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Jetway & HIS HD3870X2 vs HIS HD3870 Turbo CrossFire

Videocards/VGA Reviews by geoffrey @ 2008-03-30

CrossFire, Scalable Link Interface, ... for quite some time now we have multi GPU solutions available, now after multiple releases of mainstream video cards both video card manufacturers NVIDIA and AMD bring us a dual GPU mainstream solution to compete in the high-end market segment. Today we´ll be looking at the dual RV670 based HD3870X2 from Jetway and HIS and we´ll be comparing it with the original HIS HD3870 Turbo configured in CrossFire.

Test setup & Benchmark methodology

Test setup

Geoffreys' Test Setup



CPU	Intel E6600 @ 3,6GHz
Cooling	Zalman 9700 LED
Mainboard	ASUS P5E
Memory	2x1Gb TEAMGROUP Xtreem 800MHz 4-4-4-10-35-4-10-10-10-2T
Graphics	HIS HD3870X2 1GB Jetway HD3870X2 1GB HIS HD3870 512MB IceQ3 Turbo Sparkle 8800GTS 512MB Sparkle 8800GTS 320MB Galaxy 9600GT 512MB OverClocked Xtreme Tuner
Other	FSP Epsilon 900 PSU Maxtor 80Gb PATA HDD Seagate 200GB SATA HDD Antec Nine Hundred housing 20" Dell UltraSharp 2007FP TFT monitor

The Intel E6600 is overclocked to 3,6GHz by changing the FSB from 266MHz to 400MHz and by keeping the multiplier at default (9). This way the CPU is faster than the highest clocked Wolfdale CPU's.

Teamgroup's pair of 1Gb DDR2 sticks were clocked to default settings via the Intel X38 chipset.

ForceWare 174.12 drivers for GeForce 8800GTS 512Mb

Catalyst 8.2

While Windows Vista is now officially launched, we decided to test with a mature Windows OS (XP SP2).

Benchmark methodology

The game benchmarks were completed with the Sparkle GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, the HIS HD3870 512MB IceQ3 Turbo CrossFire, the HIS HD3870X2 1GB and the Jetway HD3870X2 1GB at stock speeds. We also tested the video cards at higher clock

All tests were done with a 20” LCD monitor with a maximum resolution of 1600*1200, where 4xAA and 16xAF offered the best in-game graphics we found that AA disabled didn't decrease the eye-candy that much while the frame rate now actually become more acceptable. The in-game settings were always maxed out, we also made sure we were using the full games with the latest patches applied in order get the best up-to-date performance and graphics.

With our following performance charts you will be informed at all time at what IQ settings were being used. FRAPS was used to measure the FPS during repeated manual run-troughs of a certain part of the games tested, the minimum, maximum and average values were recorded.

Colin McRae DIRT

Crysis

The Elder Scrolls Oblivion

Rainbow Six: Vegas

Bioshock

Futuremark 3DMark Series

Comment from Gamer @ 2008/04/01

Nice review there.
You can notice these cards need a higher cpu speed/more cores.
I did a test with QX9650 at 3600mhz and got 19k 3DO6 wirh non oc on the cards.

Comment from jmke @ 2008/04/01

19K is only due to Quad Core in the CPU tests, you know that right

Comment from geoffrey @ 2008/04/01

45nm Core 2 Duo have improved single core performance too, not that much but it adds up.

Comment from jmke @ 2008/04/01

it's the only 3D benchmark where those extra cores on his CPU will actually make a difference

and in games there is none!

Comment from geoffrey @ 2008/04/01

indeed, synthetic benchmarking and games are different!

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