Asus M4A78, Phenom II x4, 4870 x2

Leewise1

Leewise1

Leewise1

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Hello there,

I am new to these forums so please forgive me if I'm posting this in the wrong section.

I've just built a new rig, and I need help deciding if I have a hardware problem or not. Firstly here are the specs:

-Asus M4A78 Pro 780G
-AMD Phenom II x4 940 (not overclocked)
-Saphire Radeon 4870 x2 (GPU 790mhz Memory 990mhz overclocked, 50% fan speed)
-Coolermaster Real Power 700w Modular Power Supply
-Kingston HyperX 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz (not overclocked)
-Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB SATA-II 16MB cache
-Vista Home Premium 64bit
-Samsung 20" LCD (1600x900 max res)

I will be getting more ram at the end of the month. Hopefully up it to 6GB

Vista is up to date, running in high performance power settings, I'm using the latest catalyst drivers, havn't downloaded anything for the bios, but I have turned OFF the onboard GPU.

So, the issues I'm having:

-1st of all, and quite a big issue, the copy of 3D-Mark that came with the 4870 x2 gives me a score of a little over 11,000. I had seen reviews etc that were getting scores of at least 20,000 with a 4870x2 and a quad core proc, so its very alarming to be getting a score this low. The whole test seems to go quite slow in terms of FPS, at around 20-40 average, even as low as 5 in some parts. The slowest tests were the physics (planes flying through hoops, and the moving flags) they were un-watchable frankly. Lower than 15 fps.

-Although the horrible 3D-Mark results, I tested the Crysis demo which actually runs quite smoothly on high settings with max AA. On very high settings its just about un-playable, probably between 8 and 20 fps, and I havn't even turned AA on for that. Overall in terms of speed, it's not too bad, but I was expecting to be able to play it on max settings, and I still want to, so I am dissapointed.

-Also on the Crysis demo, on either high OR very high settings, I'm getting horrible flashing graphical errors in the clouds and in far away bushes and trees. This gets steadily worse throughout the demo too, and towards the end where you download some intel from a computer it looks ridiculous filling the whole sky with flashing and even the image that was just on the computer screen that you downloaded the intel from.

-Other demos run fine like UT3 (but I know that demo is limited to medium settings), and the 3 demos that came wit the card (they're old though). I installed the first F.E.A.R game, and I should be getting over 100 fps on max, but I'm only getting between 35-60!

-Out of gaming now, generally the pc seems to do everything slower than I was expecting. Like installing, loading up programs, playing music... My older PC is using an Athlon 64 3400+, radeon 9800 pro, 1 GB RAM, and it just feels like the same speed as the new rig... Obviously not gaming, I'm just talking general PC tasks.


So I am at a loss.
The GPU seems to be doing it's job, both GPU cores seem to be on as the auto-tune on the catalystCC tuned 2 GPUs.
The processor seems to be running the 4 cores (based on the ctrl+alt+del system performance tab), and I used CPU checker or whatever it's called and that said it was doing just over 3 ghz which is correct.
The hard drive has many reviews saying it's fast, so I don't think I've chosen a bad drive.
2GB of DDR2 isn't a lot, and I will be getting some more soon, but I don't think that alone would be giving me such poor performance.
The on-board GPU on the mobo is turned off (it was on the first time I tested which produced loads of atifacts but I quickly fixed that problem)
I'm assuming that the PSU is sufficiant, I was under the impression that 700w would be enough.

So thats about all I have to report (phew!). I would appreciate any help anyone can give me. I've spent quite a lot of money on this rig and I want to see it running how it should be.

Thanks!
 
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I dont think you have a problem, but yeah you could do with more RAM asap, vista needs 4 really, dont know why it says it will run with less. I suspect this is your main cause, though if I were you Id also look into OC'ing the CPU, thats prob the cause of your low 3dmark score. Though as long as your games run fine (after RAM upgrade) dont worry about benchmarks. If the flashing doesnt stop then try running the gfx card at default speeds, even if its a factory OC, just UC it and see how it goes
 
more memory particauly for gaming which I hope your using it for, going by that X2 there.

for vista you will defo need 4Gb for xp 3Gb
 
hmm, thanks for the replies! When I bought all the components I knew I would be getting more ram, but I really didn't think having 2GB would just about half the performance in some cases. But then, I wasn't aware that vista really should be run with at least 4GB. I will wait until I have more memory, and I will update my progress then.
 
definately go for more ram, i've got a x2 with a 9650 and my cpu limits my 4870x2 to around 15,000 in 3dmark 06 so you should get close to 20,000. oh and with vantage which version of the benchmark are you running???
 
