My 4870 has arrived: Picture, overclocking/benching soon!

Alright, so what is the deal with Furmark? It pretty much crashes me everytime. The load temp with the duo orb is only hitting low 70s, then it will reboot or just lose video signal. I've got a water block on the way- my OC'd GTX never broke 41 water cooled in furmark - has anyone else had issues running furmark with a 4870??
 
Not trying to steal your thunder Goldentiger and glad you're getting a workable card.

I received my HIS HD 4870 on the 26th as well since I had it overnighted from NewEgg and Wow! :eek: pretty much sums up what I think of the card.

Initially I had a problem loading the 8.6 Hotfix drivers. l did a custom install of the Hotfix Cat 8.6 drivers and the installation failed. Re-installed from the Bin folder directly and then the screen blacked out on me and didn't come back. Let it sit until the hard driver stopped churning. Re-booted and everything was fine. Drivers were installed, Cat Control Center was functional. Perhaps I should have installed the HIS CD Drivers first before the Hotfix I don't know. Everything was working fine after that though.

Anyway, first thing I did was check my temps and they were at 80c. Ouch. Started sweating a bit. But then I ran a 3D Stress test and the temps soared to only 84c .:) So I didn't feel so bad after that. Also the ambient temperature in the room where my setup is runs 75F-77F. and is the warmest room in the house. Temp later dropped to 78C at idle after sun went down. My case airflow is fine by the way as my GTS 512MB idled at 42C and 62c underload. There is also another thread here I posted a workaround for the idle temp thing on these cards.


Anyway, played a quick round of Prey, and I'll I can say is incredible IQ. Thought my previous GTS 512MB looked great. This card looks phenominal. I was playing at 1680x1050 using 8X AA / 8X AF with V-Sync Always On. Later bumped up to 16X AF My Framerates NEVER dipped below 60 FPS. IQ off the hook.


Gave Turok a play which is a little more demanding than Prey. :) Also bumped up my settings to 8X AA / 16X AF all in game settings maxxed. FPS = 57-60 / V-Sync enabled. Smooth as butter. Never skipped a beat.


Played Call of Juarez with the same AA/AF settings as Turok. All in game settings maxxed except for the Shadow Map Size which I left at 1024 as 2048 caused a major drop in framerates.


Also tried "Land of the Dead" for kicks. Even this old game looks so much better using this card. Also happened to find out using Fraps that V-Sync doesn't work with this game as I was getting 215-310 FPS.


Also interesting note on the HIS. I read before buying it that it came with a screwdriver. At the time I thought it was pretty silly, but it's actually pretty cool extra as it's also a flashlight and level.


I'll leave the real benchmarking for Goldentiger to do, as I'm having to much fun using the card. :p:D:p


No comments on my wiring job by the way. :p My main goal was to keep the wiring away from the motherboard. No case window anyway. :)


card2xj0.jpg


case2cf9.jpg
 
honestjohn said:
Not trying to steal your thunder Goldentiger and glad you're getting a workable card.

I received my HIS HD 4870 on the 26th as well since I had it overnighted from NewEgg and Wow! :eek: pretty much sums up what I think of the card.

Initially I had a problem loading the 8.6 Hotfix drivers. l did a custom install of the Hotfix Cat 8.6 drivers and the installation failed. Re-installed from the Bin folder directly and then the screen blacked out on me and didn't come back. Let it sit until the hard driver stopped churning. Re-booted and everything was fine. Drivers were installed, Cat Control Center was functional. Perhaps I should have installed the HIS CD Drivers first before the Hotfix I don't know. Everything was working fine after that though.

Anyway, first thing I did was check my temps and they were at 80c. Ouch. Started sweating a bit. But then I ran a 3D Stress test and the temps soared to only 84c .:) So I didn't feel so bad after that. Also the ambient temperature in the room where my setup is runs 75C-77C. and is the warmest room in the house. Temp later dropped to 78C at idle after sun went down. My case airflow is fine by the way as my GTS 512MB idled at 42C and 62c underload. There is also another thread here I posted a workaround for the idle temp thing on these cards.


Anyway, played a quick round of Prey, and I'll I can say is incredible IQ. Thought my previous GTS 512MB looked great. This card looks phenominal. I was playing at 1680x1050 using 8X AA / 8X AF with V-Sync Always On. Later bumped up to 16X AF My Framerates NEVER dipped below 60 FPS. IQ off the hook.


Gave Turok a play which is a little more demanding than Prey. :) Also bumped up my settings to 8X AA / 16X AF all in game settings maxxed. FPS = 57-60 / V-Sync enabled. Smooth as butter. Never skipped a beat.


