My odd gigabyte 3870 with gddr3 and crossfire..

i decided to keep the (bought by mistake) gigabyte 3870 card and play with it..

its a nice bundle complete with dongle and never winter nights.. and a pretty box.. the card itself is blue..

on picking it up my first impression was minimal and lightweight compared to the much heavier reference card i have.. i could say "cheap" but i wont .. but apart from having nothing much on it.. it looked nicely made..

the cooler looks flimsy but does a reasonable job of cooling the cards gpu core.. but the absence of any memory cooling is poor.. and the rest of the card gets very hot with the memory being too hot to keep your fingers on.. its quite clearly meant to stand heat and probably dosnt matter but will limit the ultimate memory speed from an overclocking point of view.. the cooler fan isnt speed controlled and runs single speed all the time.. its fairly quiet.. it would be better if it slowed down at idle but gigabyte havnt bothered with such niceties..

the difference between gddr3 and gddr4.. well not a lot to be honest.. the card comes clocked at 950 memory the more normal gddr4 cards come clocked at 1126.. basically at stock speeds it seems the slower clocked gddr3 performs on a par with the faster clocked gddr4..

with overclocking speeds the gddr4 will show more of a gain than the gddr3.. but out of the box the gddr3 gigabyte card dosnt lose anything noticeable with having the older memory..

the driver package that came with my card is just like the original install package that came with the very early cards.. it wont install in win XP.. it bombs as soon as the splash screen appears.. not a real problem now because later driver packages are available..

i took by old card out just to test how the new card performed and clocked.. the memory dosnt like being clocked much over its default 950.. i put this down to the lack of any metal heatsinks..

the core is happy at 850.. the little cooler does its job and keeps the temps down to around 70 C under load..

i used the bios editor and upped the core speed to 855.. i left the memory as it came 950..

i installed both cards and tried to get crossfire working.. two hours later i succeeded.. i dont normally have problems with the ati cat package but this time i did.. more down to bad luck than anything else i think..

in the end both cards showed up and the CCC appeared and let me enable crossfire.. what it wouldnt let me do thow was overclock the cards.. overdrive just set back to defaults when i hit the apply button..

back to the bios editor i loaded my fanfix bios and upped the core to 850 and the memory to 1200.. who needs overdrive.. he he

anyways the odd hybrid gigabyte 3870 and the normal HIS 3870 work together okay..

now my mobo isnt an ideal crossfire mobo.. 16 x 4 but a 2006 run produced just over 17000.. not too bad for a dual core cpu a quad at similar speeds would show 19000..

crysis.. a nice gain at the settings i played the game at.. just over 40 fps up to 50 fps.. better than the last time i tried a couple of months back.. that showed a loss with crossfire.. he he

the hybrid gigabyte 3870.. well it has to be at a good rice.. but it does go quite well.. its better than a normal 3850.. but not quite there unless the price is right.. and if anybody removes a stock 3870 cooler to attach one of these little coolers i think they want their brains testing..

but all this is just my opinions so take them for what they are worth.. the bottom line is i will keep the little beast so it cant be too bad.. he he

trog

update.. two games that like dont like C/F.. world in conflict.. and conflict denied ops.. both suffer big time for having it turned on.. i am beginning to remember why i ditched my second card the first time around.. he he

the pattern seems to be new not long released games dont bloody like it.. it seems to take a few patches and ati cat releases before new games work properly with C/F.. crysis at least works with it now.. when it first arrived it didnt..

trog

one more update.. after a bit if running both cards.. i had a few odd instability lock ups and such.. being as for some unexplained reason the CCC now lets me clock each card individually i have flashed the both cards back to their default speeds..

both are now clocked by the CCC to 830/1200 and 830/950 respectively..

if i still get instability problems i know its down to crossfire and not the cards running too fast.. my 2006 score is now about 16950-ish

for interest what happens to the second card when the game or 3D ap being run isnt coded to use crossfire.. bascially the second card sits there doing nothing.. all the work is being by one card.. the ap being run here is the fur bench..



