7990 Custom Bios - Remove Throttling

[Woodsta888]

It will defo bottleneck a four gpu setup on bf4. However Mantle should help greatly with that. Have you tried Mantle? As you're on Tahiti you may need to change a couple of BF4 settings via a user.cfg file, but i can help you with that. Mantle also uses more vram, so you may need to lower your settings a tad. However you will get much better gpu scaling and cpu performance. You really need an i7 minimum for four gpu's.

Yes please!!!!!!!! I'd likey these user.cfg settings for tahiti when convenient Lt MAtt.

Thanks in advance!

 

[LtMatt]

Yes please!!!!!!!! I'd likey these user.cfg settings for tahiti when convenient Lt MAtt.

Thanks in advance!

Try this one.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/qfynto

Will enable the overlay so you can monitor vram usage using your settings. Make sure you stay at least a couple of hundred MB below your vram limit.

 

[Woodsta888]

Thank you muchly

 

[F3r4_N3n3m]

Hi LtMatt,

I just tried your user.cfg! And I got funny results.
Can you please tell me what These three commands do:
-PerfOverlay.Enable 1
-RenderDevice.FramePacingMethod 1
-Render.DrawScreenInfo 1

Here what happened after trying them:
-MANTLE: Utilization still very low at 40% and fps was as before around 60fps @1080p+resolution scale 200%.
I was able to see the amount of vram used and it showed 3.700MB/3.000MB

-DIRECT3d11.1: My utilization went up to 80% and fps is great at 120-160fps!
The amount of vram is not being shown anymore, don't know why. I haven't changed anything else.


I don't know how to explain that...

 

[LtMatt]

Hi LtMatt,

I just tried your user.cfg! And I got funny results.
Can you please tell me what These three commands do:
-PerfOverlay.Enable 1
-RenderDevice.FramePacingMethod 1
-Render.DrawScreenInfo 1

Here what happened after trying them:
-MANTLE: Utilization still very low at 40% and fps was as before around 60fps @1080p+resolution scale 200%.
I was able to see the amount of vram used and it showed 3.700MB/3.000MB

-DIRECT3d11.1: My utilization went up to 80% and fps is great at 120-160fps!
The amount of vram is not being shown anymore, don't know why. I haven't changed anything else.


I don't know how to explain that...

Perfoverlay shows the gpu and cpu render times at the bottom.

RenderDevice.FramePacingMethod alters the mantle frame pacing method. Not available on DX. Available settings are 0 = off, 1=on balanced frame pacing, 2 = extreme frame pacing, very smooth but lowers fps. 0 or 1 are recommended.

Render.DrawScreenInfo tells you what renderer you're using and if using Mantle shows how much vram you're using.

From the info you've give me you're exceeding the vram limit. As i said in my original message to you Mantle uses slightly more vram than DX. You need to stay well below 3000MB of vram usage. If you want to use those settings on Mantle you'll need to back off the resolution scale a bit.

 

[F3r4_N3n3m]

ok... done some more testing.

MANTLE:
renderdevice.framepacingmethod 2 (Default) 100fps
renderdevice.framepacingmethod 1 (your Suggestion) 120fps
ResolutionScale@125% makes me have arround 2.600MB VRAM in use. That way I am reaching 120fps and smooth gameplay at 1080p@ULTRA.
Another remark: I get "Job Threads = 3" with Mantle.
I am also reading GPU utilization 40% and CPU utilization 60%.


DX11.1:
ResolutionScale@150% and I am getting 140fps and smooth gameplay at 1080p@ULTRA.
And "Job Threads = 2" with DX11.1
I am also reading GPU utilization 70% and CPU utilization 90%.


At the end they are both working fine now. Which is really not explanable, since nothing was changed.
I haven't flashed a new bios, and even with Standard configs it is running smooth now. Weird!

Anyhow Mantle is drawing less power from components so I think I might give it a Chance for some time now. See how it goes...
And when I Flash my Bios i'll be reporting here again.

Cheers!!!

 

[LtMatt]

Mantle provides a superior gaming experience. You have four powerful gpu's though so you can brute force your way to a smooth experience with DX. You might be able to up the res scale a bit further with Mantle as well. Just try to leave 200MB spare or so. Experiment.

 

[F3r4_N3n3m]

Hi LtMatt,

I have just tried my new bios files and I am getting weird results.
I simply copied what you have changed in yours, however using my original files as template.
I have doubled checked all files and they are ok in theory.

PROBLEM:
In Idle I get 501Mhz for GPU1 and 1100Mhz for GPU2, GPU3 and GPU4.
While gaming they all jump to 1100Mhz.

Needless to say that 1100MHz is the predefined OC that I have on Afterburner. I just don't understand how is it that Afterburner is changing my Idle clock.

Any ideas???

 

[LtMatt]

Hi LtMatt,

I have just tried my new bios files and I am getting weird results.
I simply copied what you have changed in yours, however using my original files as template.
I have doubled checked all files and they are ok in theory.

PROBLEM:
In Idle I get 501Mhz for GPU1 and 1100Mhz for GPU2, GPU3 and GPU4.
While gaming they all jump to 1100Mhz.