Played Call of Juarez with the same AA/AF settings as Turok. All in game settings maxxed except for the Shadow Map Size which I left at 1024 as 2048 caused a major drop in framerates.


Also tried "Land of the Dead" for kicks. Even this old game looks so much better using this card. Also happened to find out using Fraps that V-Sync doesn't work with this game as I was getting 215-310 FPS.


Also interesting note on the HIS. I read before buying it that it came with a screwdriver. At the time I thought it was pretty silly, but it's actually pretty cool extra as it's also a flashlight and level.


I'll leave the real benchmarking for Goldentiger to do, as I'm having to much fun using the card. :p:D:p


No comments on my wiring job by the way. :p My main goal was to keep the wiring away from the motherboard. No case window anyway. :)
Click to expand...


Welcome to the club! :)
 
Just got my HIS 4870. That little screwdriver/LED/leveler tool rocks. Worth getting the HIS model just for that. :D
 
honestjohn said:
Anyway, first thing I did was check my temps and they were at 80c. Ouch. Started sweating a bit. But then I ran a 3D Stress test and the temps soared to only 84c .:) So I didn't feel so bad after that. Also the ambient temperature in the room where my setup is runs 75C-77C. and is the warmest room in the house. Temp later dropped to 78C at idle after sun went down. My case airflow is fine by the way as my GTS 512MB idled at 42C and 62c underload. There is also another thread here I posted a workaround for the idle temp thing on these cards.
Click to expand...

Why are you running your system in a room that is 171 degrees farenheight and then complaining that it's hot?
 
JCDenton said:
Why are you running your system in a room that is 171 degrees farenheight and then complaining that it's hot?
Click to expand...

I think he got confused and used celsius instead of Fahrenheit for room temperature. Unless he was in the middle east or sahara there is no way he could get one of his rooms to get that hot unintentionally. Last summer when I was in UAE for internship I sometimes worked outside during day time and temps would climb to 140 F or higher. You think thats bad factor in average 50-60% humidity and you feel like you're swimming in an ocean of heat (and sweat).
 
Damn how are people getting 48 C idle? I get 60 C idle at 35% fan speed. I thought maybe the thermal paste was a hack job and reapplied some myself. Same result.
 
gs29 said:
Damn how are people getting 48 C idle? I get 60 C idle at 35% fan speed. I thought maybe the thermal paste was a hack job and reapplied some myself. Same result.
Click to expand...

I'm now at 37% fan speed on my 4870 in an AC'd room (68-70F I'd estimate ambient), it's running at 45-48c idle and 65-67c load at 790core/1100(4400)ram. I do have a case with a side panel fan that blows onto the 4870 as well (CoolerMaster 690, got it for $50 awhile back and love it!), so maybe that has something to do with it or the airflow in your case.

So tempted to flash up the clocks, but I don't want to tempt fate :p ... come on RivaTuner/whatnot!!! :D
 
and then a red led turn on at the back of the card... had to replace the original heatsink.
Run furnark for 2 hours with no problem and load temp @ 89

Weird because the GPU temp was only 55-59 at load with Accelero,something else on the card must overheat.
 
Mine's on stock cooling, and I'm seeing low temps. Furmark I've heard posted around is very unstable on cards, so I'm not even thinking of running it *shrug*. :)
 
Yes, this is stable/artifact free, with ~50% fan speed (I figured out using the lookup table rather than the default profiling system in the BIOS got the fan to work properly when flashing higher clocks):

gt4870oc2rb4.gif


Going for more... I've gotten it to run 3D at 870/4500 but heat is a huge concern, it pumps out too much at 45% fan, I may experiment with higher but the noise is high at 60+ (though stable).
 
What kind of framerate increases are you seeing with that OC? Is 790 core a BIOS limitation or just a limitation of Overdrive?
 
Ogilvy said:
What kind of framerate increases are you seeing with that OC? Is 790 core a BIOS limitation or just a limitation of Overdrive?
Click to expand...

It's a limitation of Overdrive only. I haven't done much benching at this speed yet, just was stability testing while keeping a sharp eye for artifacts/etc. I will do some benching at these speeds vs. stock soon, though, just for grins.
 
Just like I experienced with 870 core when I ran it, I'm seeing a large jump in maximum FPS and a small average one, yet little minimum gain...


