5850 Poor Performance?

[Bgr]

Hi, I have a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz

3gb DDR2 800mhz ram

5850 Overclocked to 775/1125

Windows XP so on dx9

And i have had nothing but trouble with this card since i got it 2 days ago :/


First problem I had was the grey lines crashes a lot of people talk about, I tried 9.12, 9.12 hotfix, 10.1, 10.1 hotfix and am on 10.2 beta drivers now..

For some reason I managed to fix the crashing problem by overclocking my graphics card with CCC Ati Overdrive, but I think im getting much worse performance than I should be with this card :S


On DoW2 Bench mark im getting 66fps max, 30 average, 15 low with everything on ultra at 1680x1050

Dirt 2 maxed, 67fps avg 52low with the benchmark

And generally on all games not getting a massive fps increase than what my 8800gt was doing...

Everygame im trying im getting nearly half of what people with nearly the same system as me are getting its really giving me a headache and Im hoping you guys can help me out with what may be wrong...

thanks.

 

[RBL]

I'm not sure about other benchmark but on my i7 860 @2.80, 8gb ram, XFX 5850 XXX Edition (775/1125) i got 57.9 avarage fps and 47.7 min in Dirt 2 benchmark (1920x1080, everything on high, VSync On).

No problems with any lines or crashes here though.

 

[mmj_uk]

I'm not sure if the 5 series has a throttling mechanism but overclocking shouldn't cause a card to become more stable, it could be the overclocking is causing the card to run slower which in turn is helping to improve stability.

When you're having problems you should reset any overclocks until you manage to get it stable under normal conditions.

 

[Bgr]

I'm not sure about other benchmark but on my i7 860 @2.80, 8gb ram, XFX 5850 XXX Edition (775/1125) i got 57.9 avarage fps and 47.7 min in Dirt 2 benchmark (1920x1080, everything on high, VSync On).

No problems with any lines or crashes here though.

I guess you mean Everything maxed instead of high right? You do lose a lot of fps on on dx11 on dirt though, espescially from the tesalated crowds

The crashing issue is pretty common so im not to worried about that being a hardware problem its just frustrating

 

[Vince]

Hi Mate,

Could you give your full specs including power supply? It will help troubleshoot the problems.

Are you sure that the cpu overclock is stable with the 5850 in? If your power supply was close to the limit with the 8800gt, the difference in power draw from the 8800gt (tdp 110w max) to the 5850 (tdp 160w max) could be causing you some problems. have you tried running at stock?

Also you really need to look at upgrading from XP, the 5850 is wasted on XP - but I am sure that you know this already.

 

[BigBruiserAl]

Something to bear in mind is your system oc. I have 3 profiles all fully stable and tested for months. 3.6ghz, 4.ghz, 4.2ghz now my 5870 will only work trouble free on the 3.6 & 4.0ghz profles the 4.2 just grey screens so it very likely something to do with system oc. This subject is been disscused do a search on it in google.

 

[Bgr]

Hi Mate,

Could you give your full specs including power supply? It will help troubleshoot the problems.

Are you sure that the cpu overclock is stable with the 5850 in? If your power supply was close to the limit with the 8800gt, the difference in power draw from the 8800gt (tdp 110w max) to the 5850 (tdp 160w max) could be causing you some problems. have you tried running at stock?

Also you really need to look at upgrading from XP, the 5850 is wasted on XP - but I am sure that you know this already.

Hi, I have a Antec TX 650w so I dont think this is the problem it should be plenty for the 5850 and cpu overclock.
I also have 3GB of this ram http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-086-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=813
And motherboard is Abit IP35 pro

 

[Vince]

Like many others have experienced, going from one card to another in exactly the same system can effect the overclock, regardless of how good your supply is or how stable you thought the system is/was. If it were me I would be pulling the system completly back to stock and running a few tests - then ramping the clocks back up. This is the only way for sure you can eliminate the cpu as an issue.

However either way you look at it the card is running in an OS which technically doesn't support its features. From experience the vendor will concerntrate their resources towards the OS's which the card was predominantly designed for, in this case Vista and W7, Issues with other opperating systems will surely take a lower priority and experience more issues.

BTW... That ram is the same ram as mine, how many volts you putting through it as it is particulary fussy, mine needs 2.1v at the minimum when running more than 2 sticks. if I am looking to overclock anything past 800mhz then it needs more.

 

[Hilts]

However either way you look at it the card is running in an OS which technically doesn't support its features. From experience the vendor will concerntrate their resources towards the OS's which the card was predominantly designed for, in this case Vista and W7, Issues with other opperating systems will surely take a lower priority and experience more issues.

quote]

I agree, i've recently upgraded from a 8800GTX to a 5850 and don't think i'm getting the full use of this card yet until i move onto W7 in a fortnight's time.

