THE UPPER MID-RANGE of GPUs is where the action is these days. With the cards costing Rs. 20,000 - Rs. 25,000, most of us can at least dream of buying them. ATI does not have any part that can match the 9xxx series cards on sheer brute power, but they do have a very interesting card - the 3870X2. This consists of two 3870 GPUs on a single card along with 1 GB of RAM. It's an easy way to get a dual-card setup, and is completely transparent to the end-user.

Nvidia's card in this price bracket is the 9800GTX. Priced just a couple of thouŽsand rupees less than the 3870X2, it's the replacement for the 8800GTX. The SparŽkle 9800GTX features a GPU core clock speed of 675MHz, 1100MHz on the 512MB of high speed GDDR3 memory, and 128 Stream processors. The MSI R3870X2-T2D1G-OC runs the core at 850 MHz - an overclock of 25 MHz over the standard 825 MHz - has 640 Stream processors (320 x 2) and 1 GB ofGDDR3 memory shared equally between the two processors. The 9800GTX has a 256 bit memory interface, while the 3870X2 has 512 bit.

Both cards are quite big, and you'll need to check whether they'll fit in your case. The 3870X2 is much heavier than the 9800GTX, since it has to cool two chips. Pleasingly, both cards are very silent, even under full load. The fan is just about audible with the speakers muted, so playing a game poses no problems. Temperatures stayed within reasonable limŽits, which for cards like these means around 65 degrees CelŽsius. Setup was easy, with no special tweaks needed. You
do need a powerful SMPS to run these cards; we used an Antec 500 watt PSU.

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Performance
After a long time, we see an AT! card outpacing the green team in every benchmark. It's been a couple of months since the 3870X2 released, and with mature drivers availŽable, it's simply too fast for the 9800GTX. In 3D Mark 2006, it set a new high of 1605830 Marks, while the 9800 GTX managed only 13958. Across our gaming tests, the 3870X2 stayed conŽsistently ahead. The 9800GTX is a very fast card, since the lone GPU manages to stay within 20 percent of the dual 3870s, but the 3870X2 is just offering more bang for your buck.

We tested with the Intel QX9650 processor, 2 GB of Kingston Hyper-X RAM, and a 150 GB WD Raptor, on a Intel P-35 based motherŽboard. The games were patched to the latest versions and run at 1680x1050 with all settings maxed out with 4X AA and AF enabled. Crysis was the only game we ran at 1280x1024 with High setŽtings. In every test, the 3870X2 was at least 5 percent ahead, and mostly stayed between 10 - 20 percent in front of the 9800GTX. The table below tells the tale.

Conclusion
The 3870X2 manages to trump the 9800GTX, and since the price differential is just Rs. 3,000, it's the better deal. As more games show up that take advantage of dual-GPUs, the 3870X2 should scale even more. There's nothing wrong with the 9800GTX - it is a very fast card, but ATI's clever decision to give you CrossFire on a single card tips the scales in its favor. We'll be looking at Nvidia's own multi-GPU solution, the 9800GX2 soon, so keep an eye out for that.