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ATI Radeon 3870 is NOW available...

G5isAlive said:
well, might not be OWC's fault.. they have to get it from AMD... I ordered directly from AMD...
Click to expand...

OWC has been quite good for me in terms of service, timely shipping, and so on, so I too would suggest giving them some benefit of the doubt.
 
ahhhhh i dont know if i should order this or not :( ive had the ati "order page" up all morning. i want the card because i feel this maybe one of my macs main problems ive had what seems to be a video card over heating issue for some time now. but i dont want to wait 8 years for it AHHHAHHH
 
Is the card quiet? I wonder if it's more quiet than the noisy ATI X1900 I'm using. It gets very loud when playing games like WoW.
 
It does have a fan...

wfehres said:
Is the card quiet? I wonder if it's more quiet than the noisy ATI X1900 I'm using. It gets very loud when playing games like WoW.
Click to expand...

I know a lot of people are gnashing teeth over delivery times... I started looking for a card months ago for my 2007 mac pro and decided to wait for the HD 3870 because I was not satisfied with the nvidia 8800GT's performance with core applications. It was a long wait. But I am glad I did. And I hope in the days to come when the supply channels get worked out we can all enjoy this card.

To answer the noise question. I had a X1900 and the damn thing burned out on me. And it was annoyingly loud.

Last night when I installed the HD 3870 I didn't notice any sound at all. But then I had the music cranked on WoW ...(still would have heard with the X1900). This morning, I had the volume down, and yes, I noticed it had a fan then. Almost all fans have some noise. It wasn't too annoying, but it was present. Mind you I swap cables a lot so the computer sits on my desk and is right next to my ear. I might change that.
 
Nice video Chaos and very informative. You can use your HD2600 as a 2nd card if you have more than 3 monitors! :) No DVI->HDMI adapter?

I don't think it's compatible with the G5's bec the card probably has EFI on it, not OpenFirmware...
 
I ordered my card on July 6th from the ATI Store. I didn't receive any tracking numbers, but it just arrived here today via standard shipping. =]
 
Nice video chaos, did you ever figure out why there is 3 power cables?

Also I couldn't help but notice the Star Wars poster in the backround I have the same one in my room! Ha!
 
The extra power cables are for PC's.

The one small black one is for the Mac Pro and is a real bitch to plug into the Logic Board unless you have tiny little midget hands.
 
That fan is a different configuration than other versions of this card I've seen online.

Is it pushing air through the heat sink (away from the DVI connectors, blowing towards the front of the Mac), or, is it sucking air in from the heat sink and blowing out the side of the card (up, when installed in a Mac) ?

I'm concerned that if it's pushing air towards the centre of the Mac, it is working against the designed flow from the Mac's fans. Perhaps it is running at such low speeds that it doesn't matter, but I'd like to keep the entire system cooling at greatest efficiency.


Also, I wonder if the fans on this 3870 are quieter than the post-firmware update 2600?
 
Since the UK stock is now to expected for another three weeks, can some of you loverly Americans please extract the BIOS like this guy says:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/514158/

I think I'd quite like to get a PC 3870 card and flash it for now and when the real Mac card comes, run them in Crossfire mode in Windows.

{begs}

Edit: I'll add that if you don't want to make it publicly available yourself, you can pm me and you can email it to me instead.
 
I'm on holiday in San Diego for the next few days before returning to rainy blighty, anyone know if I can pick up a retail card (or several) here before Saturday?
 
hey guys i just wanted to tell you that I ordered 2 3870's on friday and I got both of them 2day and installed them. There so quiet!!
 
Just got my Mac Pro today - extra RAM arrives soon and am sure will have lots of questions for tips/advice

But one in particular to this - it came with the 8800gts - I will be beginning to muck around with Poser and Espirit and Maya soon but will boot into Vista 64 at times purely for PC gaming -

Overall would you recommend two 3870's to use Crossfire when in Vista 64 over a single 8800gts - this is purely for gaming

And which would be better overall do you all think for Poser/Maya/Espirit while in OS X - the 8800 or the 3870 as I realize I wouldnt get Xfire in OS X

(running dual 24" monitors btw so any advice on overall setup would be appreciated in regards to card config on that front - )

Thanks
 
The Nvidia 8800GT Card is a little better at 3D stuff than the 3870.

But the Nvidia card totally sucks at Core Image ( the stock cheapo Ati 2600XT is faster)

The 3870 blows the 8800GT away when it comes to Core Image, and for 3D it is almost as good.

For gaming on Windows 2 Crossfired 3870's would be faster than 1 Nvidia 8800Gt.
 
I just received my PC 3870 card so am now just waiting for a BIOS dump. Can someone please extract your bios in Windows (Boot Camp) using the GPU-Z program and then send it to me. You can email it to atibios [AT] hellary [dot] co [dot] uk.

I'm not buying a PC version of the card to get money off, I still have my order down for the Mac version - its just been delayed here by three weeks.

Please! :)
 
I would do it if you can do the ROM dump in OS X.

But I don't have Windows on my Mac nor do I want it on it.
 
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