Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

My bad, I assumed you had been reading my other thread. I got conned again today, another return that the shop won't accept.

 

Oh that sucks! But I buy from newegg, and they are pretty trustworthy.

A link to your thread?

 

I forget. I don't mean to be rude here, but do you mind looking around for it yourself? I'm not really in a forum exploring mood right now, my grandad passed away today.

 

im so sorry sam, RIP grandad

 

It's ok, I'd rather this thread not be filled with my condolences, if you want to private message me about it, feel free to do so.

 

Well, crossfire setup's up and running, and after some tweaking and quite a bit of luck, this is the absolute highest score I can manage:



CPU clock at 3150mhz, GPU clocks at 777/1125, 777/1125.
Did quite well on this run, no long pauses and no crashes.
If anybody knows how to stop random rame rate drops (I'm thinking Waymon right now) or how to enable overclocking with crossfire, that'd be much appreciated.

 

Sam, that score is a bit low (3870s). The framerate drop has been known for a while - first thing I can say is make sure your are not on Catalyst 8.3s for windows, they take about 1-2k off of your score when running XP, Vista users are fine. Secondly, this could be the powerplay bug (the GPU clocks throttle down to 2d while in the middle of a game or whatever) and you can fix this with a BIOS flash, or a hotfix. (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=33033) -I think that's it.

Anyways, try those...

For the overclocking, I use the standard CCC and currently have mine at 850 core and 1251 memory - stable. You have to select 1 card, change the clocks, then select the other from the drop down menu and do the same.

My results with the core at 860 and mem at 1331 was
SM2 8291
SM3 9352

Tell me how you make out...

Oh and by the way, I have those pics of Crysis saved on my main pc, but wont be able to get to them until this weekend... Sorry!

 

I fixed my intermittent lag in 3dmark by changing to 8.2, but the score was relatively unaffected. Fully overclocking my cards to their limit (840/1251, 845/1211) I got 13810. That's as high as I can go without artifacts, significantly lower than I got with my single card, but I got an extra 2300 points out of it. Judging the fact that the frame rate only thirded when I ran a test at 2560x1600 4xAA 16xAF I think I'm CPU limited beyond this point.

 

Ok, well that seems a bit better. When I run 3dmark I say screw the artifacts, sure I get them at 860 but I complete the run - which is what I care about.

What do you get with 1 card?

 

11492.

 

Ok, so now I know CF is working. Is that the highest clocks you can get on the CPU? I bet you could break 14k if you oce it a bit higher.

 

That's as high as it will go without a major Vcore increase, which I'm not willing to do. Any idea why crossfire won't work in Supreme commander? Works fine in COD4, Crysis and HL2:Ep2, but SupCom where I was expecting big gains according to reviews, runs at half the speed it does with a single card.

 

Got the latest patch? I believe it is 3254.

 

Yup, and the same is true of the expansion Forged Alliance, which is patched to 3598.

I've certained that my 3dmark is being held back by my overclock:
1280x1024 0x0 vs 2560x1600 4x16:

Return to Proxycon: 48.5(OC GPUs) vs 26.0(Stock GPUs)
Firefly Forest: 51.3 (OC GPUs) vs 28.8 (Stock GPUs)
Canyon Flight: 89.0 (OC GPUs) vs 31.8 (OC GPUs)
As you see, the SM3.0 test is a more accurate test of the GPU, the SM2.0 is heavily CPU reliant, but even in the SM3.0 test, the default frame rate is less than 3x that of the score at insane graphics settings. That's not just three times as many pixels, but filtering that should be halving the frame rate. My 'theoretical' frame rate for those tests if CPU wasn't a limiting factor I'm thinking to be about 100-120.



Also, just ran the Crysis benchmark tool, 1280x1024 All high, 4x AA enabled, and bagged 26.26fps. Result!

 

Nice results on Crysis Sam! Especially with 4x AA!

I have a old piece of paper somewhere around here with some Crysis results written down, will post it once I find it.

BTW, are you using 1 CF connector or both?

 

One, that seemed to be logical to me, and was what I was told to use by AMD tech support, not that they are much to go by...
I'm warming to crossfire now I've found out it's definitely my CPU limiting my scores. I upped Crysis to 2560x1600 0xAA All high, shadowes and shaders low like I used to. I got between 40 and 90fps. That's stunning as far as I'm concerned, I may have to up one of them to medium!

COD4 is an absolute dream to play now it runs silk absolute max, I just wish I could get SupCom (or more importantly forged alliance since thats the one I have performance trouble with) to work with crossfire, and then I wouldn't even really care about my low 3dmark.

 

Well shaders are what gives Crysis its beauty, and is the main performance killer IMO.

What frames are you getting in SupCom?

 

Supcom: about 25 without crossfire, about 15 with.

On the plus side:
Crysis Benchmarking tool
2560x1600 no AA
All details high, Shadows and Shaders medium.
Average frame rate: 32.92.
The game still looks stunning at that resolution...
It's time for me to start playing some Crysis methinks!

 

Sam, you play it at 2560x1600? I play at 1920x1200 and get about 25+ with CF... But the resolution may help a bit.

Have you tried any of the hotfixes?

Also regarding Crysis, what's your average @ 1280x1024 High settings (no AA)? No overclock either, I get exactly 40 (thats the only one I can remember).

 

I'll test that now, last one before I go to bed!

Okay, 41.56fps. Seems high for my setup, perhaps the custom tweak I installed and thought I'd removed hasn't gone away. Even if it hasn't though, the graphical detail of the game is superb.