Needless to say that 1100MHz is the predefined OC that I have on Afterburner. I just don't understand how is it that Afterburner is changing my Idle clock.

Any ideas???

Not sure mate sorry. Have you got a 120hz screen or something? I know if you have a higher Hz screen i think the card resides in a slightly higher clock state.

 

[F3r4_N3n3m]

I found out what was responsible for that error... the new Catalyst 14.4 Beta!
I went back to 14.3 Beta and it is working now.


I am now trying to find my way through overclocking and I see a fixed Limitation on voltage at 1,2V.
How do I work around that?

The max OC I get with 1.2V is 1100/1575. My temperatures are very low at 50°C, so I'd like to push it more. I have set the base clock and boost clock at 1000/1500 1.2V and I am using Afterburner to push it further.

LtMatt, how far did you get with ocing?

 

[LtMatt]

I found out what was responsible for that error... the new Catalyst 14.4 Beta!
I went back to 14.3 Beta and it is working now.


I am now trying to find my way through overclocking and I see a fixed Limitation on voltage at 1,2V.
How do I work around that?

The max OC I get with 1.2V is 1100/1575. My temperatures are very low at 50°C, so I'd like to push it more. I have set the base clock and boost clock at 1000/1500 1.2V and I am using Afterburner to push it further.

LtMatt, how far did you get with ocing?

1200/1700 was the max i reached on 1.3v, but i don't think it was stable. For gaming i think the max was around 1150/1600. I was on air though so i tended to run 1000/1500 and undervolt the card to 1.135v.

 

[F3r4_N3n3m]

And do you have any idea why the Card isn't getting more than 1.2V?
On Afterburner it Shows that it has more... but on HWiNFO I see it only delivers 1.2V and it is not stable with that voltage.

 

[LtMatt]

And do you have any idea why the Card isn't getting more than 1.2V?
On Afterburner it Shows that it has more... but on HWiNFO I see it only delivers 1.2V and it is not stable with that voltage.

Did you manually tweak the bios? Because i found tweaking it from what i did stopped voltage control from working. I'd just download and use mine and leave it well alone. I found even the slightest change would lock the voltage for me. No idea why.

 

[F3r4_N3n3m]

Do you mean the base/boost clock and voltage?
Yes, I set them both to 1000/[email protected].

I also went with a less agressive TDP.

 

[LtMatt]

Do you mean the base/boost clock and voltage?
Yes, I set them both to 1000/[email protected].

I also went with a less agressive TDP.

I can't remember exactly. I just remembered only my bios worked and allowed voltage control. Just use mine.

 

[F3r4_N3n3m]

Hi guys....

I am going to post a few new observations I made during latest testing.

Although I am getting satisfying Performance on BF4, it still works with a low GPU and CPU utilization. I have been trying to optimize this but couldn't find a real working fix.
Parallel to that I have been trying to make Arma 3 run with reasonable Performance, which seems to be an impossible Task!
I have also tried something that I haven't done in a very Long time, running my CPU and GPU at stock clocks.

Here are some relative observations. Both games were tested at their original ULTRA Settings and on a not so demanding Single Player mission:
- BF4 is not affected by reducing CPU clock from 4.5GHz to 3.4GHz. Arma 3 reduced 10fps by doing the same.
- Arma 3 is getting only half the GPU utilization that I have on BF4. And the CPU utilization is the same at ~70%, although on Arma 3 I see more dynamic on the graph;
- BF4 uses 40% more GPU Memory than Arma 3;
- BF4 uses 25% more RAM than Arma3;
- BF4 gets in average 175% better FPS than Arma 3.

The comparison is not to be taken so seriously, since These are two different games. It is however peculiar to see that Arma 3 is using less GPU Memory and less RAM. I really didn't expect that.
And to say that my BF4 Performance is being limited by the CPU is just a big misconception. The bad scaling from crossfire is due to poor implementation I'd say.

 

[Woodsta888]

You can get GOPU usage upto 100% in BF4 by increasing the resolution scale. You must be running 1080p to get low GPU utilisation. Same for the Draw distance in Arma 3. My 7990 runs that quite well. Not done any proper benches but I hadn't really looked at GPU utilization.

 

[F3r4_N3n3m]

You can get GOPU usage upto 100% in BF4 by increasing the resolution scale. You must be running 1080p to get low GPU utilisation. Same for the Draw distance in Arma 3. My 7990 runs that quite well. Not done any proper benches but I hadn't really looked at GPU utilization.

I am using Resolution scale 125% in BF4. And going any further has an Impact on fps.

In Arma 3 my GPU utilization goes up when I reduce the draw distance. Because I reduce the bottleneck on CPU and the GPU works more.

Could you please check your Performance and GPU/CPU utilization in bothe BF4 and Arma 3? Please share your values here.

Thx!

 

[almighty15]

Might have a 7990'on the way to replace my 290.

Matt I assume the 7990 is compatible with the 7900 series BIOS editing tools that I once used on my 7950/7970's?

 

[Uncle Petey]

Yes.