World In Conflict DX10 *MAXIMUM* settings for everything, plus 16x AF and 4x AA *with* transparency AA (8x in control panel, 4x set ingame like below), third run out of four tested (840core/4400ram):

4870testt2tma6.jpg



For reference, here's my results earlier in the thread...
------------
World In Conflict DX10 *MAXIMUM* settings for everything, plus 16x AF and 4x AA *with* transparency AA, average of several runs:

Resolution: 1680*1050
Detail Level: Very High
Average fps: 29
Min fps: 17
Max fps: 45

System specs:
Q6600 @ 3.15ghz
4GB RAM @ 5-5-5 1T
eVGA 680i motherboard (NF68-A1)
HIS Radeon 4870 512MB GDDR5 @ 790core/4200ram
 
48708404400ramcrysishigtf2.jpg


Earlier in the thread at 790/4000, I got 20.2 FPS in the same test. This is at 840/4400.

Below is 790/4000:

48707904000ramcrysishighq6.jpg
 
nice results thx for sharing would be better if there wasn't limitation for oc
 
Played a bunch of Call of Duty 4 online, the average and max. FPS are far higher in the same given areas of a map it seems. I haven't FRAPS'd but I have had the FPS counter from FRAPS running full-time and been keeping a sharp eye on it. I haven't seen it dip below 65-70 except for smoke grenades which tank it to 50ish, generally it's running 80-90 FPS during heavy action even outdoors.

I'll bench with FRAPS on the same maps with the two speeds soon probably, but there's a HUGE performance increase that doesn't correlate exactly to the clock speed increases just like with Crysis (25% for 10% on the memory and 6.3% on the core... odd but it is repeatable for me. I noticed the same phenomenon at 870mhz where the performance skyrocketed over this clock even, non-linearly. I don't know what the cause of it is, but this is quite interesting... like a bottleneck is being lifted somewhere.
 
eric66 said:
nice results thx for sharing would be better if there wasn't limitation for oc
Click to expand...

With the BIOS flashing I'm doing now with proper tools, there's no limit except for no POST which would require doing a blind flash :D . 840/4400 current stable overclock with low temps and 47-52% variable van speed.
 
COD4 on the Creek map, 4x AA, 16x AF, MSAA Transparency AA, 1680x1050 max ingame settings, set to 125 maximum FPS in console:

Code: 
Frames  Time(ms) Min     Max    Avg.
12933	120000	 54	128	107.775
12020	120000	 64	128	100.167
10635	120000	 64	126	88.625

I made sure to get a smoke grenade in the mix each time I died, that's what hurt the minimums so much... except for smokes I never see it go below 75ish when I'm watching the FRAPS display. I tried forcing 8x AA in the control panel (CCC) but it isn't taking, only if I set it to application-controlled and allow COD4 to use its in-game max of 4x does it work, same with AF. Not sure why, anyone have a solution? I'd like to try it with a higher level of AA for comparison purposes.

Radeon 4870 set to 840core/4400ram.
 
Just add my experience here since it's not worthy of a new thread. my 2 Sapphire 4870's arrived today, added them to my rig I've just finished building a few days ago, a Q9450 @ 3.6ghz, thats with 4Gb of ram in 1:1 with the FSB which is running at 450Mhz, so 1800mhz effective.

Got my new Velociraptor in today and a new build of Vista x64 to go along with it.

The only thing I benchmarked before I took out my old 8800GTX was CSS built in test, I was getting 84fps average with my 8800gtx, thats 3 runs rounded to nearst fps and then averaged (mean).

Plonk in the new pair of 4870's and that shoots up to 278fps average, and a realise that fpsmax setting is limiting that, so i set that to something like 1000fps and the average leaps to 340fps!!

So from 84 avg to 340 avg in CSS canned benchmark, impressive in my eyes.

Thats all in 2560x1600, 8xMSAA and 16xAF with reflections set at "reflect all"

I tried a bit of CoD4 online in a 24 player server, had that maxed at 2560x1600, 4xAA set in the menu, ranging from approx 80fps average ourdoors and in heavy firefights roughly 250-300fps average when indoors

Tried the first part of Crysis, 1920x1200 all very high with no AA, about 25-40fps average throughout the cutscens and the first beach area, thats with 1.2 patch and no mods (apparantly mods supposedly make the game look better and run better also so I'll try that tomorrow)

Set fanspeeds using the fix suggested on the forum, to 40% for both cards and they're bareable noise wise, and lowered idle temps from 80 to 50 for the top card and 40 for the bottom one which isnt blocked as much.

No overclocking yet but Im very happy with these cards, no microstuttering obvious in CoD4 or CS but with such high frame rates that seems obvious. The low frame rate of crysis displayed a bit of discrenable microstutter intermittently.

I'll be dropping the hideous motion blur to a more appropriate "medium" or "low" and that should kick the fps up enough to make it playable, although most people seem to have expectations of 30fps in this game i feel 45ish would be better, and even thats low compared to my normal expectaion of about 50-60.

