Pros & Cons
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- Very quiet for a high-end card, good performance-to-dollar ratio.
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- Too long to fit in some smaller cases, doesn't scale as well as it should relative to a single 3870 card.
ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 Specs
| GPU Engine Clock Speed: | 850 |
| Graphics Memory: | 256 |
| Memory Clock Speed: | 1800 |
| System Interface: | PCIe |
| Video Inputs: | DVI |
| Video Interfaces: | DVI |
| Video Outputs: | HDMI |
We have seen this method of accelerating "single-card" graphics performance before—you take two mid-range graphics chips and stuff them together into one double-wide card that fits into a single slot. It goes all the way back to ATI's old Rage Fury Maxx, actually. More recently, there were cards like the GeForce 7950 GX2, and even ATI's own Radeon HD 2600 X2, which didn't really do too well.
Well, the graphics division of AMD is about to give it another shot with the Radeon HD 3870 X2. This time they're taking the thoroughly excellent RV670 chip used in the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 cards and doubling it up on a single, double-wide, 10.5-inch long card. Technically this is called the R680 product, and it's meant to compete with other cards near the $500 mark like the GeForce 8800 GTX. Because it's essentially a dual-card CrossFire setup on a single board, it relies on ATI's ability to write very good dual-GPU graphics drivers to deliver the expected performance benefits. Then there are the challenges of heat, power consumption, size and weight, and so on.
Did ATI finally produce a dual-GPU graphics card we can recommend without reservation? Not quite—but they came pretty close. —