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Power Usage

To measure power usage, we used a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter. Note that the above numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we ran a demanding part of 3DMark06.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the graph above is that the pair of HD 3870 cards requires less power when idling than the EAH3850X2 or the VisionTek HD3870X2.

The VisionTek HD 3870 X2 OC requires a 550 W or greater power supply, with two 6 pin PCIE power connectors, to run safely.

The

In the end...

The VisionTek HD3870 X2 OC has a lot of things going for it. It has a nice cooler on it, the card is compact for a dual-GPU card,  and it has a healthy out-of-the-box overclock as well. VisionTek also offers a lifetime warranty for the card, and has a 1-800 tech-support line available should you run into any problems.

When it comes to performance,  overall the VisionTek HD3870X2 OC did well, but not amazing. This video card is selling for around $450 right now -- about $30 more than VisionTek's standard, reference design card. While this card will definitely keep your games all flying at a fast clip, this card does face some healthy competition. On one hand, for those looking for the ultimate in performance -- and don't care about the price -- the much more expensive 9800 GX2 delivers a unmatched performance. I suppose you could argue that you could pick up a HD3870X2 and add a third HD3870 card to the mix in your second PCIE slot, but I have found that third card does not offer huge performance gains, and it is not uncommon to run into driver issues with some games running in a CrossFireX setup.

Less expensive cards than the HD3870X2, such as the XFX 9800 GTX in this mix, or even the factory-overclocked Asus EN8800 GTS 512, often gave the HD3870X2 a run for the money. And it is true that the HD3870X2 OC often came ahead in these match ups, but the 9800 GTX cards are selling for about 2/3rds the price of this HD3870X2, so the value just isn't as good as could be hoped. Likewise, the recently reviewed EAH3850X2 also was selling closer to $300, making this VisionTek card look somewhat overpriced.

But the VisionTek HD3870X2 OC does have some real advantages over other video cards, and overall, is defintely a capable performer -- so in the end, while perhaps not a video card that can be recommended to everyone, it is still one that would look good in any motherboard out there.