HD3870X2 delayed, benchmarked
AMD HAS riled world+dog by back the date on the 3870X2 launch.
NDA’d for today, the twin engine graphics card was supposed to shock and awe consumers around the world as hardware sites were to publish their benchies on the beast.
Sources claim AMD delayed the release by a week so the 3870X2, 3650 and 3450 will all be launched together on the 28th in one big benchmarkfest.
The reason NDA'd reviewers and editors are miffed is that they received their samples last Friday, spent a weekend benchpressing the cards and now they have received a postponement call from DAAMIT explaining they are working on new drivers for the cards.
However, pouring salt into the wound, lawless bandits in far-off China (actually it's a post on PCOnline.com.cn) have also ruined the NDA party by breaking cover and ambushing a poor little 3870X2 with a bunch of benchmarks. You've got numbers galore there, and you can see the 3870X2 pulling ahead of an 8800Ultra, 14573 to 10676 in 3DMark06 – with the “old” drivers, we assume.
In other words, while the samples are fine, DAAMIT is likely to be fine-tuning the driver performance in order to avoid any glitches. We can only assume that the reviewers that signed the NDA are really just getting to be official spokessites for the final versions of the driver.
So sit tight - seven days until West catches up with East. µ
See Also
Radeon
HD 3870 X2 tips up in China
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I notice it doesn't win in Crysis against the Ultra, I wonder if the new driver will give it a boost? 

Still, hooray for a competitive ATI again, even if they have had to stick two chips on one board to do it. Hopefully Nvidia will respond with lower prices and faster cards...
Other sites have published benchmarks too
Just been looking at the graphs mentioned in the article, and if these figures are true and the drivers are still being optimised then....well WOW. This is Radeon back in at the top end with some serious kick-ass performance. The 8800 gets absolutely trashed in some results. I'm no fan boy of any colour and like most of you I want head to head competion to keeps things onwards and upwards. Well the greens better put down those coffee mugs and get back to work because the red boys are back in town and this time they're serious. 

Real interested to see how much power this things sucks in idle and under load. Also how much is this beastie going to be?
the 8800 series has only been out for what? two years?
id like to see the benches of two 8800 on a 65nm process, stapled together.
i like competition just as much as the next guy...but ati is really taking awhile.
@storm cloud

You have your wish in a few days. The Geforce 9800GX2, which is two 65nm 8800GTS on one PCB in SLI, is exactly what you want. I believe that while 1 HD3870 < 1 8800GTS, the fact that the clock speed of ATI's new part is 50MHz faster and that Crossfire has better scaling than SLI will mean ATI will come in very close.

Due to 55nm vs 65nm process nodes and the fact that HD3870X2 is more integrated on a PCB than 9800GX2, Nvidia's card will consume significantly more power.
And how many generations did we have to wait, before nVidia had something that could answer the 9700 Pro? Every company has its bad cycles.

Don't forget who made the original leafblower, foolz.
I love competition, and I hate fanyboyism, but I believe nvidia is coming out with a similar card, 9800 gx2 or something along those lines. It should beat this card by a little bit.
"DAAMIT is likely to be fine-tuning the driver performance in order to avoid any glitches."
HAha, yeah they will finetune it sure, and they will be almost done by the time the next generation card is in the shop.. maybe.
The 8800 series have only been out a bit under 1 year, the ultra was released in march 2007..the other 8800s december 2006.