my HD5970 experience

[skunksmash]

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. :shock:

but its Christmas & life is good...

 

[mpcrsc562]

i'm officially jealous...

 

[skunksmash]

i'm officially jealous...

lol....... im just loving the 0 lag in ANY game, & its early days in terms of DX11s capabilities.

once i pick up the X48 board im gonna grab a 5770 too (TriFire baby )

 

[jfar]

Hi,thanks for making me feel bad, is there a new driver out 9.12?

 

[sygnus21]

Nice review Skunksmash

Thanks, and as they say in ATI land "Welcome to team red"

I'm getting ready to build an i7 system in Feb and may pick up one of these cards if the price is right and the issues get ironed out.

 

[skunksmash]

Hi,thanks for making me feel bad, is there a new driver out 9.12?

its not officially out on AMDs site, but it is the 9.12 release....


its up in the ATI drivers thread

 

[PooMan UK]

Man that card is like the dogs doo dars, if swearing was allowed on these forums my post would look slightly different, but nice one pal.

I've been an nvidia freek for most of my life but have recently just upgraded from 2 x BFG 9800 GTX to an ATI 5850 and I'm well chuffed ... big improvement but I'd like to switch to crossfire and try 2 x ATI cards to see how that performs. Just gotta get the wife to stand under the Red lampost for a few months to generate enough pennies to get a crossfire board and second GPU

But please let us know if you do any more testing and show us the results. I for one am keen to see how it goes

 

[skunksmash]

cheers lads.......

but my results dont do this card justice, here's what this card scores with a PCIE 2.0 board (check GPU scores)

its a monster!!

 

[MyWin7]

9.12 is supposed to come out today (Australian time zone) and btw - this card can do aero

 

[sygnus21]

this card can do aero

Not sure what you mean, but of course it can. It's ATI's flagship card

And for the money, it better!

 

[Everlong]

Looking good

Are you saying you have a PCI-E 1.1 slot? GPU-Z is saying 2.0 for you...or are you just informing people it will be a problem with 1.1?

 

[MyWin7]

this card can do aero

Not sure what you mean, but of course it can. It's ATI's flagship card

And for the money, it better!

I was addressing skunk's screenshot - right-click desktop/personalize and you have Aero themes at your finger tips

looks much better

 

[Everlong]

this card can do aero

Not sure what you mean, but of course it can. It's ATI's flagship card

And for the money, it better!

I was addressing skunk's screenshot - right-click desktop/personalize and you have Aero themes at your finger tips

looks much better

It gets disabled automatically when you run 3dmark vantage

 

[sygnus21]

this card can do aero

Not sure what you mean, but of course it can. It's ATI's flagship card

And for the money, it better!

looking at you screenshot your win7 skin is default - right-click desktop/personalize and you have Aero themes at your finger tips

looks much better

Though I responded to your post, I'll assume your reply here is intended for Skunksmash since he's the one showing off the card

Though you're right, I'm sure he has his reasons for it being off

 

[nate42nd]

Thanks for the post Skunk.

I have really been thinking hard about getting a 5700 or 5800 series card, but I just don't want to go ATI.

All the info was very useful and interesting.

 

[MyWin7]

Ah, okay, then it's Vantage, thanks for pointing out!

 

[chev65]

The X48 at 3.6GHz still won't match the framerate of the i7 at 4127MHz, I mean look at the difference in CPU scores.

I believe that part of the problem is your CPU bottle necking the card at 3.6GHz.
Still plenty of performance either way but more is better right?

Nice card none the less, I'm waiting for Nvidia's 300 series, and waiting, and waiting, LOL.

 

[nate42nd]

Nice card none the less, I'm waiting for Nvidia's 300 series, and waiting, and waiting, LOL.

Me too (waiting for the 300s) I think my i7860 and DDR3 1600Mhz RAM (and SSD) will do nicely with one NICE card. (for now haha)

 

[Everlong]

Nice card none the less, I'm waiting for Nvidia's 300 series, and waiting, and waiting, LOL.

Same here :roflmao:

 

[stormy13]

Nice card none the less, I'm waiting for Nvidia's 300 series, and waiting, and waiting, LOL.

The wait is over,

Every PC needs good graphics.

Graphics processing has become an essential ingredient to the modern PC. Nowadays, we simply demand more from our PCs. If you want to enhance photos, edit videos, watch movies, play games, or if you simply desire a Premium Windows® 7 Experience, the NVIDIA® GeForce® 310 graphics card brings impressive graphics processing power to your PC at an incredible value.

Sorry, couldn't resist. :devil:

Oh and very nice card skunk.