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Sapphire HD 3870 X2 Review |
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Written by Димитър Динчев a.k.a. Veseliq
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Friday, 22 February 2008 |
Page 10 of 11
Page 10 - 3DMark06 and Overclock
Synthetic test are done last. The truth that more and more people begin to understand is that those tests are highly overrated. Years ago when versions 99 and 2001 of the famous 3DMark test began gathering popularity as a frequent gamers test, and a high result became a mark of a good video card, the companies began to optimize their drivers and chips to be capable to prove themselves in any of the latest 3DMark “disciplines”.
Many people spend hundreds or even thousand of dollars just to obtain computer capable of “playing 3DMark”. And they still exist! But even if you're not one of them, you still might want to know how will your video card perform in 3DMark, is it in the best results of it's rang compared to card ana computer. Now after showing how the cards are holding on in the the most recent and heavy games, we cannot miss the opportunity to give you the delight of the synthetic test:
you need to upgrade your flash player
Attempts to overclock the card left us with a bitter taste. At first we ran into the ever so popular (for HD 3870 X2) bug - the so called PLL bug, with which there is problem with the divider, and when attempting clock over 860MHz, the system crashes. Indeed a flash with new fixed BIOS might fix that, still that is yet another disappointment for the regular user, wanting only after spending 600$ for a videocard everything to run smooth. The pathetic 35MHz of core and 45MHz memory clock (825MHz/901MHz @ 860MHz/946MHz), we managed to squeeze, had no difference on the, performance, that why we are not publishing graphs for the tests with them too.
It must be pointed out that the card emits massive amounts of heat and maybe with a proper cooling and flashed with other BIOS it might perform differently. Still it is doubtful if the money for such cooler with heatpipes or even water will justify the few megahertz more.
