ATi has been playing catch up to NVidia for a while for the performance crown.  They obviously have been getting tired of that with today's official release of their next gen card.  The Radeon HD3870x2 Card shoehorns two HD3870 GPUs onto one card with each core having 512MB of memory.  One gig of onboard memory total...  You gotta love the way that rolls off your tongue.  Let's say it again, one gig of onboard memory.  Dual GPUs are nothing new.  NVidia released the GeForce 7950 GX2 a while back except the NVidia GX2 had two PCB boards with a GPU on each.  ATi has a much cleaner look with both GPUs being on one PCB.

The Radeon HD3870x2 was originally slated for release on January 23 but that was postponed due to "driver issues" until today, the 28th.  This seems odd as there has not been a driver update since the 8.1 Catalyst release on the 16th of this month.  A street price is uncertain at present but I'm guessing from tid bits here and there and the card's positioning for it to be in the $500 range.  That seems to suggest that the Radeon HD3870x2 is quite a card.

HIS continues to be a premier ATi partner and as such has supplied us with a sample of the Radeon HD3870x2.  With the card's official release being today it is in reference design trim not having the benefit of HIS's near famous IceQ3 Cooler or factory overclock.  I'm sure they are tweaking this card at their factory now to find how much farther they can push the performance.  Until then, let's see what the reference Radeon HD3870x2 packs under the hood.

Specifications

• Graphics Engine: Dual ATi Radeon HD3870 (R680)

• Interface: PCI-Express

• Engine Clock: 825MHz

• Memory Clock: 1800MHz

• Memory Type/Size: GDDR3/1GB

• Memory Interface: 2 x 256-bit

• Stream Processing Units: 640 (2 x 320

• Max Resolution: 2560x1600

• VGA Output: Yes with adapter

• TV-Out: HDTV/S-Video/Composite Out

• Built in HDMI and 5.1 surround audio

• ATi AVIVO HD video and display technology

• Unified Video Decoder (UVD) for Blue-Ray and HD DVD

• DVI: two ports

• Native CrossfireX support

What you get

A nice round out of cables and adapters comes with the HIS Radeon HD3870x2 to allow end users full functionality for HDTV options.  Aside from the card, we find a driver CD, a DVI to HDMI adapter, two DVI to VGA adapters, HD Component Out, Installation guide, CrossfireX bridge, HIS' hip little pocket screwdriver with level and LED light along with an HIS case badge.

NEXT

Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - The Card
Pg 3 - Operation / Temperature / Test Bed
Pg 4 - Crysis / NFS: Pro Street
Pg 5 - STALKER / Image Quality / Overclocking
Pg 6 - Conclusion