x2 ATi 4890 v GeForce GTX 560Ti??

WazMeister

WazMeister

WazMeister

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85
Hi,

After the debacle of Brink running really pants on my system......and not playing well for ATI cards I want to jump on the Geforce again after years of dedicating to ATI.
My last Geforce was the Geforce 1 ddr.

My rig is this, bought from OC! awhile ago!
AMD Phenom 2 x2 550
4gigs ram
ati 4890 x2

Now, I can't afford loads but i'm looking at the GTX 560ti, is there much performance increase with this card as a single?
Will games like brink run more than 5FPS in everything low? I'm fed up with ATi cards being buffgy in games.


Also.. my main qustion- will my above system run Rage in a decent setting at ok FPS?

Many Thanks

Waz!
 
Sorry, would this be a noticely upgrade in FPS over my current 3.19 Phenom duel AMD cpu-

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 980 Black Edition "140W Edition" 3.70GHz
 
You'd expect a dual 4890 configuration to be faster than a 560 if it's working in crossfire mode.

The Phenom quad core is twice the price of the dual core so you would expect that to make a difference, plus it's clocked higher. I don't know much about AMD CPUs I'm afraid so I don't know the gaming difference this will bring.

Can you not overclock the dual core?

Sound like you are totally CPU limited if you are only getting 5FPS.
 
Hi there,

May I ask what make and model motherboard you are using?

Have you tried unlocking your Phenom II X2 to a Quad core? These chips have a relatively high success rate of this. The phenom II X2 is just a quad core die with 2 cores disabled. One or both of these cores may be faulty, but often they are perfectly fine - just locked off to be sold as a lower-spec product (it is often cheaper to manufacture on core type and lock parts off in software instead of building two distinct cores for different models). Here is a good guide on unlocking, whether you can do this will depend on what motherboard you have.

If you want to buy a brand new quad core - then please don't buy a 980, it is ust poor value. Instead I would suggest going for the phenom ii x4 955be (£84 this week) and overclocking it to the same speed (or higher), since it uses the same core as the 980, its just clocked lower at stock.

looking at brink in particular - this article seems to show that it isn't a particularly CPU-heavy game. Instead, at high resolutions it is very demanding on the GPU (have a look here).

On the graphics card front -dual HD 4890s will be much faster than a single GTX 560 Ti (they will be more on the level of a GTX 570). However, to achieve this performance you need each game to run well with Crossfire - are your AMD catalyst drivers updated to the most recent version and is Brink patched up to date?
 
cmndr_andi said:
Hi there,

May I ask what make and model motherboard you are using?

Have you tried unlocking your Phenom II X2 to a Quad core? These chips have a relatively high success rate of this. The phenom II X2 is just a quad core die with 2 cores disabled. One or both of these cores may be faulty, but often they are perfectly fine - just locked off to be sold as a lower-spec product (it is often cheaper to manufacture on core type and lock parts off in software instead of building two distinct cores for different models). Here is a good guide on unlocking, whether you can do this will depend on what motherboard you have.

If you want to buy a brand new quad core - then please don't buy a 980, it is ust poor value. Instead I would suggest going for the phenom ii x4 955be (£84 this week) and overclocking it to the same speed (or higher), since it uses the same core as the 980, its just clocked lower at stock.

looking at brink in particular - this article seems to show that it isn't a particularly CPU-heavy game. Instead, at high resolutions it is very demanding on the GPU (have a look here).

On the graphics card front -dual HD 4890s will be much faster than a single GTX 560 Ti (they will be more on the level of a GTX 570). However, to achieve this performance you need each game to run well with Crossfire - are your AMD catalyst drivers updated to the most recent version and is Brink patched up to date?
Click to expand...

This is the most comprehensive reply I've seen on this forums.
 
cmndr_andi is completely right. As an addendum however, a 6950 2GB flashed to a 6970 is faster than either a 560Ti or a 570 (and hence dual 4890s), for the same price as a 560Ti.
 
Wow, Thank you so much guys!

I tried the unlocking thing before, I asked on here and people tried helping but everytime I changed setting to unlock anymore nothing changed, it would not report that it was a quad in windows or anything. I think I also crashed, but no performance increase.

Maybe I should get the 950be and O/C? My motherboard is-

Gigabyte GA-MA790x-UD3P
 
Ah, fair enough. Sounds like you are one of the unlucky ones with extra cores that won't run stably.

Nice board you have there, with a decent CPU cooler (this one is a good one for a decent price) and the Phenom II X4 955BE for £84 you should be able to get a nice overclock and a big jump in CPU performance compared to your existing X2.
 
THanks again, your too kind! Really have been helpful! Again thank you.

Last thing though, sorry!

Do many games support Duel or Quad cores yet? I am still under the impression most games dont even take advantage of duel let alone quad?

I'm also on the udnerstanding CPU don't really go by MHZ much, i/e the Quad core only being 3.2ghz is still real powerful right?

What if I buy the 955 quad and it dont over clock right or stable? have I wasted my money or at it's default is it still a nice increase?
 
WazMeister said:
Do many games support Duel or Quad cores yet? I am still under the impression most games dont even take advantage of duel let alone quad?
Click to expand...


Yea, that was the case a few years ago - but these days games are increasingly making use of quad core CPUs.

Have a look at these CPU scaling articles for:

Battlefield Bad Company 2
The Witcher 2
Dirt 3
Crysis 2
Mafia 2

Hence why going from a Phenom II X2 to a Phenom II X4 (even if you don't overclock it) will give you a decent performance boost in many modern games.

As for if you don't overclock the CPU stably, well you can either scale the overclock back, add more voltage or give up (reset CMOS and return everything to default settings). So long as you don't pump excessive voltage through the chip then you can't damage it. With modern gigabyte boards - if you fail an overclock (it is unstable) the system resets and the motherboard loads up the last stable settings (overclock recovery). So getting back on your feet after a slightly ambitious overclock is simple and painless.


WazMeister said:
I'm also on the udnerstanding CPU don't really go by MHZ much, i/e the Quad core only being 3.2ghz is still real powerful right?
Click to expand...

One GHz or Gigahertz is 1000 MHz (Megahertz). So 3.2GHz is 3,200 MHz. For comparing CPU speeds within a family (ie comparing a phenom II X2 550 with a phenom II X4 955 for example) then comparing based mainly on frequency (GHz) as well as core count is perfectly fine and generally very accurate gauge of relative performance.

However, you can't compare between different architetures just using these two simple metrics (eg comparing a 3.2GHZ AMD Phenom II X4 with an 3.1GHz Intel i5 2400 quad core- which are basically the same in terms of frequency and core count) since these are very different CPUs and one does more work per clock than the other - so the core count and frequency are the same, but the performance is very different (have a look here). Hence using just core count and frequency to compare between different CPU architectures doesn't work - the best way to gauge them against each other is to compare their performance in standardised tests or benchmarks - hence that Anadtech link I posted in the previous sentance.
 
Last edited:
cmdndr_andi,

I was reading that guide and I do not fully understand it.

Step 5 states change Frequency, what ist he freqnecyy? I have many options like they do in their screenshot of diffren voltages.

He mentions in the last parahraph of Step 5 that the frequency to rais eis stock voltage and not voltage?

Which is which and where do I change frequency within overdrive like his using?

Thanks!
 
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