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my HD5970 experience
ok...... so here's my HD 5970 experience. :)
upon receiving the card i was as happy as a pig in poop, packaging was great, card was sealed..(for some reason they love to pull these cards out of the boxes at the warehouses..??)
its an absolute MONSTER, i knew it was big but it makes my GTX260 look like an add in PCI card..lol, the card itself weighs nearly 2 kilos... its a thing of beauty though ppl
so i clean my rig of Nvidia traces & power down, remove the 260 clear a space for the 5970, reposition the needed wires & boot up....... no picture..??, rig posts but no signal.
so i begin reseating the massive thing, 3 times i moved it & switched cables, on the 4th time (not sure why) it powered up..
so.... i load into ''safe mode'' (note at this point the rig did not recognize the card, all it listed was ''standard VGA adapter'' i know there's no drivers but a GPU will be recognized upon first boot & will await driver), so i run ''driver sweeper'' again to be sure & attempt to load up the BETA driver i had got off the net a few days before the card arrived,
fire up the launcher..... ''there are no supported devices''
ok so its fair to assume by this point im cursing ATI, tried it a few more times ...same deal, so i decide to try the drivers that came with the card,
fire up the disc.....''there are no supported devices''
right now ive lost the plot... i tried everything i could think of inside ''safe mode'' but no joy.... so i thought another reseat was my only option (i knew the reason the driver wouldn't install was b/c the rig had not generically detected the card).... so i power down, but i hit restart rather than shutdown....
so instead of shutting it off manually i let it run through to windows to see what would occur.
upon loading windows the OS recognized the card & finally i was up & running (without reseating again), so the driver completes & i reboot......
firstly i had fan control straight out of the box so there was no need for a flash....:)
when i get back to windows im met with heavy artifacting over the 2nd monitor, at first i thought it was a faulty core as the system would also lock randomly & force a reboot, but the more time i played around with it the more i realized the H/W was fine.... gaming performance was EXCELLENT!! & i had no artifacting while the card was loaded out..
after spending a few days scouring the net it turns out these ''glitches'' were a common issue with the 5 series cards.
dual monitors & CFX were a known problem nearly ALL 5 series users were experiencing, the 2D clock settings on these cards are 157/300 (as apposed to 850/1200 & 735/1010), these setting are too low on dual monitor setups & it causes instant corruption while idle... (later found out from sapphire that it needs to be 400mhz min for dual screens)
so after days of crashes, lockups & general glitches the 9.12 cat driver was released.....this has solved the 2D issues & boosted performance GREATLY!!, but..... ive lost the use of CCC, so i cant load my color settings.... typical
now then..... performance.
i can now confirm that there is a HUGE bottleneck with this card on a PCIE 1.1 slot (i kinda knew there would be), it hasn't been an issue with previous cards but the 5970 completely saturates this connection, & then some.
its not a power issue, even though my connections only deliver a rated 300w (1x 75w PCIE)(1x 150w 8pin)(1x 75w 6pin), the card will draw ALL extra power required through the plugs, its a bandwidth issue..... not only does a GEN 2 PCIE slot deliver 150w it also doubles data bandwidth from 250mbps per lane to 500mbps per lane, so im being choked quite badly..
im planning ''i9'' in a few years so im just gonna grab a cheap X48 in the new year to fully open her up while using existing H/W until the big Gulftown push..
OCing......
this card clocks like a charm, & holds stable clocks with very small voltage boosts......
i flew past CFX 5870 clocks, i made it all the way up here (see image) furmark stable, but as said above the bottleneck is choking data transfer even though the card is firing on all cylinders.
here's my benches........
vantage ...... @ 5870 clocks, (pay close attention to the GPU score
stalker......
temps......
here's an image after running the furmark burn test, it ran for 15 mins..... look at the temps, EXCELLENT.
also i cant sing my praises enough for MSI afterburner, its an amazing bit of kit, it allows you to set a ''power curve'' for your GPU fan, never again will i have to worry about it before gaming.
i'd like to tell you im pissed off with all the crap ive undergone this past week, but its just an AMAZING card, that chomps through everything i throw at it, i mean GTA4 is ASTOUNDINGLY different.....my FPS never drops below 70... EVER!!, now anyone who plays this game will know that in itself is an amazing result considering how poorly coded it is.
so ...... im happy now, but the change to ATI has been a rocky road.
but its Christmas & life is good...
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