As far as Im concerned thats 1920x1200 all "very high" gaming for the average joe in Crysis, and Crysis looks impressive at this res with all settings very high, the 40fps inside the plane cutscene at the start shows immense detail on their suits which previously looked low res and jaggy. I know from benchmarks that the cards dont scale well in crysis, nothing like the source engine based games or games like CoD 4 where scaling is almost 100% so there maybe room for a decent improvement in Crysis still, and there is always overclocking as well so if that kind of frame rate isn't enough for you between graphical mods and overclocking you should get the 1920x1200 all "very high" gaming experience.

I will report back tomorrow with further testing once I get TF2 back downloaded and installed and AoC updated, that should all happen nicely over night.

Oh its Vista x64, SP1, with the default drivers on the CD which i've check as v8.6
 
did you figure out why there is a 5fps boost in crysis when you get to 840core? does it happen in other games too?
 
No, I have no idea still why it does that... it does do it in other games to boot across the board (a far larger increase than it should be). I was hoping someone might know... :). In COD4 for example smoke nades took me to 45FPS if I stood near one and looked at it, now the minimum with them is around 60... and that's just between 790/4400 and 840/4400, a 6.3% clock difference making over a 25% speed increase just doesn't make sense.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I noticed the same phenomenon at 870mhz where the performance skyrocketed over this clock even, non-linearly. I don't know what the cause of it is, but this is quite interesting... like a bottleneck is being lifted somewhere.
Click to expand...

Maybe shaders clocks are tied to core clocks?? Maybe the shader speed is the bottleneck?? Just kinda tossing up ideas....
 
GlacierFreeze said:
Maybe shaders clocks are tied to core clocks?? Maybe the shader speed is the bottleneck?? Just kinda tossing up ideas....
Click to expand...

Interesting... I'd forgotten but I did read somewhere (I think) that these cards had a seperate (hidden) shader clock that ran a little faster than the core... perhaps it is hitting a threshold where it makes a large jump, like what can happen with the nVidia cards going in steps at times. Good thought, it is certainly possible...
 
GoldenTiger said:
Interesting... I'd forgotten but I did read somewhere (I think) that these cards had a seperate (hidden) shader clock that ran a little faster than the core... perhaps it is hitting a threshold where it makes a large jump, like what can happen with the nVidia cards going in steps at times. Good thought, it is certainly possible...
Click to expand...

Yeah I remember reading, a while back, that the shader clocks on the 4800 were supposed to be able to be changed but apparently not. Maybe they have to be at a set ratio compared to the core clocks or else it might not work correctly. Maybe that's why we can't change them.

If the shader clocks are a set ratio, say (gpu) 1:1.1 (shader) for example, then that could explain the larger jumps in performance when you get the core clock to a certain speed, because the shader clocks are being increased by even more.

Just another wild guess....
 
Hey GT, did you notice any really tangible difference between 790 and 840? From stock 750, I would imagine a 90mhz OC might prove to be useful, but I don't want to screw around with my BIOS if I can avoid doing so :)

Anyone interested in my impressions, mini review and Oblivion benches?
 
Arcygenical said:
Hey GT, did you notice any really tangible difference between 790 and 840? From stock 750, I would imagine a 90mhz OC might prove to be useful, but I don't want to screw around with my BIOS if I can avoid doing so :)

Anyone interested in my impressions, mini review and Oblivion benches?
Click to expand...

Read the last page as far as differences between 790/4400 and 840/4400... there's a HUGE one, much more than you'd think by the 6.3% clock increase. It's translating into 20-30% extra performance depending on the game :eek: .

I'd love to hear 'em! :)
 
GoldenTiger said:
Read the last page as far as differences between 790/4400 and 840/4400... there's a HUGE one, much more than you'd think by the 6.3% clock increase. It's translating into 20-30% extra performance depending on the game :eek: .

I'd love to hear 'em! :)
Click to expand...

Ok, well, that settles it... I'll definitely flash it tomorrow.

I'll also post my thing tomorrow afternoon or late evening, depending on my 16 hour work shift :(
 
Since it seems like this is becoming the De Facto post pics of your 4870 thread :)

DSC_0219.jpg


DSC_0227.jpg


DSC_0228.jpg

Got a little wire management to do.
 
This is strange. You are reporting a huge performance boost with minimal OC, and a guy in an other thread reports that fps lowers when he overclocks his CPU. I wonder what is going on. Perhaps there is a lot of hidden potential in this card.
 
Well I decided to give the o/c a shot, When i first got this thing at 750/900 i was idling at 80C and full load 87C, decided to push the fan up to 40% and maxed the o/c to 790/1100 now I idle at 60C and full load at 69C, I have to admit impressive results I can't wait for the aftermarket coolers to show up along with a new version of rivatuner because this thing has some serious room to overclock massively.
 
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