that it was that simple). Probably there exists a niche for those like myself.

It's also unimpressive in terms of the about a billion five hundred million posts:OMG, it's going to OWNORRZ, it is ATi's comeback etc. Call me odd, but fanboysm pisses me off considerably(from either side of the fence), and the fact that it's simply a middle ended not excessively sexy refresh gives me a limited ammount of satisfaction. I'd still like to get my grubby mitts on a pair of 1Gb 2900XTs from Diamond, just for shits and giggles...hmm, time to sell the 512MB ones.

 

[nicolasb]

I'd still like to get my grubby mitts on a pair of 1Gb 2900XTs from Diamond, just for shits and giggles...hmm, time to sell the 512MB ones.

The "giggles" part I can understand, but do Diamond's 2900XT cards really act as a laxative?

 

[satein]

Let's discover a new concept:IMHO, it's unimpressive. I should've pointed that out. Because I really dont care all that much about power consumption, noise&heat(watercooling is my good friend). I'm more into performance types of things...or features-the RV670 brings neither(DX10.1 solving Global Illumination-yeah, sure, now why didn't we figure out ages ago that it was that simple). Probably there exists a niche for those like myself.

It's also unimpressive in terms of the about a billion five hundred million posts:OMG, it's going to OWNORRZ, it is ATi's comeback etc. Call me odd, but fanboysm pisses me off considerably(from either side of the fence), and the fact that it's simply a middle ended not excessively sexy refresh gives me a limited ammount of satisfaction. I'd still like to get my grubby mitts on a pair of 1Gb 2900XTs from Diamond, just for shits and giggles...hmm, time to sell the 512MB ones.

Or maybe you need 2 of HD3870 1GB DDR4 cards

Just only a week left for the RV670 parts and the INQ added more to it...
AMD tells partners to focus on 3850 with GDDR3