 

[ringo747]

I had to RMA a new PowerColor 5850 the other day. Was crashing all the time running the 10.1 hotfix drivers and it was failing Furmark tests after a few minutes. Pretty annoying to say the least but hopefully get a new one out soon.

 

[r0cky]

I had lots of problems with a MSI 5850. I've returned it. Waiting on Fermi, otherwise I will get a GTX275.

 

[Vince]

thats interesting mine is also a powercolor and has been good so far, Im not ignorant enough to say flawless but for sure its been acceptable.

Issues I have noticed so far are:

1) Monitor goes into standby after x period of time when the machine is idle even though I ask it not to, it recovers fine but I dont want it to turn my screens off.

2) Since I can remember if you log into the machine over RDP and then close the session and log back in locally the driver will fail to initiate properly (this issue has been around forever).

3) My second screens seem to flicker occasionally, this was a power play issue which was also prevalant with my 3 series cards when i first bought them. I have no doubt that this will be fixed.

On another note the card that they sent me is a gem, will happily do 1030 core for less than 1.25v which will be great as and when I need the extra grunt.

 

[Bgr]

Like many others have experienced, going from one card to another in exactly the same system can effect the overclock, regardless of how good your supply is or how stable you thought the system is/was. If it were me I would be pulling the system completly back to stock and running a few tests - then ramping the clocks back up. This is the only way for sure you can eliminate the cpu as an issue.

However either way you look at it the card is running in an OS which technically doesn't support its features. From experience the vendor will concerntrate their resources towards the OS's which the card was predominantly designed for, in this case Vista and W7, Issues with other opperating systems will surely take a lower priority and experience more issues.

BTW... That ram is the same ram as mine, how many volts you putting through it as it is particulary fussy, mine needs 2.1v at the minimum when running more than 2 sticks. if I am looking to overclock anything past 800mhz then it needs more.

I diden't overclock this Cpu by myself I bought it like it from overclockers, so im not sure How to put it back to stock, and if i Did and it was the same would it be as simple to get it back to 3.2ghz as taking note of the settings it was on before and simply putting them back?

Also the Ram, how can i check the volts? And why on Cpu-z does it say DRAM Frequency 427mhz? Shoulden't this be 800mhz? I know cpus and gpus have the speedstep thing where the clock goes down if not in use, never heard of ram having it though..

 

[Bgr]

Another thing I would like to know is how I can see my max temps while playing games for the gpu? Because i thought it was normal for GPU to go in the late 70's 80's and the highest I have seen mine is under 50 after a hour of gaming on something like l4d2 and then checking the temps when i close the game

 

[Vince]

Hi mate,

Going from overclocked to stock should be as simple as loading defaults and then shifting the voltages back up for the memory, you should also be setting usb mouse and kb settings so that they are recognised by the bios. It is more than possible that OCUK have saved a bios profile so that would be worth checking.

You wont be the first and certainly not the last that has had an OCUK system delivered without a perfectly stable overclock, I cant give any direct advise on the board as i have no experience with it so hopefully somebody a little more qualified with the board can step in and help.

As for your memory clock it seems that there is probably a divider in place so that the memory is not running in sync with the processor, the OCZ memory, although good ram isn't the best for overclocking. The guys at OCUK probably put a divider so that it doesn't go over its rated 800hmz. you can see if this is the case in the bios.

 

[Vince]

Anouther thing I would like to know is how I can see my max temps while playing games for the gpu? Because i thought it was normal for GPU to go in the late 70's 80's and the highest I have seen mine is under 50 after a hour of gaming on something like l4d2 and then checking the temps when i close the game

Download MSI afterburner, this can log temps while playing your games.

 

[dmsims]

On another note the card that they sent me is a gem, will happily do 1030 core for less than 1.25v which will be great as and when I need the extra grunt.

PMJI - how did you change the voltage ?

 

[pastymuncher]

As you have gone from a Nvidia card to a ATI card did you completely remove all traces of the Nvidia drivers?

Running my 5850 fine on XP and Vista 64bit.

 

[Vince]

if you dont want to mess about with flashing here is how **NOTE THIS WILL BREAK POWERPLAY WHILE THE OVERCLOCK IS ACTIVE*: download MSI afterburner and install, open the install directory and locate the file MSIAfterburner.cfg opening it with Notepad.

At the bottom of the file you will see an option "enable unofficial overclocking", change this value to 1 and save it back to the same directory with the same name. (May have to save to desktop as the file is read only)

Once done voltage control and unofficial overclocking will become available.

Happy overclocking.

 

[Bgr]

As you have gone from a Nvidia card to a ATI card did you completely remove all traces of the Nvidia drivers?

Running my 5850 fine on XP and Vista 64bit.

I uninstalled drivers at add/remove programs and then ran Driver sweeper in safe mode and then installed ati drivers