A Decade Old Deathmatch - GeForce 8800 GT vs. Radeon HD 3870

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[@hivaidz3250]

F2F IS BACK I FINALLY HAVE A REASON TO OPEN KZbin AGAIN

[@tucker21222]

Hiv Aidz game on

[@fivesquaredyt2521]

Nah Random Gaming In HD and Budget Build Offical are goats

[@tucker21222]

@@fivesquaredyt2521 random Gamer a good guy I definitely like his videos

[@Sknwlker]

Back in time when graphics cards had sexier shrouds than today

[@Phenom98]

.... That's debatable ...

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Personally I'd agree with you that a lot of this comes down the the poorer Terascale Drivers... But even I have to agree to use that the 8800GT is just a much better buy for retro/budget gaming, it's usually cheaper aswell, Atleast over here.

[@TimmyJoePCTech]

I hate when Weapon X shoves his hand in my benchmarks... Great video dude you know what you're doing. Your benchmarks make me feel inadequate LOL

[@Face2FaceHardware]

😂 I couldn’t help it after seeing that frame time graph. Thanks man, but I don’t think so.

[@TimmyJoePCTech]

my phone auto capitalized the LOL, I really meant to say lol but still, you put some massive scientific effort, props where props are due

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Much appreciated bro.

[@Russell970]

Thanks man for making this comparison, It really brings happiness upon me.

[@andreibolohan686]

It's great to see another video on this channel, I always think how old hardware work today. I owned a 8800gt and i was happy with it, at the time I could still run some games like Batman arkham city and Arkham origins on 1440x900 with mixed settings with fps going from 30 to 50. Also other games worked quite well at HD resolution: Far cry 3, Devil May Cry Series and others, truly a great card.

[@PixelPipes]

The real benchmark: Can F2F ever pronounce anisotropic filtering??? XD

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Sounds like s perfect title for my next video 😉

[@TheZax85]

Another great video... Thanks man... I myself collect a bit of GPU's, and like the way you test'em. Still looking forward to the video, with the 9800GX2 though ^_^

[@hunterp589]

I have an 8800 GT left over from a Craigslist PC that I upgraded for a friend. It is about on par with mobile Intel HD graphics of a few years ago, but better of course with over-clocking. I paired it with my i7-2600 (temporarily) for some extreme bottleneck fun!

[@Crossfire12312]

Ah.... BFG logo nostalgia

[@megajeans8462]

great blast from the past thanks :D

[@Obie327]

Good cards back then.. My last Nvidia DX10 card was the 1 gig GTS 250. I loved that card with its 55nm process and high overclocking potential. Thank you F2F Tech for the excellent presentation and retro review.

[@Rocket1026]

Yesssss another video!

[@alonsovillalobos8281]

You deserve much more suscribers !

[@Pillokun]

Very very good comparison, hat of to you :)

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Thanks 🙏

[@tucker21222]

That's pretty badass one of the cards on the graph I have in a retro XP box and that one is the Radian x1800 GTO it works pretty good for Halo and especially for F-22 lightning 3 what can I say I love my retro games anyways thanks a bunch

[@DanielCardei]

Fantastic! The first GPU that I successfully reflow :D Still beats having Intel HD ^_^

[@aarongarza4769]

I had both of these cards. I liked both. I recommended the 8800GT to my friends only because it came bundled with Company of Heroes or its Stand Alone Expansion and we all got to play several hundred matches. Good times. Asus also had a cool looking cooler at the time.

[@SonofaTech]

awesome!

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Thanks bro!

[@markdobson3066]

got 2 8800 gt cards in my wardrobe gathering dust along with an old phenom and a few other bits. was a great card in its day

[@iCarlyfan4534]

BUDGETS BUILDS AND F2F COME BACK FROM THE DEAD ON THE SAME DAY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA YES.

