not many thing's seem too max out my 3 gpu's

Sida · 1 May 2011 at 10:13

Blue160 said:
I wish people would read the thread before posting.

Gareth already said he has a 46" screen at 1080p and can't go to a higher resolution without going smaller. He's also said that eyefinity doesn't work for him.

It's not that people aren't reading, it's just that the answer to his problem doesn't change, whether it's viable or not. If he wants to stress his cards and use them where they're great, the answer is a higher resolution. If he doesn't want to use a higher resolution then he can't expect them to be working in their optimal conditions. Tbh though if he's able to play everything he wants without pushing his cards then I'd consider that a good thing. Maybe sell the 6950 for a bit of extra cash instead of trying to push your cards for the sake of increasing their usage percent.

gareth170 · 1 May 2011 at 10:43

Cleeecooo said:
I saw some samsung 46" 2560x1600 screens. Theyre ridiculously expensive but maybe worth considering? Theyre aimed at large graphic design companies IIRC

that would be great but i guess they are £1500+

gareth170 · 1 May 2011 at 10:47

anyway for now it seems using force 24x AA + super sample stresses the gpus alittle more so i'll keep it at that.....

how do u get 32x AA in ccc?

gareth170 · 1 May 2011 at 10:57

Sida said:
Maybe sell the 6950 for a bit of extra cash instead of trying to push your cards for the sake of increasing their usage percent.

if i sell the card now then if i need the extra performance power in 7months or a year 9 out 10 i would not have money to buy one. i've just got the £200 due to selling afew things.

Marine-RX179 · 1 May 2011 at 11:32

gareth, I still think that if you have no plan up the res or not going to sell your graphic card, to make the most out of them, you would NEED something faster than overclock Phenom II.

Granted applying higher AA would put more stress on the GPU, but it doesn't change the fact the limitation with the Phenom II where at some intensive game scenes the frame rate will drop to 25~30fps or less, while the GPU is even lower than average. Yes using higher AA will make GPU work harder even in those situation, but it doesn't change that the CPU is limiting the frame rate at 25-30fps. If you had only overclocked SB or Bulldozor (if it is as good as we are hoping it to be), it'd most likely at least give you extra 10-15fps in those CPU demanding game scenes.

It really simple really...if your GPU usage is not maxing out at 1920 res, then you should really look into upgrading your CPU/platform, rather than further graphic upgrade. To be honest, I doubt your extra 6950 is even giving you the extra speed over the 6990 with the Phenom II holding the graphic back...you are just wasting unnecessary money on the energy bill to be honest. Rather than working both GPUs of the 6990 to say...90% (180%), you are now like splitting the load to 60% over the 3 GPUs. While the there are extra graphic processing power, the workload distributed from the CPU to them most likely remain unchanged. You need a faster CPU to give them more workload, so the graphic processing units will have their hands full working on producing extra frame rates, rather than sipping tea working with one hand...if you know what I mean.

May be you can try doing some Crysis bench comparing your 6990+6950 vs just 6990 on its own?

Final8y · 1 May 2011 at 11:42

Marine-RX179 said:
gareth, I still think that if you have no plan up the res or not going to sell your graphic card, to make the most out of them, you would NEED something faster than overclock Phenom II.

Granted applying higher AA would put more stress on the GPU, but it doesn't change the fact the limitation with the Phenom II where at some intensive game scenes the frame rate will drop to 25~30fps or less, while the GPU is even lower than average. Yes using higher AA will make GPU work harder even in those situation, but it doesn't change that the CPU is limiting the frame rate at 25-30fps. If you had only overclocked SB or Bulldozor (if it is as good as we are hoping it to be), it'd most likely at least give you extra 10-15fps in those CPU demanding game scenes.

