"ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 - Fastest yet"...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can two HD3870 cards for around 270 quid. I think a price around £270 to £290 is more appropriate. The few remaining 8800GTX cards can be had for under £250 so I think it is around £40 overpriced. I suppose that it will take a few weeks for price to settle down to normal. Funnily enough some of the European sites have it for around £290.

[306maxi]

Its way too expensive.


I got my two 3870 XTs for £80 less than that.


Might as well put in some extra an get an x38 with two 3870

But if the 3870x2 is fast then 2 x 3870's in crossfire then it might just be worth it

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But if the 3870x2 is fast then 2 x 3870's in crossfire then it might just be worth it

Not when it is being priced £30 to £40 higher than in other European countries!

[Stoo]

Like I said, wait until some of the other retailers get stock online, then compare

[306maxi]

Not when it is being priced £30 to £40 higher than in other European countries!

All PC bits cost more in the UK than they do on the continent.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yes I know!! £30 to £40 is still taking the mickey just because it is being sold in the UK!! Other countries also have 10-20% tax too so VAT is NOT the reason. As I said before if people stopped accepting ripoff prices than the computer stores would be forced to keep the prices lower. If people are prepared to pay above the odds for anything then any company is going to price their items higher. It is the consumers fault and not the companies.

[Stoo]

Look, you're all basing this on *one* price from *one* retailer...

Calm down, and see what happens in a week or so..

[Richdog]

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

£327

LOL at that price, it's extortionate!

[Webby]

I love the way its extortionate but not all that long ago people were paying that much for GTXs ( in fact you still see them for loads more) and Ultras cost more still! Its a single card (I know its basically 2 cards together) but it still only uses a single PCIe slot so for some that will be a bonus think of the poor people without crossfire MBs who want to have a competative ATI card. Also performance wise from what I have read (which is limited) it easily bests a GTX and in some cases an Ultra so is it really all that overpriced?

Yes it costs more than 2 3870's but on a current crossfire board (P35 etc) you can have 2 of them so that's 4 3870's without an expensive motherboard upgrade and a move to an AMD CPU!

And you have to remember its not aimed at the casual buyer, at that price its not for the faint hearted. Just like the GTX and the Ultra are aimed at people who have more money than sense so is this.

[Stoo]

Have people forgotten how expensive the high-end cards *always* are?

[TooNice]

I doubt it will go for anywhere near 450.

then

Nowhere near 450 is it?

Yes it turned out that my estimate was wrong: it is closer to £300 than £400, although closer to £350, than under £300. Remains to be seen how representative whether that card will be representative to the average cost of the 3870 X2. If it is true that it can get cheaper, it is also true that it can get more expensive (referring to the price of the first 8800 GT to what you typically find these days). However, I never claimed that the 3870 X2 would cost £450. Please read the post you are quoting.

[Stoo]

Please read my post about not starting to snipe at each other over what each other said...

[KiMi-Tech]

I'm actually suprised it's that cheap, especially for it's starting price. Its not that far off the proper GTX's, by which I mean non OEM and given what i've seen of it's performance it can wipe the floor with both the GTX and the Ultra.

When nvidia bring their dual gpu card out don't expect it to be any less than £450 that's what the ultra was at launch afterall..still is for most of them.

[TooNice]

I think it is fair to point out an error, as trivial as they may seem, when someone completely misread/misunderstood what was written, accidentally or otherwise. I even went back to re-read what I had written in case I did make a mistake. Had I written anything to that could have mislead someone to believe that I a believe that the 3870 X2 will cost £450, I would've corrected it, pointed it out the same way that the user pointed out the Euro/USD mistake, and we will all be happy.

Going back to the previous post, I do not believe that anyone have forgotten how expensive high-end graphics card *can* be. That's not to say that they have *always* cost towards £400+ even though they have in the last few years. The Voodoo card, as expensive as they were, even combined with an excellent 2D card (e.g. Matrox Millennium II) would not have cost in the £400+ region (expensive as they were). Neither did the G200, TNT, TNT2 as far as I remember (again, expensive as they were - though it's worth noting I consider £200 for a GFX card 'expensive'). I am not sure how much did the GeForce 256 cost on release, but I am pretty sure it was still on the lower side of £300 than £400.

Basically, even with inflation into account, it is fair to say that prices of top end graphics card have steadily increased. I've refrained from criticising the cost of the X2 so far since I know it is marketed towards that end. It is 'cheap' compared to the Ultra and I personally expect that it will be cheaper than the 9800 GTX or any 'XTX' card on ATI's past inventory. If I was to make a wild (yet not completely uneducated guess), AMD did the price the card lower than a typical nVidia (or ATI for that matter) flagship card for three reasons (Disclaimer: Those are my opinions and I am not stating them as facts - I did try to think it through though): 1. It doesn't quite expect to beat the 9800 GTX - which I'd expect to be priced on the higher side of £300 (i.e. just under £400, to allow an Ultra to stand at the current 8800 Ultras position). 2. Going by the 3870's price, it can't be incredibly expensive to manufacture. The problem with Ultra cards is that they tend to require faster memory chips and chips that are capable of particularly higher clockspeed (lower yield). I am sure that dual GPU has it's challenges too, but going by what we've seen in the CPU industry, it's easier to manufacture 4 cores @ 2.4Ghz than 1 core at 10 Ghz (or much less for that matter) 3. Releasing a performance leading chip at (comparatively) attractive price may entice people to buy the card before waiting for the 9800.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Overclockers UK have it for just under £300 excluding postage:

HIS ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

[Webby]

Or Scan have it for a touch less at £269 all in for us Hexites Pre-order though with no ETA

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK