Testing and Overclocking

Testing is going to be done with a variety of synthetic benches as well as actual games.  The results will be compared to an eVGA 8800GT OC 512MB card and an eVGA 8800GTS 320MB.  Synthetic benches were tested using the benchmarks standard settings.  Games were tested using 1680x1050 and high settings.  Anything other than that will be listed.  The test system is as follows.

To overclock this beast I used the ATI Overdrive feature, yes I know there are a few people cringing when they read that, but it did a pretty good job.  Maybe you'll be able to squeeze a little extra out of it if you use third party software.  I knew that the card was already factory overclocked and wasn't expecting a huge gain.  The factory settings were 800 core and 1152 memory.  ATI Overdrive took the core all the way to the sliders max of 885 and called it good.  After some testing and some lock ups, I moved the slider down to 850Mhz and everything was good.  Really overclocking a 3870 will require a BIOS flash to get past the 860MHz barrier.  That is not really important in this review, but be aware of the core limitations, if you are buying a 3870 with the intentions of pushing the overclock hard.  The memory, which is rated at 1200Mhz, went up to 1333Mhz and was very happy there.  So not huge gains on the overclocking front, but the card came factory overclocked and every little bit helps the benchmarks.

3DMark06:

Futuremark's 3dMark06 has become the go-to benchmarking tool when it comes to synthetic benchmarking.  Love it or hate it, there is no question that 3DMark06 is the measuring stick of video card performance industry wide.

We will be using Version 1.1.0 professional.  The free downloadable version can be found here.

The sapphire comes close to the 8800GT overclocked edition and the both destroy the 8800GTS 320MB card.  Let's break down the test and compare each stage of 3Dmark06.

Aquamark:

Aquamark is an oldie but goodie.  I always like throwing this benchmark into the mix.

This one wasn't even close, Sapphire just walked away with this one.