One Unreal 3 game would be nice, I agree.

Sorry I keep asking questions here but I am really interested in this product because my next build I am finally going to be done with Nforce boards (thank God) and I was curious what model of the regular 3870 was being used. The reason I ask is I was thinking of picking up two of the His radeon 3870 turbo models and using them in crossfire mode. They are factory overclocked to 850 mhz and run gddr4 at 2.38 gh. So with that In mind I am thinking that combination of overclock, memory bandwidth, and crossfire should be a high performance monster.. what do you think ?

I'm sure it would be plenty powerful, but why not get 1 3870 X2 and perhaps another 1 at a later date for crossfire... ahh to have the power of 4 GPUs under the hood!!!

This is very likely the route I'll be going this year.

I have thought about that too.. but I havent decided. The high memory bandwith of the ddr 4 combined with overclock seems that the crossfire combo would be a high performer especially if the numbers HH included from their crossfire was stock reference board. I could see the overclocked versions really giving insane performance. Then again if HiS comes out with an overclocked edition of the X2 i will probably get that no questions asked

FlyinBrian:

if HiS comes out with an overclocked edition of the X2 i will probably get that

I would imagine that OC'ed boards will start showing up very soon from most partners.

Hi All,

I think that'll be the card I'm getting for my build. I'm not sure if I'll go the Crossfire route or not. I will wait & see how two of the cards Scale before making that decision.

If you already have a GTX is probably isnt worth it.  Unless you just want to get away from Nvidia for some reason. You could add another gtx for sli.

Getting another Ultra is a viable option, but I would venture that dual 3870 X2's in xfire would outperform their sli counterparts... couple that with the fact that I prefer Intel chipsets and it makes sense for me personally.

 Hi All,

That means I'd have to go with a Nvidia Motherboard. I've no experience with them. I've always used Intel Motherboards. I'd like to hear how you Guys with Nvidia boards feel about them, are they stable? Every Intel Motherboard I've owned has been Rock Solid. 

EVGA boards seem fairly descent to me if your going for an nvidia chipset. I think DFI lan party series is good too. I used my DFI lan party for like 4 years and the only reason It stoped working is I put on an after market cooler on the northbridge chip and accidently cracked it.

Davo:

The subtle variances between motherboard chipsets when you're testing at high res, high AA settings and high image quality settings, are totally meaningless. The tests are GPU bound, no if, ands or buts about it.

Given that, why don't we test them on completely different boards for the *** of it then! It'll be fun! We'll have to reload Windows and everything!

You guys are awesome at missing the mark. 

phresh:

You guys are awesome at missing the mark. 

To phresh:

What makes you an authority? Do you have any legitimate credentials?

You come off like you know a page more than the book, have you ever built a system... if so, how many?

Do you have any expirience bench testing high end machines comparatively or running a tech website?

Do you consider your critiques constructive criticism? If not then what is your agenda?

To the admins:

I've gathered that you guys have a pretty "thick skin" for the most part, but I can't help feeling as though phresh is willfully condescending and also can't help feeling a bit aggitated by it.

To the HH forum community:

You guys may feel like I'm overreacting and wasting my time by questioning this individual, but I respect HotHardware and trust their reviews implicitly!

BTW: If you think my reaction was spawned by just 1 post, read his other 2!

recoveringknowitall:

To phresh:

What makes you an authority?

Never claimed to be an authority. I'm just a dude that thinks critically and enjoys flaming forums. 

recoveringknowitall:

Do you have any legitamate credentials?

I can spell legitimate, does that count? 

recoveringknowitall:

You come off like you know a page more than the book, have you ever built a system... if so, how many?

No, I just run eMachines. lol. Really though, approaching 50 or so over the past decade. 

recoveringknowitall:

 

Do you have any expirience bench testing high end machines comparatively or running a tech website?

Bench testing yes, did a lot getting my q6600 to 3.4 stable on air without too many volts. Tech website, nope.

recoveringknowitall:

Do you consider your critiques constructive criticism? If not then what is your agenda?

Yes and I also enjoy being condescending, bite me.  My agenda is simply to point out things that don't make sense and have a bit of fun along the way.

Sincerely,

-phresh 

IMO you are misinformed and childish. I hope that if you continue to post here that you will step up your maturity and present your oppinion without disrespecting the people that run this site.

 And I think you lack any significant point and suck at spelling. Let's fight about it.

 The fact remains that no one here has properly addressed the issues I brought up. Pure fail.

We don't flame here, find another forum to disrespect.

 Hi there,

I have a 17 inch LCD monitor 1280*1024 32bit, Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 3.262GHz 466FSB ORTHOS,PRIME,OCCT,SANDRA,AND OTHER FULLY STABLE (1.86GHz Default) with Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 Motherboard (Rev. X.X WITH F7 BIOS) with 2GB Kingston Hyper-X 800MHz Memory modules in Dual Channel Mode (128bit - 64bit*2).I'm using ATI GFX-Cards FOREVER and the reason is because i don't know what the Bench sites are saying or doing but every time that i was trust any of the benchmarks i was pissed off because is like they are saying lies to me at least.Finally i want to make something about the ATI HD3870 clear and not for the ATI HD3870 X2 is that in any game i'm playing the frames are about 60F.P.S.(Frames Per Second) and up, not at least in any time of the game drops below of that at ALL FULL GRAPHICS and all Details Cranked Up - AA16X,HDR and so on...... and something else those 55nm babes and not 65nm are so easy overclockable ~1000MHz+++ core (stock cooling- within VGA BIOS modifications).