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Also, about overclocking the CPU, I've never done that before, but I'll check the forum for a guide or something. I don't want to wreck any parts obviously :p How much more could I potentially get out of it though?
 
i'm sure i read somewhere that 3.5ghz was achievable with good air colling using the stock voltages, and 3.7 ish when voltages are increased. anything more and you'd need water cooling.
 
I've got the Asus M3A79-T Deluxe with a 940 in it paired with a GTX 280 and I get around 16000 points (3D06) with it. You're right in saying that there's something a bit strange with your rig as you should be flying through everything with that setup.

The physics test in 3D mark is supposed to be slow as it's all rendered on the CPU. Perfectly normal :)

As far as your RAM goes, I really doubt that it's causing such a performance hit. More RAM would be good but I can't see it having too much of an effect on your system as it stands.

I'll assume it's a graphics card issue as it usually is, especially when associated with low FPS in games and a powerful card. Try downloading GPUZ and seeing what that says about the card.
 
NightmareXX said:
I've got the Asus M3A79-T Deluxe with a 940 in it paired with a GTX 280 and I get around 16000 points (3D06) with it. You're right in saying that there's something a bit strange with your rig as you should be flying through everything with that setup.

The physics test in 3D mark is supposed to be slow as it's all rendered on the CPU. Perfectly normal :)

As far as your RAM goes, I really doubt that it's causing such a performance hit. More RAM would be good but I can't see it having too much of an effect on your system as it stands.

I'll assume it's a graphics card issue as it usually is, especially when associated with low FPS in games and a powerful card. Try downloading GPUZ and seeing what that says about the card.
Click to expand...

Well thats a relief on the physics side, at least I know the cpu must be running fine.

I downloaded GPUZ and here's what I got:

[img=http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3457/gpuz1sttest.jpg]


I think everything on there is normal. The only thing I'm not too sure about is it says 1GB of memory, but then you can select a seperate 4870 x2 at the bottom so maybe this is how it recognises the 2 gpu's? (so it's 2x1GB?)
Also the bit where it says if crossfire is enabled. It says that it's "enabled (2 GPUs), Sideport Off (unsure on vista64)".... Does this have anything to do with anything? Obviously I'm not using true crossfire, as it's a single slot PCI-E 16x mobo. But I suppose the 4870 x2 classes itself as a crossfire enabled card? It's the "(unsure on vista64)" that concerns me most anyway...
 
Leewise1 said:
Out of gaming now, generally the pc seems to do everything slower than I was expecting. Like installing, loading up programs, playing music... My older PC is using an Athlon 64 3400+, radeon 9800 pro, 1 GB RAM, and it just feels like the same speed as the new rig... Obviously not gaming, I'm just talking general PC tasks
Click to expand...
On that, could be because its a fresh Windows install & its just taking time to settle in/down. Other than that you could check settings in the BIOS to ensure everything is running optimal. Found that changing some settings from AUTO (to something manual) can improve performance. But you'll have to research on your particular mobo. Also install latest updates, defrag regularly, etc :)
 
Vista runs slow as hell when first freshly installed, mine was the same, wait till a few boot ups and it will speed up by a huge amount, make sure you get all teh Vista updates to. Also uses a weird prefetch system I think which agains speeds up over time. Gratz on the machine though, think less of tiny things and enjoy your games!
 
It's interesting you should both mention that, because I was starting to notice last night that the system seemed faster than the first time. I was actually thinking "maybe all the parts needed to be used a few times to break them in" but it didn't seem feesable at the time. It does seem to be doing things a bit faster now though. I will see if I can get any more out of it changing some bios settings, because most of the bios is set to 'auto'.
 
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