Last year hasn’t really been the best one for AMD- with Intel and nVidia dominating performance in the CPU and GPU sectors respectively. AMD launched their Phenom line of CPUs and their HD3700 line of GPUs that fare well on a price/performance ratio, but for the power user demanding the most out of their system, AMD simply wasn’t a choice. The start of 2008 might bring some good luck to AMD with the release of their X2-3870 graphics solution

Following up on our HD3870 review, we take a look at its successor- the much hyped X2 graphics card courtesy of ASUS. The ASUS EAH3870 X2-1GB is a two GPU solution similar to nVidia 7950GX2. Basically, these two GPUs are internally connected over a PCI-E 1.1 bus and just like the 7950GX2, you don’t need a specific multi-card ready technology (read SLI or Crossfire) on the motherboard to use it at its full speed.

The good thing about X2 is that you can have dual CPUs working in conjuction with multiple monitors which was not an option on the nVidia 7950GX2. However, like all multi-GPU setups, a game profile needs to exist in drivers to deliver the best performance. Both AMD and nVidia have been doing that in their drivers for the longest time, however, there may be times when you go out an buy a new game that is not supported in their drivers. While this will not prevent the game from working, you will probably not get the power of your dual GPU card utilized to the fullest until a driver update is issued.

Lets look at the specification and features of the X2-3870

Specifications

• GPU: ATI RV670 x2
• Engine Clock: 825MHz
• Video Memory:1GB (512MB x2)
• Memory Clock: 901MHz
• Shader Units: 320 x2
• Memory Bus Width: 256bit x2

As you can see, while the total memory on the card is 1GB, only 512MB is available per core thus making this card more of a 2 x 512MB product than a 1GB product. Also noteworthy is that AMD has increased the core speed from the HD3870 (which was 777MHz) however memory speed has decreased from DDR4/1126MHz to DDR3/900MHz. The card does retain Direct-X 10.1 compatibility as the HD3870 which is something we have yet to see in an nVidia card.