The lucrative high-end video card market is one that is hotly contested between the graphics juggernauts at AMD and NVIDIA. Both companies have continually outperformed one another at different times, and the constant struggle has lead to different philosophies in graphics chip manufacturing and even graphics card design. While NVIDIA has focused on making larger, and more powerful single graphics processors, AMD has taken the approach of adding two GPU's onto a single graphics card. Of course NVIDIA has done that in the past as well with a certain success. We will be looking at one of these dual GPU cards today which is made by ASUS, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 TOP version. - PCStats

ASUS Extreme AH3870 X2 TOP Board Edition Review

The ASUS Extreme AH3870 X2 1GB TOP edition, which is quite a mouthful to say, packs in twin RV680 GPU's, packaged together in CrossFire mode on a single PCI Express card. The 1GB in its name refers to its GDDR3 memory, and the TOP refers to what ASUS calls top overclock performance. And sure it's not the greatest acronym, though it does mean you get a chipset that's got a GPU overclocked to 850MHz, with 1900MHz memory added on out of the box. The ASUS Extreme AH3870 X2 board currently retails for around $250, which is about half the price you'd have paid when it launched the first quarter of this year.

You can imagine that squeezing to large GPU chips and and all the associated circuitry needed for them to run into one single vide card daughterboard is going to lead to a serious lack of space, or a pretty large footprint. And it comes in an even bigger box, the requisite amount of goodies we've come to expect from top tier manufacturer ASUS' flagship cards are supplied incidently. Like most dual GPU boards, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 edition demands a lot of power. In addition to the power it draws from the PCI Express slot, the card requires two non optional PCI Express power connectors, one a 6-pin and the other an 8-pin.

The ASUS Extreme AH3870 X2 is gigantic. This graphics card uses a dual slot cooling solution and may prove especially unmanageable in cases that have hard drives mounted parallel to the video card, rather than perpendicular. The dual fan cooling solution exhausts hot air back into the case, which can be troublesome in chassis that have poor in-out airflow. We would recommend a rear exhaust fan to help get rid of all that hot air before the internal case temperature rises too high. The heatsinks are hidden behind a brushed aluminum shroud. Two copper plates cover the GPU's to efficiently work to disperse the heat.

This ASUS Extreme AH3870 X2 graphics board was once the flagship of ATI's graphics processor line, but like all top-end hardware, after enjoying its day in the sun it has been eclipsed by newer, faster technology. However as products like this age, prices also drop precipitously, moving the ASUS Extrem AH3870 X2 from a $500 part into the much more affordable $250 range. This shift in price means that it's no longer competing against its younger brother, the Radeon HD 4870 X2, instead it'll be compared to some of the mid-range cards from this year and the high-end cards from last year that also occupy this price segment.

Now if your biggest concern is pure GPU performance, there are better options for around $250 than the ASUS Extreme AH3870 X2 edition, namely in the form of AMD's Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. Its single GPU is more power efficient and will give more consistent frame rates in a wider variety of games than the ASUS Extreme AH3870 X2's dual processors. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 card is offering more than just frames per second though. And its wealth of DVI ports, included software and extras can still make this a compelling buy for enthusiasts looking to own a once flagship card that no longer demands a flagship price.