7900 GTO Single & SLI Testing on a Badaxe

easyrider · 30 Sep 2006 at 10:48

The Asgard said:
Good for you.

I'm sure some people will find it interesting even if you don't. The world does not revolve around you young Padawan contary to what you might think.

Here you go again. lol

Age obsessing :eek:

Your testing comes from the level of you being the first to do it and try it etc....

All i'm saying is that there are quite a few of people on this very forum doing SLI GTO already.

You say its worth it cause it cost you £240.
Its not going to cost others this is it?

Its gonna be the same if not more than a GX2 and offer tiny perfromance gains and driver restrictions.

Thats my point.Don't get so defensive.

The Asgard · 30 Sep 2006 at 10:49

man_from_uncle said:
That looks very good indeed. I'll probably get a pair myself.

I am surprised that the ram won't go further though. 720 seems lower than other people were getting and it'll certainly be bottlenecking the rest of the performance. Was that auto-detect or are you just playing it safe given the reputation of the 7900 family?

In single mode they were hitting 800 but I couldnt get much more than 720 in SLI for some reason. Might be down to the drivers

Richdog · 30 Sep 2006 at 10:50

The Asgard said:
The world does not revolve around you young Padawan contary to what you might think.

Don't be angry with him. He's not what you call the er... most "socially gifted" bloke form what i've seen of him on the forum. If computer hardware floats his boat and gives him some sense of superiority then leave him to it. The rest of us appreciate the thread for what it is.

The Asgard · 30 Sep 2006 at 10:51

man_from_uncle said:
Also, Asgard, what did you do to get SLI to work for Company of Heroes? I'm not familiar with the term AFR2.

EDIT: Good work too by the way.

Basically I just setup a profile and one of the options is AFR2 which seemed to work and work well.

AFR is Alternative Frame Rendering

easyrider · 30 Sep 2006 at 10:53

Richdog said:
but easyrider is right, a 7950 is more efficient in terms of cost and performance than your 7900GTO SLI setup.

You agree with me.

Richdog said:
Don't be angry with him. He's not what you call the er... most "socially gifted" bloke form what i've seen of him on the forum. If computer hardware floats his boat and gives him some sense of superiority then leave him to it. The rest of us appreciate the thread for what it is.

I make valid points about SLI GTO thats all.The Asgard has problems with when my points are clear and concise.

PC hardware does not give me sense of superiority I just analyse the results.
And comment on them in this public forum.

I don't see the problem.

The Asgard · 30 Sep 2006 at 10:53

Richdog said:
Don't be angry with him. He's not what you call the er... most "socially gifted" bloke form what i've seen of him on the forum. If computer hardware floats his boat and gives him some sense of superiority then leave him to it. The rest of us appreciate the thread for what it is.

I'm not angry he just makes me laugh and I like toying with him.

Its good to here that people appreciate my efforts. I ceratinly get a lot of nice emails

man_from_uncle · 30 Sep 2006 at 10:54

easyrider said:
Its gonna be the same if not more than a GX2 and offer tiny perfromance gains and driver restrictions.

Thats my point.Don't get so defensive.

For those that haven't gone conroe yet, there are no driver restrictions and they look like they might fit my rig quite well. I'm actually sort of surprised that the GX2 manages to keep up so well, but I guess both set-ups are equally limited on the GPU memory bandwidth.

On paper the two set-ups are actually VERY similar. The only difference being clock speeds. What are you running at easyrider?

man_from_uncle · 30 Sep 2006 at 10:57

The Asgard said:
Basically I just setup a profile and one of the options is AFR2 which seemed to work and work well.

AFR is Alternative Frame Rendering

Oh, alternate frame rendering! Got it.

Er....when you say 'set up a profile' does that mean though just changing the default SLi rendering mode from Auto to AFR2 in the nvidia control panal? Or is there more to it?

easyrider · 30 Sep 2006 at 11:01

The Asgard said:
I'm not angry he just makes me laugh and I like toying with him.

Nope I have your number! I'm not the one who sinks to personal insults when the going gets tough.

Your reasons for SLI GTO are based on stuff like the cost of replacing a GX2

When we all know here that there is no cost when RMA'ing and most cards have a lifetime warranty or at least one that will cover the length one has the card for.

Heatsinked · 30 Sep 2006 at 11:23

Thanks for taking the time to post your results Asgard. My GTO just arrived, waiting for latest drivers to download.

Did you bother flashing the bios in the end? Or did you just overclock?

