14 DAY TRIAL // The short delay in the launch of the AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card surely let users sweat cold for a few days. It wouldn't be the first time for the chipmaker to first delay the product for a few days then announce that it is completely wrecked and useless, so it would arrive six months later. Fortunately, the company stuck with the plan and finally unveiled the most powerful graphics card in the world: the HD 3870 X2.
"PC gaming enthusiasts demand the ultimate in performance and scalability for their HD gaming experience and the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 sets the standard by which all should be compared in this segment," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. "With this launch we reaffirm our commitment to enthusiast performance leadership and send a clear message that the ATI Radeon 3870 X2 is the new gold standard of the PC gaming world."
Codenamed R680 throughout its development, the card might give the users the fake feeling that it is powered by a new GPU. In fact, it is based on a pair of RV670 GPUs linked together on a single PCB by a PCI Express bridge, which makes the card worthy of the "CrossFire on a single card" description. The card is built on a red PCB that is consistent with AMD's signature.
Under the hood, there are two RV670 GPUs, the same chips the company used on the Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 cards. The chips are joined via the PCI Express fan-out switch from PL, that takes the 16 PCI Express lanes and distributes them to both graphics processors. Although the graphics card is PCI-Express 2.0 compatible, the on-board switch complies with the PCI Express 1.1 standard only.
The card comes with a single CrossFire connector, since the other has already been used for linking with the second processor. Moreover, that single CrossFireX connector cannot be used for the moment, as there is no driver support for this feature yet. When the drivers finally arrive, the users will be able to link two of these cards together for achieving a quad-GPU CrossFireX configuration.
Both GPUs features their own 512MB frame buffer for one GB of GDDR3 memory. Also, each GPU has its own all-copper heatsink, while the PCI-Express switch and the RAM memory are covered in an aluminum plate, to keep the card's weigh down. However, the card is still heavy and has larger sizes than an average ATX motherboard.
The AMD reference Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card comes with a pair of dual-link DVI connectors, and a single HD video output.