[@MaTtRoSiTy]

Absolute MadLad ha yeah just noticed both in my notifications. Love these retro gpu vids

[@iCarlyfan4534]

MaTtRoSiTy who the hell doesn't lmao

[@MaTtRoSiTy]

Absolute MadLad Lol yeah I am preaching to the choir here I guess

[@Face2FaceHardware]

You guys rock 🤘

[@sanybalkanaciairsoft3253]

Nice one, How about a video about a HD5670 DDR5 1GB version, that was my second GPU and it was good at 1024x756 even being able to play BF3 at medium settings at 1600x1200.

[@dharkbizkit]

the 8800gtx and gt were such good cards back then. and they held up long. too bad that i could never afford one. i was able to get a 3850 in early 2008 while a friend of mine got his 8800gtx for christmas 2006. and that was still faster then my card 15 months later

[@MrKillswitch88]

Wow not only did you make a good review you picked the right 3870 and not the common GDDR3 version, had both cards over the years and they both had their flaws. Bad cooling with the 8800 GT and something was lacking with the 3870 but at least it was still a great card. Years and years later I landed a 3870X2 and modded it, got another but the much rarer GDDR4 version but it needs to be fixed.

[@ihatelols]

I cleaned my drawers yesterday and put together the phenom 9650 and 8600 gts rig. However the 400w codegen supply is shite, when i run prime 95 the computer just shuts down.

[@homelessEh]

still got an ole 3850 with a tt duo orb copper dual fan cooler on it. the damn thing still lets me slide the ram/gpu oc all the way and stay stable. but its only the better heat sink that allows that. the stock low pro heatsink was completely under gunned.

[@cybercat1531]

There's something interesting/weird with the early VLIW5 Cards from ATI. They do really quite well on the older game engines that make heavy use of Octree BSP maps with static prebaked structured geometry & shaders (Source, Quake, COD 4 etc) and do horribly badly everywhere else. It's quite likely a driver + game engine issue where the HD3000's GPU thread scheduler seems like it isn't well able to keep the cards SP's very efficiently feed with instructions & juggling resources. There might even be a shader compiler in the drivers to blame since VLIW is very compiler dependent to work well. I'd love to test this for myself If I get a nice 3000 card at some point, but for now I'm just making a best guess based on what I've seen everywhere. With the HD4000 series it's not nearly as bad. I'd say it actually does really well. I now have a few 4000 series cards I've been doing testing with and found that changes to the shader execution scheduler and better resource management (local caches) and tmu improvements on the GPU in large parts can account for the performance improvement other than from obvious the denser SIMD SP units and clock rates. It's actually quite well documented what ATI changed from R600 to R700 :) ixbtlabs.com/articles3/video/spravka-r7xx-p2.html www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/R600_pres_carli2.pdf On the G80/G92 Side I'm unfortunately not well informed since good information is hard to come by. Nvidia is rather secretive with technical details even on their earliest hardware.

[@JonnyBoyUltra161]

Where does one find these modded Terascale drivers?

[@supernoob72]

Do more videos like this please.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Thanks, I plan on it.

[@RiskyBRiskyB]

Pretty crazy that the process has shrunk so much but the actual GPU dies are still of similar size and use more power. Also you labeled Shadow of Chernobyl as Call of Pripyat in the graph on screen.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

System spec is shown at 3:54. The game is call of Pripyat, not SOC.

[@DJCiec]

I still have the ASUS EAH TOP 3870 and that one has a 851 Mhz . i wonder how much difference would that made.Prob. still a bit slower then that GT. Good Video test :D

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Maybe 5%. Not enough to make a real difference

[@DJCiec]

Back in when they ware released my friend and i had identical pc with the exception of gpu's so he had the 8800gt and maybe that was drivers or something else but he wasn't that much faster then me.

[@cjaay4359]

Oh boy i can remember playing these exact games at 720p resolution on a hd 3870 paired with a q6600. 1080p resolution is pretty high for these cards in my opinion

[@talon1706]

The first "gaming" card I bought was an XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog. Triple digit fps was great.