trog

a little more info on crossfire gpu usage and frame rate gains with the abit ip35 pci-e 16 x 4 motherboard and the hybrid crossfire set up..

the first two pics show each cards gpu usage with something that is optimized for crossfire..

the battle of proxicon game test from 3dmark 2005.. run at 1680 x 1050 resolution with 4 x AA and 4 x AF added to take the cpu out of the equation and make it a pure grafix card power test.. crossfire raised the frame rates from 58 fps to 84 fps.. roughly a 50% gain.. not bad at all..







the first pic shows the HIS gddr4 card clocked at 830/1200.. its shows not 100% gpu usage.. not too bad thow.. this card is in the pci-e x 16 slot

the second pics shows the gigabyte gddr3 card clocked at 830/950.. the gpu usage seems higher.. than the other card.. this one is in the x 4 pci-e slot

the last pic shows the HIS cards gpu usage when not being run in crossfire mode.. pretty much a %100 flat line load..

just for interest the single speed gigabyte gpu cooler keeps the card at about the same temps as the stock ati cooler with the fanfix bios.. the stock ati coolers fan is only running about 70%.. nowhere near its maximum leaf blower range.. at full speed it would knock about 10 C off the HIS cards temps.. just for those who might claim the zalmain cooler on the gigabyte card is more powerfull.. it isnt..








the last two pics show the gain in crysis useing the cat 8.2 drivers with this set up.. its the games fly-by gpu bench run at 1680 x 1050 with textures and shaders on high the rest on medium and no AA.. how i played the game with one card..

basically a nice 25% gain up from 40 fps to 50 fps..

to sum up so far.. the hybrid cards seem to work nicely together with no real loss from one having gddr3.. the 16 x 4 board.. well i cant do a direct compare with a 16 x 16 p38 board but any loss from the x 4 slot certainly isnt enough to stop the abit ip35 pro board being used as a crossfire set up..

trog

ps.. just to note.. all card clocking is being done with the CCC.. rivatuner is being used only for its nice monitor..

InfDamarvel said:

Why dont you do yourself a favor.

-Test the cards in the x16 slot by themselves and benchmarks and overclock them separately.
-When testing them on Crossfire, leave each card stock

You might just find where your errors are if you do this. Maybe youve done it already but I didn't wanna read over all 3 of your post.

Click to expand...

i dont have errors.. my posts are for information purposes only not a request for help.. i suggest u read a little more before adding comment.. he he

trog

InfDamarvel said:

Just assumed your were moaning about that card again.

Click to expand...

read my posts and u might find out some useful information about that card..

plus my original "moan" wasnt about the bloody card.. other folks turned the thread into a card for card contest.. i moaned cos i got something i didnt want..

trog

some 3mark results..

3dmark 2003



3dmark 2005



3dmark 2006



and something to compare them with..

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?cat=grfx&id=586&pagenumber=3

the compare system specs..

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 3.2GHz
Memory: 2 x 1GB OCZ DDR3-1600MHz Memory Modules
Motherboard: ASUS P5E3 P38 16 x 16 pci-e 2
Optical/Hard Drives: Generic 8X DVDRW, Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM/8MB Cache S
Monitor: BENQ 24" LCD with 1920x1200 Resolution
Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate - 32bit
Drivers: Latest Intel Chipset and nVidia Forceware Drivers

all in all not too bad for a p35 board with 16 x 4.. pci-e 1 that dosnt even claim proper crossfire support.. and odd hybrid unmatched cards..

trog

not at 4 gig i dont think.. it runs but not as well as with just the one card.. i have only run the in game test i dont a have problem with just the one 3870 playing the game..

i just did some comparing when i added the second card.. i noticed poorer performance with two cards than with one.. i played the game at 1680 x 1050.. my monitor dosnt go higher.. it was sweet well maxed out in dx9 with one card..

i just put it down to the XP drivers not being optimized for the game.. to be honest the only game i need more than one card for is crysis.. all my other games at the resolution i play at are happy with just the one card..

trog