AMD FX 8320 analysis

[almighty15]

Thanks almighty. Unfortunately my 7970 is physically locked with a resistor - I've used the ghz edition bios which attempts to up volts, but then it crashes as without removing the resistor it is physically limited If I was brave enough I'd attempt to remove the resistor.

That's easy... You use the old Nvidia 780i reference board pencil mod trick.

Find the resister and with a 2B pencil put a few strokes between the 2 soldered ends of the resister as that will allow extra voltage to flow.

 

[ALXAndy]

Sleeping Dogs. Note - I'm running the DLC extreme textures.

 

[gpuerrilla]

So it detects half the card as only shows 3Gb vram?

 

[ALXAndy]

So it detects half the card as only shows 3Gb vram?

Yeah. You don't get 6gb vram with the 7990. Basically it will use each 3gb to load in pretty much the same textures.

Common misunderstanding with dual GPU cards tbh.

 

[Martini1991]

As an FYI Mantle is touted (By AMD) for dual cards like 7990's to use the 6GB (So, your VRAM would stack, not mirror)

How they're doing that, how it works is beyond me however.

 

[almighty15]

As an FYI Mantle is touted (By AMD) for dual cards like 7990's to use the 6GB (So, your VRAM would stack, not mirror)

How they're doing that, how it works is beyond me however.

It's easy dude.... The memory has to be mirrors because of how they render the frame together.

Because in AFR each card is working on the same scene and assets both cards need the same frame buffer.

With Mantle they can have much finer control over what GPU renders in the game scene so memory will not have to be mirrored.

 

[Martini1991]

I know how it works now .

But I don't know enough to start guessing why mantle would change it.

I could take a stab in the dark for example, but that'd be all it is.

However, with Mantle working on Nvidia (If Nvidia do their work obviously) that's where I start to get confused, unless SLI won't stack (But why not?) so who knows really.

 

[almighty15]

I know how it works now .

But I don't know enough to start guessing why mantle would change it.

I could take a stab in the dark for example, but that'd be all it is.

However, with Mantle working on Nvidia (If Nvidia do their work obviously) that's where I start to get confused, unless SLI won't stack (But why not?) so who knows really.

SLI can stack, it's just bound by current DirectX limitations.

Question is will AMD allow full control over Nvidia cards or will they lock certain features out to ensure there own have a slight advantage

 

[ALXAndy]

Batman AC





Oddly the min FPS is literally one stutter but the average remains really high. It's when it loads the second level.

 

[ALXAndy]

I thought as much... It's like it has a glitch similar to Heaven and Valley. Min FPS was easily raised by running the bench a couple more times.

 

[teppic]

I'll run a comparison Batman AC (4770k/670 SLI) later. I expect it'll be much the same, though the Batman games only run on 2 cores I think.

 

[ALXAndy]

I'll run a comparison Batman AC (4770k/670 SLI) later. I expect it'll be much the same, though the Batman games only run on 2 cores I think.

Hmm good point ! core analysis inbound...

 

[Alkalinepro5]

I'm thinking of getting one of these or a 8350 given that the difference is just £30 now.

Do you know If these things run hotter than Phenom II's? I have heat issues in my case, and I need to know If these things handle heat atleast just as a good as my trusty old 965 xD

 

[teppic]

Hmm good point ! core analysis inbound...

Although in saying that I forgot about PhysX, even switched off you can't get rid of it, and it'll be offloaded to the CPU on a 7990.

(And I've played way too much Batman lately to know that that screenshot is from the Bowery district)

 

[ALXAndy]

Plenty of use there. Odd spike on one of the cores mind.. I'm beginning to think that loads are spread around much better in Windows 8. I'm seeing 8 cores being used when I really shouldn't, which is starting to make me think that Windows 8 (given it supports the FX series properly and has had work done to make it so) is really the only way on an FX 8.

 

[teppic]

Plenty of use there. Odd spike on one of the cores mind.. I'm beginning to think that loads are spread around much better in Windows 8. I'm seeing 8 cores being used when I really shouldn't, which is starting to make me think that Windows 8 (given it supports the FX series properly and has had work done to make it so) is really the only way on an FX 8.

It's probably using 4 threads loosely, but reliant on one. Windows 8 is better at distributing threads across all available cores, which can make it look better than it is really (it doesn't increase multi-threading at all).

4770K 4.5GHz/670 SLI result:

Spoiler

 

[teppic]

Sleeping Dogs results:

Spoiler

 

[ALXAndy]

Looking at Batman it's clear it's probably only using a core or two. Which is a shame because Batman AA (the first one) worked with Quafire so they've obviously put in the legwork for GPUs.

SD? I can't try that one on my SLI rig. Batman I can, but it means shifting a 20gb file :S

 

[teppic]

Looking at Batman it's clear it's probably only using a core or two. Which is a shame because Batman AA (the first one) worked with Quafire so they've obviously put in the legwork for GPUs.

SD? I can't try that one on my SLI rig. Batman I can, but it means shifting a 20gb file :S

Batman's pounding one core quite heavily on your setup, but that could be PhysX effects being offloaded. It's using all the cores, but most of them are not used to any useful extent.

 

[ALXAndy]

Well I ran it on the other desktop. 44 FPS min with the CPU at 4.3ghz. It likes Nvidia....