[@KE-ee6ns]

I really love that 8800gt one of a kind beast card back then...

[@Trancelistic]

My lovely 2007 laptop has the nVIdia FX3600m. Its like a 8800GT

[@TheVbabeBroXX]

8800gt AKIMBO. Do that one man. Keep the vids coming

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Thanks! I had one back in the day...I miss it. Very cool card.

[@MRHOTCAKE]

Excelent comparison thanks, maybe you should make one with dual gpu evolution 7900gx2, 7950gx2, 9800gx2, etc. So we can see if they really improve a lot or not

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Would love too, but missing some cards and would have to run all the tests in XP. Shouldn’t be an issue up to the GTX 295.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

I say XP, as the 7950 GX2 doesn’t work well in w7

[@MRHOTCAKE]

@@Face2FaceHardware you can test what you have, I can help you checking those you dont have (I have most of those cards) and Hd 3870x2, hd4870x2, hd5970, hd6990 and just sold a hd7990/8990 (I know Im a dual gpu freak lover) but if you need any help or record performance count with me :)

[@Face2FaceHardware]

I appreciate it. Nice collection BTW. You should join the Pixel Talk podcast discord. You’d fit right in with us.👍. Check out the Pixel pipes channel for the link

[@MRHOTCAKE]

Thanks, and dont mention, I was already suscribed to pixel pipes, I love the way all of you make videos, I always wanted to do similar ones but in spanish but my job doesnt allow me to

[@blisterbrain]

Mmm-mmm! Look at all that sweet, sweet copper!

[@boktorinator693]

Is the DDR4 the 3870 uses the same type of memory used as system memory in new computers?

[@xDraga]

back then paint on the gpu's was so cool

[@kirbyswarp]

I saw your comment on budget build official's latest video.You think a driver mod will help the HD 3870?

[@Face2FaceHardware]

It’s possible, but without trying some it’s hard to say. I’m okay with the performance, it’s frame times that are terrible.

[@macdudeguy]

Are there modded drivers out there?

[@karolbanaszek5760]

Hd 3870 sure hell of a card 666 xd

[@marlonbrans3567]

Tech is my PC decent enough for gaming?? Its Ryzen 5 1500x,8gb ddr4 ram and Raden RX 550 2gb (yes my video card sucks but if I upgrade this some day when I have money???) I also use a ssd drive for my Games and OS My PSU I believe is a Antec 500watt 80plus.. Right now I play old titles like Brutal doom/mods and mount and blade warband , just pretty old titles but if I upgrade my RX 550 to let's say a geforce gtx 1050/1060?? Id be able to play newer titles? Maybe not maxed but playable??

[@Face2FaceHardware]

I mean you system is pretty good. Yeah a new video card would help, but the RX 550 can still play modern games pretty decently. You just have to be realistic with the settings.

[@Kanivalos80]

@F2F Tech Im Bulding a retrogaming pc, 3870 or 9600GT?

[@Face2FaceHardware]

I’d go 9600 GT because of better drivers. That said, I’m a big fan of the 3870.

[@Kanivalos80]

@@Face2FaceHardware tyvm :) yeah 2015 drivers for the nvidia card

[@CaudaMiller]

@6:29 looooooool so true , but orange justiceeeeeeeeeeeee XD i love it

[@Macbookpro19991]

i bought one of those dell xps m1730 laptops for around 300$ it came with two m8800 gt cards in sli and i thought it was gonna be great but one of the gpu's ended up dying a week after i bought it, just thought i would share my depressing purchase

[@thefinalroman]

U do a Gtx 280 yet?

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Not yet. Wanna compare it to another card.

[@RTMonitor]

Is a GeForce 8800 GT Alpha Dog Edition good?

