Noise level

The card's fan is a variable rate unit that increases speed based on an internal diode's detected temperature.  Fortunately we didn't have the dust buster fan we saw on the HD2900XT card last year.  The fan would spin up for a few seconds then back to it's very quiet norm and repeat in an almost annoying manner.

Conclusion

Finishing up this review, I have the same awkward feeling I had when we reviewed the HD2900XT card last year.  To sum it up, the Radeon HD3870x2 feels unpolished as if it needed a bit more development time before it was released.  As before, I lay this at ATi's doorstep for rushing to get a card out to market.  The delay of the card's release and extension of the nondisclosure agreements most sites (ours included) were bound to, seems to want to validate this.  "Driver issues"?

The card's performance when it was on was SPOT ON.  Posting the fastest speeds we've ever seen in STALKER and Crysis.  However, the dual HD3870 GPUs of the card being bested by the HD3850?  That just boggles me unless you consider driver optimization for specific games at ATi's driver development level.  All the issues weren't something that could be linked with a driver though.  The card's load temperatures were by far, too high.  This resulted in the card's poor stability and inability to overclock in the least.  Add in the card's 10.5" in length and you have a very expensive product that has a poor bang for the buck.  Pricing is as yet unknown but conjecture puts it in the $500 range.  Unfortunately, no matter what the price at present, this card is something end users may want to pass on. 

There is a bright side however.  This particular card was manufactured by HIS and is 100% reference design.  HIS has a long history of tweaking card's raw performance and cooling.  Assuming a driver update comes along, I have full faith in HIS developing a cooler that would negate all the temperature woes of the HD3870x2.  These temperature woes are like Dominos.  Dealing effectively with cooling makes the card more stable when raises the level of potential performance with overclocking.  Time will tell if the Radeon HD3870x2 can grow into a mature and worthwhile product.  We can only wait.

Pros

• Excellent performance in some games

• Excellent image quality

• DirectX 10 Ready

• CrossfireX Ready

• Dual DVI

• HDMI 1080p Ready

• HDTV Out

Cons

• A video card that weights 2.2 pounds??

• Unexplainable poor performance in some games

• Card runs unreasonably hot

• Sub-adequate cooler design

• Heat released into case off cooler raising case temperature substantially

• Unstable for any period of time

• Nil overclocking

• Card is 10.5 inches long

• Pricing and availability unknown at present

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