It really simple really...if your GPU usage is not maxing out at 1920 res, then you should really look into upgrading your CPU/platform, rather than further graphic upgrade. To be honest, I doubt your extra 6950 is even giving you the extra speed over the 6990 with the Phenom II holding the graphic back...you are just wasting unnecessary money on the energy bill to be honest. Rather than working both GPUs of the 6990 to say...90% (180%), you are now like splitting the load to 60% over the 3 GPUs. While the there are extra graphic processing power, the workload distributed from the CPU to them remain unchanged. You need a faster CPU to give them more workload, so the graphic processing units are not slacking off and work to produce extra frame rates.

May be you can try doing some Crysis bench comparing your 6990+6950 vs just 6990 on its own?

If the OP was unhappy with the performance then you would have a point.
Even though the OP is not maxing out the GPUs its not like its a problem as the performance is more than plenty.
The 6950 will definitely be giving him extra speed over just a single 6990 with the 1090T 4GHZ/2.6GHZ 6 core.

gareth170 · 1 May 2011 at 12:41

in games that optimized for CF i do see a good performance boost with 6990+6950 over a single 6990 example metro2033

i will upgrade to a Bulldozor when it's out

Cleeecooo · 1 May 2011 at 12:51

gareth170 said:
that would be great but i guess they are £1500+

about £3k each IIRC

arc@css · 1 May 2011 at 12:53

gareth170 said:
how do u get 32x AA in ccc?

'Wide Tent' iirc. Not worth the performance hit as I recall, though with your gpu muscle it should be fine in almost all games. I'm not sure I like the look of the IQ change when (Wide Tent) was applied though.

gareth170 · 1 May 2011 at 13:11

arc@css said:
'Wide Tent' iirc. Not worth the performance hit as I recall, though with your gpu muscle it should be fine in almost all games. I'm not sure I like the look of the IQ change when (Wide Tent) was applied though.

i don't have 'Wide Tent' ..

i've only got theses

Marine-RX179 · 1 May 2011 at 13:33

Final8y said:
If the OP was unhappy with the performance then you would have a point.
Even though the OP is not maxing out the GPUs its not like its a problem as the performance is more than plenty.
The 6950 will definitely be giving him extra speed over just a single 6990 with the 1090T 4GHZ/2.6GHZ 6 core.

You are missing my point...Metro2033 or Crysis aside, I seriously doubt he will get any noticable extra performance with the extra 6950 at 1920, since 6990 itself is already overkill for 98% of the games out there for 1920 res.

The Phenom II is definitely not doing his 6990+6950 setup justice. But since gareth saids he will look into Bulldozer when it is out, so it should be fine I guess.

I really hope that AMD's Bulldozer with the new architecture can compete with SandyBridge on performance, and not just trying to attract customers with the low budget tactics they got going for Athlon II and Phenom II that are tweaked and updated 7 years old architecture. Really wish to see AMD kicking butt like they once were back in their Athlon 64 days...

Cleeecooo · 1 May 2011 at 13:35

Marine-RX179 said:
I really hope that AMD's Bulldozer with the new architecture can compete with SandyBridge on performance, and not just trying to attract customers with the low budget tactics they got going for Athlon II and Phenom II that are tweaked and updated 7 years old architecture. Really wish to see AMD kicking butt like they once were back in their Athlon 64 days...

Didn't the X6 compete with the i7's?

Blue160 · 1 May 2011 at 13:39

Cleeecooo said:
Didn't the X6 compete with the i7's?

Only in massively multithreaded stuff. The performance per core is way down.

Marine-RX179 · 1 May 2011 at 13:44

Cleeecooo said:
Didn't the X6 compete with the i7's?

Only on heavily thread apps like video encoding it does, but majority of the games are still only optimised for using 2-3 cores, and the extra cores (5th and 6th) on the X6 means nothing on gaming...faster CPU architecture/faster speed per core is where the money lies for higher frame rate in gaming.

arc@css · 1 May 2011 at 14:07

gareth170 said:
i don't have 'Wide Tent' ..

i've only got theses

The CCC has changed quite a lot for the 5/6000 series cards, and apart from a brief spell with a 3450, the last AMD card I used was a 4000 series. There were some nice improvements to the CCC though mainly cosmetic in my case, t'was hampered by old tech.

