Project: The System

[The boy 4rm oz]

Nice new tech mate. Good to see this mod moving again.

[Tavarin]

Holy Nerdgasm Batman!!!

So I took a stroll on down to my favourite computer store, and gave up my entire last paycheck to get some very hot new hardware. What hardware you ask.

The Radeon HD 4870 X2!!!

So here it is in it's brand new box:

Very Hot.

And opened:

Nerdgasm! This was about the point that I almost had a heart attack in excitement.

So I opened up my system:

The HD 2900 XT resides there. A very good card by the way.

And here the two cards are, side by side:

Similar size, the 4870 is slightly longer.

And into the computer the new card goes:

It fit, hooray.

So this wasn't really an update, just more of a show-case of my new bragging rights. I have yet to take this card for a spin, but it will be getting some Crysis tests tonight.

And if anyone is interested in the HD 2900 XT then let me know, it is for sale now at best offer.

Cheers

[The boy 4rm oz]

Nice new card mate, it truly is a monster. I thought my 8800GTX was big at 28cm but that looks even bigger.

[DonT-FeaR]

wow thats huge

[Tavarin]

So I had some interesting results with Crysis. It started out at a playable frame rate with all setting on maximum. But as soon as I dropped some settings back to high the framerate dropped, and even if I put the settings to what they originally were the framerate never recovered. Very strange, there must be a bottle neck.

So I ran 3DMark Vantage to see if I could get some answers. Here's the results:

Well as you can see the GPU score is quite good, no problems there. And beside it is the bottle neck. My CPU. Although this was a suspicion I had, I never thought that it would be such a bottle neck.

Can anyone give me any insight? I'm running the fastest AMD dual core processor with stock speeds (3.2 Ghz). Shouldn't this processor be faster?

Any insight would be well appreciated.

Cheers

[The boy 4rm oz]

I think that's the best you are going to do with a AMD.

[Tavarin]

Do you know what it is about AMD that causes these results. All the numbers for the processor (clock speed, cache, frequency) are the best you can get. Is it the drivers they make, or the architechture? This processor works amazingly with everything else, multi-tasking, animation, media. What causes some games to be crippled by them? Keep in mind that Crysis is the only game I've had trouble with. CoD 4, Mark of Chaos, Supreme Commander, and all the other games I play all run great on my computer.

[The boy 4rm oz]

You are probably only getting the lower score in Vantage because you are using a Duel Core. What's the score like on 3DMark06?

[Tavarin]

Haven't run it yet, I don't have a license for it.
I'm still just trying to figure out what is going on with Crysis, since on this computer with a 2900 XT it ran fine.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Use the free version of 3DMark06. The drop in score is probably driver related. Being a new card the drivers are still lacking on the performance side of things. AMD are probably got the card out as fast as they could and only gave minimal amounts of attention to the drivers. A new Catalyst driver was released yesterday, this may help you with your problem. I had the same sort of problem with my 8800GTX when it was first released. I had to wait for the drivers to mature a bit before I go maximum performance from the card.