greds04

December 31, 2007 at 12:31pm

The reason he probably didn't use the Beta drivers as I have heard plenty of times before is due to the fact that they are not finished and can be unstable.

I'm having a hard time choosing between this card and the EVGA 8800GT for my build in March, yes I know the 8800 is a slightly faster, but as the review said "the 8800 is not DX10.1 compatible"!

and then the price, for $100 dollars less ($50 at the least) I can buy a card that is only 2-7 frames a second slower than a model of card that has been floating around on the market for the last year or a little bit more (that in my opinion should be at the exact same price if not being turned into a budget card sometime soon).

The only other problem I have is the driver support, ATI used to be constantly throwing new drivers and updates to the public...since the AMD takeover I'm kind of unsure what is happening with them now, hopefully they will catch up again and get back to normal, but they need to really get moving again as I'm sure Nvidia has the next series rolling out soon and it's taken ATI a year to get close to the latest version of the (getting old) 8800.

at the moment I'm tempted to buy an ATI regardless of the insignificant FPS difference, and a price I would pay twice for the dual card features unlike the competitors cards where it feels like your being ripped off somewhere for the cost...especially when the entry level 8800 512MB card is so overpriced compared to the ATI 3870.

JCCIII

December 14, 2007 at 11:14pm

Dear AMD/ATI,

Your 2900 XT was probably a thin lifeline, and now you are starting to produce what has long been ATI's goal, efficiency, performance, and intelligence, (Do not let us down with driver issues). I am seriously considering building scalable systems with your new GPU technology. Hopefully, I will be able to find within the next month or so a well-implemented motherboard with current technology. DDR3, PCIe 2.0, (3 lanes x16 2.0), with a few available PCI slots.

Have an excellent holiday to everyone.

~Joseph

Ninjawithagun

December 14, 2007 at 10:48pm

uh...Michael, you might want to fix the title of this article to read "ASUS EAH 3870" and not 2870 ;)

Seriously though, great article. But please make sure to point out that the drivers used for benching the 8800GT are already outdated. New beta drivers were released just a couple days ago. You did not state which drivers you used for the benchmarks. I'm assuming the nVidia drivers used are the "old" 169.02 WHQL drivers that were released waaaaaayyyyyy back on 31 October (hint, hint).

Also, the 8800GT actually beats out the EAH 3870 in both World in Conflict and Lost Planet at 1920 x 1200 resolution once AA and AF are enabled through the in-game graphics settings. Word to the wise, if you want to enjoy all the eye candy with the additional filters turned on, the eVGA SSC 8800GT beats the EAH 3870 easily.