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Just ordered a Diamond 3870

C

cyclone3d

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Aug 16, 2004
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Well, it should be here in a few days. Can't wait to hook it up and use it.

It will be replacing my 7900GS which has decided to start spazzing out even in 2d, even at default clock settings.

$185 + shipping from Newegg :) - after $15 rebate.

I haven't been impressed with Nvidia as of late... just trying to milk more money out of the general populous.

It's been quite a while since I have bought an ATI card. This time around, ATI looks to have a much better price/performance and power/performance lead over Nvidia.
 
good on ya, for supporting an american manufacturer during a time of economic turmoil.

cyclone3d said:
This time around, ATI looks to have a much better price/performance and power/performance lead over Nvidia.
Click to expand...

umm......not really. nearly across the board at all price points nvidia cards equal if not best ati cards in terms of performance. and on the power/performance matter, keep in mind that nvidia cards keep up with ati cards while running lower clocks on gpu cores as well as memory. this means the nvidia cards consume less power over its lifetime. still, you will not regret going with the 3870. i have two of them myself (yes, diamonds) and have enjoyed their gaming performance since launch. they are a day-and-night improvement over the 2900xt's in terms of raw number crunching, heat, and consumption. if you leave crysis out of the equation, the 3870 is powerful enough in xp to push 1920x1200 resolutions with max in-game settings in todays most popular titles.
 
And I will be running in 1280x1024 max settings, which is pretty much what I can already do with my 7900GS.

I dunno if Nvidia beats ATI in price/performance. For a 8800GT with a decent cooler that vents air out the back of the case, I would pretty much have to make one myself.
 
you're going to love how cool your rig will get with the gpu heat crammed out the back. people always seem to bitch about cards with dual slot cooling, then bitch about their single slot cards overheating.
 
McGyver was my "hero" when I was growing up :)

In any case, you should see some of my other mods I have done in the past as well. The most recent being mounting an Opteron 175 4-heatpipe heatsink on a Slot-A Athlon.

But that is not why I was gonna post in the first place.

Newegg alrady shipped the card. It is supposed to be here tomorrow! I didn't get rush processing, and I only got the standard "3 day shipping"! This is the fastest I will have ever received something from newegg!

And that is only second to sending something through the mail from AZ to FL, it getting there the same exact day I shipped it, and my getting a letter with payment from the customer the very next day!
 
i live north of newegg's drop-ship warehouse out here in california. every time i order something from them, it comes up, goes past my house 60 miles to some central receiving warehouse, then makes the trip back down south and delivers my package at my door step. some days i think i should just hide out along the freeway and bushwack any fed ex or ups truck i see coming up the road.
 
nice! That's kinda like what happens if you live in Tucson, AZ and send somethinf via mail to somebody else in Tucson.. that is unless they have changed it.

Anyhow, send something from Tucson to Tucson, and it gets sent up to Phoenix, then back down to Tucson. Very stupid waste of money.
 
Well, I just have to re-boot for the drivers to finish installing.

I was expecting the standard size heatsink/fan that is pictured on Newegg's site.

Instead this card came with a 2-heatpipe heatsink that is at least 2/3 the length of the board as well as having a larger fan.
 
cyclone3d said:
Instead this card came with a 2-heatpipe heatsink that is at least 2/3 the length of the board as well as having a larger fan.
Click to expand...

I'm very curious as to how loud this card's cooling set up is. I'm just about to build a new system (to replace a 5yo SFF) and am looking at this card. I like the fact that it is a double slot card so that it's exhausting much of it's heat outside the case instead of further raising the air temps around the CPU. :)

Thanks,
pat----
 
The fan is not that loud, well that's b/c most of the noise comes from my CPU fan lol
 
:) I'm planning on putting a mid-speed Scythe fan on a Ninja for the CPU cooling, so I'm hoping for somewhat quiet. <fingers crossed>

Thanks for the feed back!
p
 
psklenar said:
I'm very curious as to how loud this card's cooling set up is. I'm just about to build a new system (to replace a 5yo SFF) and am looking at this card. I like the fact that it is a double slot card so that it's exhausting much of it's heat outside the case instead of further raising the air temps around the CPU. :)

Thanks,
pat----
Click to expand...

It is actually very quiet at the default speed of 40%. It gets a bit louder than the other fans in my case once I get up to around 70% fan speed. Even at 100% it really isn't all that loud.

As for air flow, it does exhaust most of the air out the back of the case but I am not sure that it actually flows as much air as it looks like it would.

BTW, anybody know if the RivaTuner temp monitor is actually accurate? It is saying my card is idling at 58c at default speeds. That seems a bit high to me as the back of the card is not getting warm at all.

On another note, I did try it at 850/1250 with the fan cranked up to 100%. From the lack of speed increase I am thinking I am CPU limited at this point. Gonna try upping the PCI-E speed to 110Mhz and see if that makes any difference.

Edit: Well, upping the PCI-E speed to 110Mhz did more for it than anything else so far. Upping the card speed to 900/1400 shows no more fps in WoW at 1280x1024 8xaa with all detail maxxed, than it does at 777/1125.

Also, if you get this card and are wanting all the hot air to be vented out the back, you will need to do a little bit of modding as there are some slots in the shroud right above the main part of the heatsink. I think more hot air is currently coming out of those slots than is making it out the back of the case.

I may end up actually making a custom shround for this like I did with my 7900GS. I could probably drop the GPU temps by a good 10c at idle and who knows what under full load.

The heatsink is very nice... the shroud and possibly the fan is lacking in my opinion though.
 
Well, scratch the OC not helping in WoW. It did nothing for it before I enabled AF. I now have it at 16AF and overclocking it does help nticeably, especially when traveling on a flight.
 
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