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Good for a retro rig? Yeah

[@blackknight9710]

lol there was a capacitor in the fan of the ati card at the start of the video XD

[@Face2FaceHardware]

I was looking for that 😂

[@blackknight9710]

@@Face2FaceHardware lol no prob glad u found it

[@thudtheace]

8800GT(S) build by BFG is a failure waiting to happen. I went through a couple 8800GTS cards that suffered from bad QA/QC issues, had to send the card back to BFG, they fixed/sent me a new card then it died.. Not surprising BFG tech went belly up a few years later.

[@likeclockwork6473]

Keep in mind the 512MB 8800 GT was more expensive than the HD3870. The 256MB version was actually competitive. Also on that last bit I didn't know the HD3870 had DX10.1 support. That's pretty cool that it supported newer games that dropped compatibility with many better GPUs like the GTX260. I didn't think it had DX10.1. I knew the HD4xxx series did but that's news to me that the HD3xxx did. Adding that on top of the additional 256MB of GDDR4 and it definitely was the more future proof GPU compared to the 256MB 8800GT

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Yeah prices were kind of odd back then. The 8800 GT was supposed to be released for $250-$349 or Lower, but not enough stock and demand drove prices up. AnandTech and TechPowerup differ in that regard, and I can’t honestly remember. I do remember buying a 8800 GT 256 to replace my 7800 GTs in SLI. I later bought a 3870 and then a 9800 GTX. I evidently couldn’t make up my mind 😂

[@likeclockwork6473]

Its like the RX 480 4GB that was supposed to be under $230. Only the first batch sold for those prices then prices went up. Same with the RX 470 that was supposed to be $180.

[@adamsonntag5755]

Awww my 3870 x2. The best she gave me was that 620 watt PSU.

[@iyfranco151]

Don't forget the GTS 250 1GB Under the hood it's a GTX 8800 It was a rebadge card fine-tuned What a great video man thinks

[@amiga5008]

how did you manage to get fortnite running on the 8800gt? I have an 8800gtx and every time i after the loading screen ends there is an error saying "Out of video memory trying to allocate a rendering resource.Make sure your video card has the minimum required memory,try lowering the resolution and/or closing other applications that are running.Exiting..." The vram should not be a problem since your 8800gt has 512mb of vram and my 8800gtx has 768mb

[@Face2FaceHardware]

I remember I did get some type of warning message, but it still allowed me to play the game for both cards. I plan on testing the 9800 GX2 in the coming weeks, so I’ll report back if I see the error again.

[@amiga5008]

You probably won't get that error since that card has 1gb of vram.Thanks for the spoiled video tho,i can't wait to see it,it's one of my favorite cards.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

It actually will only see 512 and unfortunately UE4 games don’t support SLI, but I’ll test it regardless. Thanks!

[@jhonnyxyz]

The problem was first seen on 8800GTS 320MB cards. They ran out of vram until Nvidia updated the drivers.

[@devinport.]

Finally someone else agrees that Far cry 2 is one of the best in the series.

[@gvi341984]

Wish you put the specs in the description

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Of the cards or test system?

[@blackpete]

No oc testing? I think my 8800gt was overclockable ... Nice comarison, anyway. Thumbs up!

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Not for the old cards. I’m going to take a collection of all of the results and put them on one graph, so potentially 20+ cards. Won’t have room on the graphs for the OC results. I still plan on testing OC performance on newer cards though.

[@blackpete]

F2F Tech Nice. Waiting for it.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

It’s going to be an ongoing thing with this range of cards. At the end we’ll a lot of cards to test.

[@televisionandcheese]

8800 GT / GTS / GTX were just legendary. Even if the ATI at the time was a better value, we still went for nVidia. Maybe it was for the bald people feeling their heads on BFG cards haha

[@badass6300]

that's when ATi/AMD had the best market share... And AMD had better architecture. The hd3870 had 2.5x times smaller die size than the 8800gtx but only 1.3-1.4x times lower performance...

[@ravenwda007]

512mb used to be huge amount of graphics memory. Now we’re dealing with 8gb, 12gb,20gb

[@raresmacovei8382]

FEAR: soft shadows + FXAA/MLAA vs hard shadows + FSAA any day.