Final8y · 1 May 2011 at 16:44

Marine-RX179 said:
You are missing my point...Metro2033 or Crysis aside, I seriously doubt he will get any noticable extra performance with the extra 6950 at 1920, since 6990 itself is already overkill for 98% of the games out there for 1920 res.

The Phenom II is definitely not doing his 6990+6950 setup justice. But since gareth saids he will look into Bulldozer when it is out, so it should be fine I guess.

I really hope that AMD's Bulldozer with the new architecture can compete with SandyBridge on performance, and not just trying to attract customers with the low budget tactics they got going for Athlon II and Phenom II that are tweaked and updated 7 years old architecture. Really wish to see AMD kicking butt like they once were back in their Athlon 64 days...

I'm not missing the point because i disagree with just Metro2033 or Crysis aside especially at the AA & quality settings that the OP has been using & forcing through CCC.

Not being able to do full justice does not mean to not do it at all & you got to think of the long term possibilities & what games the future holds.

Final8y · 1 May 2011 at 16:49

Marine-RX179 said:
Only on heavily thread apps like video encoding it does, but majority of the games are still only optimised for using 2-3 cores, and the extra cores (5th and 6th) on the X6 means nothing on gaming...faster CPU architecture/faster speed per core is where the money lies for higher frame rate in gaming.

The 5th and 6th core means smoother gaming as the background tasks don't take away cycles from the game.

And seeing as i have many games that use 4 cores & there was a list & the future is more cores so it good to have leeway.

If everything was maxing out CPUs & GPUs right now then the only way would be a nosedive in performance for that setup as time goes on.

Marine-RX179 · 1 May 2011 at 17:04

Final8y said:
The 5th and 6th core means smoother gaming as the background tasks don't take away cycles from the game.

Anding seeing as i have seam many games that use 4 cores & there was a list & the future is more cores so it good to have leeway.

If everything was maxing out CPUs & GPUs right now then the only way would be down in performance for that setup as time goes on.

Come on...not the "help with background tasks" arguement again...how much things would people really want to run in the background when they are gaming? 5th and 6th core doesn't really help, as even Quad core CPU with the 4th core is already enough for handle the minor tasks in the background. The only time you might see overclocked Phenom II X6 performance on par gaming wise with overclocked i5/i7/SB is may be if someone was to encode video and game at the same time, or the graphic set up is slow enough. For any games that only optimised for 2 cores ish, Phenom II's frame rate is poor comparing to the newer faster architecture CPU. Even with the "more games optimise for Quad" arguement, there's still no going around the fact it is only offering on par performance as Core2Quad, unless all of a sudden every single game developers optised their games to make use of 5th and 6th cores, which is unlikely as hell since we barely see games enough games make good use of the 4th core right now.

And also I don't know what you are trying to prove...if you compare say the 6990/6950 set up on the overclocked Phenom II vs overclocked i5/i7/SB, the performance/frame rate results on the overclocked Phenom II set up will be mediocre comparing to the i5/i7/SB set up.

gareth170 · 1 May 2011 at 17:12

most of the games i play i see all 6 cores being used around 60-70%. maybe it's spiting the load to all 6 cores.

gareth170 · 1 May 2011 at 17:27

Marine-RX179 said:
if you compare say the 6990/6950 set up on the overclocked Phenom II vs overclocked i5/i7/SB, the performance/frame rate results on the overclocked Phenom II set up will be mediocre comparing to the i5/i7/SB set up.

are u sure

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=18930585&postcount=501

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=18941609&postcount=519

i know his cpu not oc'ed but if it much been then my 1090t surely it'll be nearer mine even at stock.