Today AMD announced the Radeon HD 3870 X2. This graphics card is based on the R680 graphics processing unit which consists of two RV670 GPU cores. Both cores are interconnected using a PCI Express bridge chip and run in a CrossFire setup which is completely transparent to the end user. There is no CrossFire option to enable in the Catalyst drivers, nor is there one to disable it. When we installed our card it was as easy as using as any other video card. Insert card into slot, install drivers, reboot and start playing. Since this card is a dual design, basically every component can be found twice on the PCB. AMD failed to mention a price, but it should be either $449 or $499. - techPowerUp!

HIS Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB Graphics Board Review

HIS ships their Radeon HD 3870 X2 card in a box the typical size for a video card. The package communicates all the important specifications, some are a bit misleading due to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 design. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 is ATI's biggest video card so far. The card has the exact same length as the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX. The power connector placement is a bit better in our opinion because you don't need any extra space toward the top of the card. As we all expected, the cooler of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is a dual slot cooling solution. This is necessary to handle the heat output of the two GPU's installed.

ATI's cooler is huge and quite heavy. It is uses a complex base plate that cools more than just the GPU and memory. The black piece of metal is sitting on the back of the card and cools the memory chips which are located there. As you can see only a single CrossFire connector is present, this means you can run two of these cards in a Quad CrossFire configuration called CrossFireX. It will not be possible to run three or more cards for even more powerful combinations. The GDDR3 memory chips are made by Samsung and rated at 1.0ns latency and should have some headroom left for overclocking.

The big chip that sits between both GPU's is the PLX technology, a PCI Express to PCI Express bridge chip. It connect the second GPU to the PCI Express bus on the motherboard and also creates a direct link between the two GPU's for the CrossFire data. The question you should be asking now is, does it support PCI Express 2.0? No it does not. That's also the reason why AMD can not advertise the card as PCI Express 2.0 compatible. Of course the card will work fine on any motherboard that has support for PCI Express 2.0, but it will not run at the increased speeds available. In our opinion this has no negative effect.

With the Radeon HD 3870 X2, AMD has managed to design a card that is finally able to compete with the performance of NVIDIA's high-end offerings. The card is based on CrossFire technology which makes both of its GPU's work together for more performance. One major drawback of CrossFire is that scaling is very dependant on the application you are looking at. Since some benchmarks show the massive potential of the Radeon HD 3870 X2 we can only hope that over time there will be improvements to the drivers that help with performance. But knowing the ATI way of driver releases, that is will be a priority.

Compared to two Radeon HD 3870 video cards in CrossFire mode the Radeon HD 3870 X2 is easier to use because you just plug it in and it works, there is no need to change any configuration or activate anything. Also it will work on any motherboard that has PCI Express support. The use of two GPU's increased the power draw and heat output of the card considerably resulting in a noisier fan. What we found more annoying than the fan noise was the constant changing of the fan speed. If the fan is just a bit louder it will blend in with the other noises, but if it constantly changes its speed your attention is drawn towards it.

This can easily be fixed by using smooth steps on increasing the fan speed. The lack of PCI Express 2.0 support is only very minor in our opinion. It has been shown that there is very little performance to be gained from doubling the PCI Express bandwidth alone. Overall the Radeon HD 3870 X2 shows good potential but the CrossFire implementation in the driver needs to be improved a bit before we can expect massive sales of the card.