[@karolbanaszek5760]

You should do hd 4870x2 and 295 clash of titans

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Karol Banaszek on the look out for one. Maybe have one in the next couple of months.

[@karolbanaszek5760]

F2F Tech cheers I am loving ur content especially the 480 review

[@eastern_european1968]

0:48 can u tell me about that capacitor XD

[@Face2FaceHardware]

asqit Hey, I was looking for that 😂

[@antwanarmstrong5987]

Did that capacitor in the 3870 burn out the fan?

[@Face2FaceHardware]

You mean the HD 2900 XT?

[@antwanarmstrong5987]

yeah i meant the 2900 XT.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Yeah, it fell off another card. Haven’t figured out which one yet.

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

I had a Sapphire 3850 die on me near the end of it's warranty and Sapphire sent me a 4890 as a replacement, I always thought that was very cool. I never owned a 3870.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Barack Smith That’s one hell of a replacement 👍

[@HazewinDog]

I guess this explains why the HD 3870 I bought at the time was extremely disappointing

[@Baki-EGW]

Palit GeForce 8800GT Sonic was the best one.

[@stevin47]

ran tri-fire with 3870 was great back then/ next later was 5870 v.2 crossfire was really good / next was asus ares 5870x2 4 gb card dual 5870 gpu 1000 made but was not as good as hd5870 crossfire

[@jamezxh]

The 3870 was rubbish my mate had one and raved on about how good it was . That was until he saw my alpha dog 8800gt in action .

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Yeah the 8800 GT was/is the better card. Oddly enough, Crysis always ran smooth on my 3870 vs. my 9800 GTX back in the day. Performance wasn’t better, but frame latency was.

[@maybelive765]

Has anyone considered building a computer with similar specs to the Xbox 360? That could be fun...

[@MadJackChurchill1312]

Yeah it would!

[@alzarpomario889]

These old AMD GPU works better in linux than in windows nowadays. Official driver support didn't last for long and when HD4870 came older card just got dropped. Also HD3870 and HD2900 were both rops limited, poor design by AMD.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Agreed on the ROPs, through I haven’t played with them in Linux yet.

[@alzarpomario889]

F2F Tech the opensource drivers squeezed out a lot of power from VLIW . OpenGL performance are almost double than in windows and you can compare DX9 with windows by using wine-staging-nine that implements DX9 natively without translation layers. With an HD4870 linux gave me more FPS in fear, stalker, cs:go, dark messiah and oblivion. Also the opensource driver won't need external tools for performance monitoring.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Paolo Marzari very nice. Would be a cool comparison. Did you measure the difference between OSes?

[@alzarpomario889]

I did, I had some comparison hosted on imageshack but the stupid site locked everything asking for money to get my pictures back. If you wanna try yourself, just for fun, padoka-ppa is the driver repository for Ubuntu, mesa-git is the one for Arch linux.

[@courtepaille7286]

I have a 9800+ it's beter of the 8800?

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Yes.

[@henriquetasca7675]

9800 GTX+ = 8800 ULTRA

[@homelessEh]

still using a hd3870 512. Complete with uber pimp TermalTake Duo Orb cooler. at first it would only oc a few mhz before heating up beyond use with its jank single slot cooler.. Enter the duo orb and BAM! mem/core oc sliders to the max. "that catalyst will allow" and its been a gem ever since.. just never to be mated with a winblows 10 machine..... also with 666 transistors.. why was there not a Red Devil version.. or a Special Diablo themed card.. i mean .. seriously..

[@anybag7007]

Tells you that you do not need to buy a new gpu every year

[@EscapeVelo]

Im willing to bet the frame time stuttering is because of the GDDR4, which has worse latency than DDR3.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

That be an issue though. I believe it has to do with the fact the frame latency issues that Scott Wasson uncovered were never fixed for TeraScale cards in certain games and this is the by product of it.

