HD 3870 x2 in FSX?

OldBuzzard

I'm seriously considering a 3870 x2 for use with FSX. Has anyone seen a review where they benchmark the 3870 in FSX?

All the reviews I've seen use mostly FPS games, which is OK I guess, but FSX is well known for bringing hardware to it's knees and making it scream "Uncle!"

swimtech

You can check tomshardware's VGA charts to see how a single 3870 performs against Nvidia's best cards in FSX at various resolutions, but alas no posting of the 3870x2 card to compare with.

You would think though, extrapolating from the review of the card here at DH, that the card should perform 10-30% faster than a single 8800 Ultra - IF - there is support in the driverset for FSX. AMD might know that...

That could be a bit short of double the performance of your existing video card (in FSX - could be even more in other games), IF...

OldBuzzard

Tom is a whore, and I'd give more credence to the babblings of a 2yr old than anything I see at that site.

swimtech

Ouch!

You asked...

You're welcome?

Anand checks the x2 against a single 3870 at 2560x1600 without AA and finds the x2 to perform 15% better than a single 3870 - not a huge improvement at all - but with AA the improvement percentage may be larger.

ChaosMinionX

In comparison to 3870s crossfire, and 3870X2 the X2 is faster, due to the fact it doesnt have to communicate through the bus for crossfire, its doing it on the card so latencies are reduced.... As for FSX performance I couldnt tell ya.

OldBuzzard

swimtech...my apologies to YOU. I do appreciate that you took the time to reply. I just have a deep 'dislike' of that site.

I know that the x2 is whuppin ass...I was just hoping to see what it was doing in FSX. Seems like everyone that reviews hardware aren't aware that fliight sims exist

temeteus82

i think that fsx is more cpu intensive than gpu intensive. And the Dx10 support has a lot of bugs as far as i know. And stuart has used fsx in the past in some cpu/mobo reviews if memory serves me right.

swimtech

Cool - thanks, but I know what you mean though - have had to take them with a grain of salt at times. I think the "competition" (no names necessary - you know...) the past couple years has helped them with their objectivity.

Recent reviews using FSX are just about nonexistant...

tornadog

I am really liking this card. Only thing that is stopping me from getting one is I only game at 1280 x 1024 and that too on XP, so I am not able to justify this purchase to my techsavvy better-half!!!

nookadum

So... get a 3850 or a single-GPU 3870 and save a bunch of cash. :P 1280x1024 with all the highest settings on a 3850 is enough for all the games out at the moment. Except Crysis of course.

OldBuzzard

Well, I finally found 'something'. Anandtech revisited the 3870 x2, and did a bit more testing. They got 50.4 FPS at 2560x1600 on High Quality with no AA using DX10. Using the single version they got 44.4 at the same settings. not too much go go on, but it's a start. No info on the system used, other than the fact that they used the Vista OS, since it's DX 10. That is something that comes into play with FSX, since it scales very well with processor power.

I'm thinking that with my system the x2 will be a good thing

I doubt that I'll run it at that high a res, since my FW-900 only goes to 2304x1440 max. I figure that at 1920x1200 and with a few 'tweaks' to FSX, I should be able to get a constant 40-45 FPS. With FSX, real high FPS isn't as important as having it remain constant, and anything over 35 is more than adaquate.