5870 is here! Catalyst Control Center & oc'ing questions

GoldenTiger

GoldenTiger

Fully [H]
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Dec 2, 2004
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My XFX 5870 just arrived... popped it in and have a few questions:

1) How do I force Transparency Multisampling AA (TRAA) on the 5870 in the Catalyst Control Center? I only see options for Multisampling, Adaptive Multisampling, etc.

2) Is there anything out that can overclock it other than the Catalyst Control Center? My card hit 900mhz on the core easily and is running very cool @ 40% fan speed, I want to push it for more.
 
1.) Adaptive Mulstisampling is Transparency Multisampling on Alpha textures

2.) Nothing official, you *might* be able to do it with some hacks in RivaTuner, I personally have not tried it, also ASUS's Utility may allow higher OC'ing on their cards
 
Thanks Brent :)! I did come across an AMD GPU Clock Tool on Guru3d just now that seems to be clocking the 5870 properly, so I'm going to test if it actually is by benching some/playing through some Shift.
 
2k4.png


950 on the core will make it VPU recover every few minutes, seems like more voltage via a software tweak like was doable on the 4xxx series will unlock it further. I haven't pushed the RAM too hard yet but I read you start losing performance if you go too far due to the error correction, before crashing, so I'll be testing it later... 925 on the core is running rock solid alongside 1225 RAM. The card is running RIDICULOUSLY cool, spiking to around 72-74c after 15 minutes of gameplay when I checked under GPU-Z's log and maintaining that at the auto-adjusted 28% (quiet) fan speed at that time. As I said, with some voltage tweaking and a higher manually set speed (I can't use Overdrive at the same time as this AMD GPU Clock Tool unfortunately), these cards should fly.

Anyway... couple of quick game impressions! I'm running 2560x1600 in the sig rig for reference:

1) Under Need For Speed Shift, I raced around 20 laps on the same track at these overclocked speeds (verified they were working by GPU-Z). On my GTX 280, I could only run 2x AA with the 16x AF, and multisampling transparency. I would get dips to 22-25fps at times but average around 30. With my 5870, I am averaging around 45 with jumps to 50 at times, and minimums around 32-35. Not so great, right... keep reading... this is with 8x AA instead of 2x :eek:. The performance gain is amazing, and the minimum dips during bumps with other cars when the shader effect happens are way less. With my GTX 280 on 8x AA I got 7-10fps steadily ;).

2) Aion (MMORPG) I ran a loop around a remote town with few other players running through, as I did with my 280 before I shipped it off after selling it (on purpose so I'd have a comparison) on average the framerate seems to be ~40% higher (I'm seeing mostly 70-75fps versus 45-50 in the same area). This one's far from scientific, but it's no doubt improved a good chunk.

Overall I'm impressed more than I thought I'd be: it brought NFS Shift from uncomfortably playable with 2x AA, to comfortably playable @ 8x AA, and the extra power in Aion should help a lot during PVP fights later on (I haven't visited the main city yet since popping the 5870 in, but I'll report back on framerate changes there) with lots of players on-screen.
 
and the NFS Performance is supposedly slow according to AMD, should improve even more with patch/drivers....
 
I haven't been able to test mine much. I can tell you 900 on the core = 8294 GPU using the extreme preset in Vantage.

I'll be testing AoC DX10 tonight.
 
Yeah, current release drivers haven't been the most exciting yet!
I usually don't install the CCC, but the new interface is so much more... clean the the older design.
 
Sounds cool Backlash can you jump in the water in common district and do the diving for tea barrels thing see how well that is handled especially diving and coming up for air sometimes was choppy for me on gtx260.
 
You can try OC by editing the CC profile.xml directly. Open up the file and scroll down to the clock section, it's pretty easy to figure out what values are what. After you edit it save and click "restart CCC runtime" under your start menu CCC folder. This should bypass the restriction the CCC interface have on OC.
 
You make me jealous man :) Cannot wait to order mine in 2 weeks.

building a new I7 920 system first. I do not want to be CPU bottlenecked.

/wave P2 940
 
you got a phenom 2 940 and you think you will be bottlenecked by cpu, it is just a myth man unless you are playing at lower resolution you i7 won't really give any better better frames, may be one or two, I would just overclock the phenom 2 and enjoy.
 
NKD said:
you got a phenom 2 940 and you think you will be bottlenecked by cpu, it is just a myth man unless you are playing at lower resolution you i7 won't really give any better better frames, may be one or two, I would just overclock the phenom 2 and enjoy.
Click to expand...

Uh sorry man I love my p2 940, but it wont be able to push everything I need with 2x5870.

From the benchmarks here http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5870-crossfirex-test-review/
A I7 at 3.75ghz is CPU bottnecking the system...and you think the p2 940 wont?

Besides come Intels new 6core procs, and seeing 4.6ghz screenies. AMD has to catch up in the CPU department
 
Is 1225 the highest that you can push the memory and remains stable? If you go 1250 then you'd have 5 Ghz/s effective.
 
vjcsmoke said:
Is 1225 the highest that you can push the memory and remains stable? If you go 1250 then you'd have 5 Ghz/s effective.
Click to expand...

I tried 1300 and it locks quickly on the desktop, 1225 is solid. I haven't tried higher such as 1250 more than a minute or two but it looks like it will work at that...
 
DASHlT said:
Uh sorry man I love my p2 940, but it wont be able to push everything I need with 2x5870.

From the benchmarks here http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5870-crossfirex-test-review/
A I7 at 3.75ghz is CPU bottnecking the system...and you think the p2 940 wont?

Besides come Intels new 6core procs, and seeing 4.6ghz screenies. AMD has to catch up in the CPU department
Click to expand...

well I dont know how you can tell by that review that i7 is bottelnecking those two cards, I highly doubt that, it is true that the games aren't strong enough to push the card to limits other than crysis.

I really don't believe that 3.75ghz i7 is bottlenecking hd 5870 crossfire, when dx11 games come out you will see that it probably does better than gtx 285 sli because it can probably handle more stress under stressful conditions,

I don't believe that i7 is bottelnecking the system at all, if it was than why would u upgrade now why not just wait for westmere 32nm
 
DASHlT said:
Uh sorry man I love my p2 940, but it wont be able to push everything I need with 2x5870.

From the benchmarks here http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5870-crossfirex-test-review/
A I7 at 3.75ghz is CPU bottnecking the system...and you think the p2 940 wont?

Besides come Intels new 6core procs, and seeing 4.6ghz screenies. AMD has to catch up in the CPU department
Click to expand...

Nowhere does Guru3D show the I7 bottlenecking these cards. If you look at the graphs that show performance over different resolutions, you clearly see a downward trend. That means the CPU is not the limiting factor, but the GPUs are. This bottleneck talk has really gotten out of hand.

Edit- Only Fallout 3 showed any signs of bottlenecking, but it's using an older engine. Add a HD texture pack, and the GPU will be the weak-link.
 
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