ATI's new HD3870X2 video card

[Groove]

whats the problem with 8.3

[FA_Crazy-Canuck]

I am rolling back to 8.2. Groove here is what I have found. I have noticed an increase in artifacting, it looks much like dust on a movie film. Also there has been a drop in FPS. I have not quantified it but it is apparent. However the loss of FPS is not enough to deter my ejoyment of the game. Thats all for now.

[KosiMazaki]

Try to use ATI Tray Tools, just go:

 

Hardware>>>Overclocking Settings and there is Fan Settings or somthing like that.

 

or tray ATI Tool:

 

Find the settings button and choose Fan Control

[FA_Crazy-Canuck]

Unfortunately ATI tools does not support HD3870X2 fully. I am using the catalyst that came with the card.

[Kuky]

Actually Canuck, now that I have Vista Ultimate and dual boot with XP and Vista I find ATI Tray Tools works fine in XP but I couldn't get it to run in Vista (it gives some error message saying can't access driver in low level or something).

 

And to answer your question Groove, on my end Catalyst 8.3 are quite slower in 3DMark06 compared to Catalyst 8.2. This is for XP and in Vista its about the same, and I haven't tried Catalyst 8.2 in Vista yet (takes bloody lot of time to unistall, reinstall, test, reinsyall again..... arggh )

 

By the way I installed Vista SP1 last night (did fresh install of Vista 64-bit and SP1) and I'm not so impressed. Doing things overall is very snappy but in 3DMark06 I feel it's not that fast. I think there are way too much services and all kinds of crap running in this Vista for it to be fast O/S.

 

Also untill I installed SP1, Vista 64-bit did not recognise full 4GB or RAM, only after I applied SP1 did it show full 4GB.

 

Overall I am happy with this cards performance now in XP. Even better is first time I bought it it costed me AUD$599, this time round I found it for AUD$532. Considering this new nVidia 9800GX2 is selling for AUD$850-900 I think ATI HD3870X2 for AUD$532 is really good deal right now. I so hope future drivers squeze more juice out of this card.

[Groove]

Do you guys start Ati Tray tools "as administrator" ?

[Kuky]

I tried running and installing as Administrator ad it won't work me still. I'll install but when the ATT is sposed to call for drivers or something (load on windows startup) it gives an error and it doesn't start.

[Groove]

Kuky, just out of curiosity. In which resolutions do you play your games ? Do you use AF and AA ? Im asking because the 3870x2 seems to be faster than the 9800GX2 in real high resolutions if you use AA and AF.

 

Im still wondering why the GX2 has just 512 MB VRAM per card.

[Kuky]

I run 1680x1050 as standard/native 22" LCD resolution. I set the card through ATI Tray Tool to 4xAA, 8xAF, HighQuality and V-Sync On, then enabled AF Optimisations, Catalyst AI is Off. LockOn runs very nice now...

 

far_clip = 80000;

structures = {50, 9000};

trees = {10000, 10000};

dynamic = {100, 20000};

objects = {3000, 50000};

mirage = {3000, 9000};

surface = {20000, 50000};

lights = {50, 10000};

lod = 3;

 

ShadowLevel = 2;

LightsLevel = 2;

MirrorsLevel = 2;

TextureLevel = 2;

WaterQuality = 2;

EffectOptions = 3;

Exhaust = 1;

FogQuality = 1;

SceneFile = "High";

 

LandDay

L01 = 30000;

L12 = 50000;

 

LandNight

L01 = 30000;

L12 = 50000;

 

But according to reviews 9800GX2 is faster over HD3870X2.

 

By the way I managed to set custom fan speed with RivaTuner. I enabled hardware monitoring to run in background then started up F-15 quick mission... when I exited I notice about 80% of time the GPU was running at about 50% and temperature didn't go above 53C... (before it's go up to 80-81C) fan speed was I think about 70% speed at most. So the fan actually cools the card pretty good.

[FA_Crazy-Canuck]

I was using the ATI Tray Tool latest release. I found that it wasn't supporting the 3000 series so I went back to the Catalyst. It is workng fine although I believe it is not specific to the 3870X2.

 

I am running the game at 1920x1200 with AF=4 AA=4. I will try out Kuky's settings and report back.

 

Kuky how did bump the fan up? I would like to try that.

[FA_Crazy-Canuck]

One other thing Kuky, does "Full Shadow" work for you?

[Kuky]

Full Shaddow doesn't work... same as before.

 

To get the fan speed customised install RivaTuner 2.08 then open "Power User" tab and under "RivaTuner / Fan" set "AutoFanSpeedControl" to value of 3 (click ok then RiverTuner will close). Next open this "low-level system tweaks" (Icon that looks like a video card) and click to enable low-level fan control, click on Auto then scroll down to where you got "T min", "T max" and "T slope"... by default T min is 70C, T max is 106 I think and T slope is 51. I've set mine to T min 50, T max 70 and T slope to 50.

 

Once set you can keep RivaTuner running, open this hardware monitor and then start LockOn... play for a few minutes and when you quit LockOn hardware monitor window will be open, pause it and you will be able to trace back what temps and fan speed you had while playing. You can adjust values to your liking.