It is worth mentioning that it's a heck of a long card... but I'm guessing a lot of you already know this. I had to reconfigure my drive cages, cables etc in order to jam it in lol... nice airflow now, was worth it.

Guess there is no point posting results myself now, perhaps if I get another GTO I will, since my rig is somewhat outdated compared to you lots

man_from_uncle · 30 Sep 2006 at 11:25

Heatsinked said:
Guess there is no point posting results myself now, perhaps if I get another GTO I will, since my rig is somewhat outdated compared to you lots

I'd still be interested. I'm still using a opty 170 so your results should give me an even better idea of what to expect.

easyrider · 30 Sep 2006 at 11:32

man_from_uncle said:
I'd still be interested. I'm still using a opty 170 so your results should give me an even better idea of what to expect.

What 06 mark do you get with your 7900 GT's in SLI?

man_from_uncle · 30 Sep 2006 at 11:48

Without a volt mod, 9000 (clocks at 600/1600 roughly). Getting to 10k wouldn't be a problem with the mods, but one of my cards is giving up the ghost and I've back the whole thing off to 500/1480.

If I do get a pair of gtos i'll probably suicide the dieing one just to see how far it goes.

EDIT: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=419090

That's what i got without the volt mod.

Heatsinked · 30 Sep 2006 at 12:00

Damn. My copy of 3DMark06 is borked! It'll be a while before I can run it...

I did however run 3DMark05:

9720

Running at stock... may try to reach GTX speeds now

man_from_uncle · 30 Sep 2006 at 12:09

Heatsinked said:
Damn. My copy of 3DMark06 is borked! It'll be a while before I can run it...

I did however run 3DMark05:

9720

Running at stock... may try to reach GTX speeds now

That's pretty dam good. Keep'em coming.

The Asgard · 30 Sep 2006 at 12:35

Heatsinked said:
Thanks for taking the time to post your results Asgard. My GTO just arrived, waiting for latest drivers to download.

Did you bother flashing the bios in the end? Or did you just overclock?

It is worth mentioning that it's a heck of a long card... but I'm guessing a lot of you already know this. I had to reconfigure my drive cages, cables etc in order to jam it in lol... nice airflow now, was worth it.

Guess there is no point posting results myself now, perhaps if I get another GTO I will, since my rig is somewhat outdated compared to you lots

No I didn't bother flashing in the end and I thought for a change I would leave these standard.

m8, post your results its always interesting to see how the cards compare in different rigs and how well they scale. I would be very interested

The Asgard · 30 Sep 2006 at 12:40

man_from_uncle said:
Without a volt mod, 9000 (clocks at 600/1600 roughly). Getting to 10k wouldn't be a problem with the mods, but one of my cards is giving up the ghost and I've back the whole thing off to 500/1480.

If I do get a pair of gtos i'll probably suicide the dieing one just to see how far it goes.

EDIT: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=419090

That's what i got without the volt mod.

Thats a nice score you have there not bad at all.

If I was you I wouldn't bother upgrading you have a nice rig and I bet in the real world you wouldn't tell any difference

man_from_uncle · 30 Sep 2006 at 12:56

Well, the thing is one of my 7900gts is starting to artifact and replacing it would be more money than it's worth. I've also changed the heatsink and the new ram sinks don't seem to want to come off, so I can't RMA it. Annoyingly of the two cards I have, it's the one that I haven't volt modded that is breaking. The first one went up to 680/1650 stable with the mod and I imagine it still will. I would have modded the second card too, but it was in *** height of the summer and I didn't want THAT much heat in my case.

Since then I've been on a spiral of reducing clock speeds for about a month and it's only a matter of time till I am down to one card. I also game at 1600x1200 and i think the extra vram will make a difference.

Heatsinked · 30 Sep 2006 at 13:38

Oh yes, the extra vram WILL make a difference... also taking into account that a lot of upcomming games will no doubt take what vram they can get (Crysis, Quake Wars ET).

I just installed F.E.A.R. Retail version, no patches applied yet. Using the following settings:

4xAA
1280x960
Everything else set to MAX.

I disabled soft shadows. Seems to disable AA when enabled.

Here are the test results:

Min: 32
Avr: 60
Max: 139

All I can say is... wow :eek:

And this is with the card still running at stock speeds...

3DMark06... 56% downloaded... :mad:

Heatsinked · 30 Sep 2006 at 14:03

Looks like I have an awsome card! Check out the coolbits "Find Optimal" results:

Memory clock frequency: 760

3D clock frequency: 700

More benchies to do...