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Sapphire 2900Pro 1024MB Crossfire Performance affected by K9A Motherboard BIOS

Predator

Predator

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After days and days of testing different scenarios, I have come to the conclusion that the later BIOS's on the MSI K9A MB slows down Crossfire performance dramatically.

To give you an idea of how bad, here's some figures

BIOS Ver ; OS ; Card Config ; Catalyst Ver ; Card BIOS ; 3DMark06

1.6 ; XP ; Crossfire ; 7.10 ; 2900Pro ; 11192
1.6 ; XP ; Crossfire ; 7.10 ; 2900XT ; 11486
1.5 ; XP ; Crossfire ; 7.10 ; 2900XT ; 11929:cool:
1.5 ; Vista ; Crossfire ; 7.10 ; 2900XT ; 11865
1.5 ; Vista ; Crossfire ; 7.10 ; 2900Pro ; 11596

The test showed that XP did slightly better against Vista, but as you can see there is a dramatic difference between motherboard bios versions.

Note: I did flash the BIOS on both 2900Pro's to make them XT's for various tests. To be honest this doesn't make a huge difference as expected.

In addition, the very latest BIOS for that board (1.7) caused me even more headaches, hence rolling back to such an earlier version.:mad:
 
TheRealDeal said:
Those scores are low for crossfire full stop. 1 overclocked 2900xt can beat those scores.
Click to expand...

Sorry I don't agree with you on that, as when I ran with one 2900pro clocked to 831/1050 and the CPU to 3.3Ghz, I got 10633.

According to Futuremark, I am now the fastest PC with the same spec.
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=3466574

The scores in my first post however are with the CPU at stock speeds.
 
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Well here's a breakdown of my score.

3DMark Score 11929 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 5129 Marks
SM 3.0 Score 6673 Marks
CPU Score 2289 Marks

If you guys can post yours, so we can see where the differences are.

Cheers
 
seems low for crossfire tbh, my SM2.0 and SM3.0 scores were similar to that, obviously CPU was higher at 3000.

My 06 score is 12380.

Even with an AMD CPU you should get higher.
 
willhub said:
seems low for crossfire tbh, my SM2.0 and SM3.0 scores were similar to that, obviously CPU was higher at 3000.

My 06 score is 12380.

Even with an AMD CPU you should get higher.
Click to expand...

Can you post your exact scores?
I've also noticed that you've clocked your XT to 850 which will also help you get that bit extra.

its a shame that the Catalyst doesn't support overclocking Crossfire, otherwise I'd get my scores even higher.
 
Didn't gibbo have a thread not so long back stating 1 of the machines they build hitting 19000 in 3dmark with crossfire xt's. The memory in the machine and the q6600 were overclocked but the gpu was not. I think it was 2006 he was using.
 
Interesting, although his FSB is over twice as fast as mine at (mines running at stock). Might be worth me trying the older CAT drivers though.
 
FSB set to 210 x 15
Also noticed the HT was running at 200Mhz in the BIOS, so have changed that to 1Ghz.

3DMark now 12400 with the later MB BIOS 1.7 and Catalyst 7.8

So over 400 better than the last score and with a different MB BIOS as 1.5 doesn't like to be OC'd
 
what i don't understand is one of your 2900pro at xt speed is abit slower than 2 2600xt... one 2900pro at xt speed should beat 2 2600xt...

have u tryed reinstalling xp?
 
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