[@EscapeVelo]

@@Face2FaceHardware I just picked up an HD 5870, sad!

[@dexthegamer3234]

HD 3000 series: "870 = mid range" HD 4000 and 5000 series: "psych! 870 is high end" HD 6000 and 7000 series: "nah fam. jk, 870 is mid range" costumers: *visibly confused*

[@jhonnyxyz]

The HD4870 was more budget orientated. The Highend GPU was the HD4870X2. The HD5870 was to good for the time. It killed the GTX2xx series and hold up well against the thermi(GTX4XX) cards.

[@pc-broke8348]

85th

[@Face2FaceHardware]

More like 3rd 😥

[@yosuhara]

Right now, when I'm watching this video, it has 666 likes! Coincidence? :D

[@schweepy_g]

AMD Box Wine

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Gus Cantu 😂

[@evilqtip7098]

I bought a 8800 GTX killer card and it ran like shit !! You know why!! My Power supple wasn't feeding it enough juice!!! I found out later...

[@keylock32]

What? 8800GT and HD 3870 are mid range? I don't think so.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Yup, I think so. How would you classify them?

[@keylock32]

Those were high end card, sure probably wasn't the highest High-end 8800 GS/GT/GTS High-end 3830, 3850, 3870 Mid-range 8600 Mid-range 3650 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_3000_Series en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_series

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Interesting, enthusiast for the high(er) end. Huh, I would consider them more mid-range cards, but yeah I see your point. Thanks for the info.

[@Face2FaceHardware]

I’ll change the title and thumbnail later. Thanks for the feedback 👍

[@ahmedlag4909]

No RGB, very manly gpu

[@frozenflame8319]

try using these drivers for the HD they were the last official drivers support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=legacy2&os=Windows%207%20-%2064 try using these drivers for the GT they were the last official drivers www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/112594/en-us then do the bechmarks :)

[@Face2FaceHardware]

These are the exact drivers I used?

[@mikespikeey4625]

my 3870 still works some thing u can`t say about the bump gate sorry gt8800 (g80) millions of them died,nvidia said nothing to with us and blamed every one but them self's,i still have my 8800 dead but looks nice on wall were its been for 10years right next to my 3870 working they say the greatest gtx8800 card ever hahahah most gpu die`s were faulty i remember, vista driver didn`t help

[@blackpete]

Tried a repaste? Mine was coocking after maybe 1,5 years. Shi**y stock thermalpaste...

[@Face2FaceHardware]

Well known issue. I have a couple dead ones, but a couple that work as well. All thanks to using solder without any lead.

[@alzarpomario889]

Buy an heatgun and do your job. Your 8800 is wayting to reborn.

[@blackpete]

Paolo Marzari Ha. Tried the oven method on my gtx460 back then.... Worked about 3 month, till it was replaced ;)

[@jamezxh]

Yeah good cards but rubbish reliability. Both my 8800gt die within 2 years .

[@patrikmiskovic791]

4850 was nvidia killer

[@Face2FaceHardware]

G92 Killer 😀

[@jhonnyxyz]

I bought mine a few day's after release. I payed 130€ for a really good card. It was right between the 9800GTX and the GTX260 with less sp's.

[@aldeen9190]

and they say amd cards run better than nvidi's when they are older

[@Tico2858]

Laki PC didn't listen to the end of the video aye

[@macdudeguy]

They usually do

[@Lady_Zenith]

They usually do when AMD is still on the same architecture and optimizing drivers for it. Once they move on they tend to drop support really fast. For example people that bought the last Terrascale HD6000 series right before AMD pulled GCN and then stopped focusing on Terrascale completely, ouch. Nvidia supports their cards much longer. Some of them tend to fall short in modern titles if their architecture was not future proof, like what happened with Kepler recently. But if you look one generation behind Fermi destroys its Terrascale competition nowadays, its hard to generalize here.