It has been some time since we have had a good old fashion head to head comparison between the industry’s most high-end graphics cards so today we are taking the time to compare two new dual-GPU monsters. Yes, we are of course talking about the Radeon HD 3870 X2 and the new GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards...
Those of you out there looking for the ultimate performance graphics cards will no doubt be aware of these new dual-GPU products from AMD/ATI and Nvidia. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 was released last month, having quite an impact as it stole the performance crown from Nvidia, which is something that had not been done by a Radeon graphics card in quite a few years.
As you should know by now, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 is essentially two Radeon HD 3870 GPU’s stuck together on the same PCB. The GPUs use a PCI Express 1.1 bridge to communicate in much the same way Crossfire ATI cards would. However, because the X2 is meant to be a 'transparent' single card solution, it is still possible to use two of these graphics cards in Crossfire mode. Meaning that with the proper drivers, a quad-Crossfire system becomes a possibility.
The end result was a single graphics card that delivered performance that was comparable to a Radeon HD 3870 Crossfire configuration. The advantage of this being that gamers do not necessarily require a Crossfire capable motherboard to use the Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card. While the Radeon HD 3870 X2 was king of the hill defeating the GeForce 8800 Ultra, its reign over the graphics card market was short lived, at least as the most powerful solution available.
Just recently Nvidia unleashed the GeForce 9800 GX2, which is their answer to the Radeon HD 3870 X2. This new graphics card is essentially two GeForce 8800 GTS 512 graphics cards and therefore delivers similar performance to a GeForce 8800 GTS 512 SLI configuration. The problem here, for ATI at least, is that the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 is much faster than the Radeon HD 3870, and therefore the GeForce 9800 GX2 should easily defeat the Radeon HD 3870 X2.
So then it’s going to be a pretty straight forward conclusion, buy the GeForce 9800 GX2 because it is faster. When are things ever that simple? Not very often, and that is the case with the GeForce 9800 GX2 and Radeon HD 3870 X2, as one is faster but the other is cheaper, making choosing between the two quite difficult. Before we make any rash decisions, let’s take a look at the performance difference between these two high-end graphics cards...
