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ATi 4870X2

Republic

Republic

Republic

Associate
Joined
7 Oct 2011
Posts
138
Recently purchased an ATi 4870X2 from eBay. All installed, but I'm finding that even this card can't handle GTA:SA on highest settings without lag, even worse is GTA:IV on highest settings. Best way to describe that would be like a grandma on speed. The rest of my PC I'd of said was up to spec, hence the confusion. Any ideas?

AMD Phenom 9850 Quad Core 2.5Ghz Black Edition
AMD Standard CPU Heatsink + Fan
Asus M3A-7T Deluxe Motherboard
Corsair XMS2 PC6400 DDR2 800Mhz Memory 2 x 2048Mb
Western Digital Caviar 500Gb HD
HiS ATi 4870X2
15" TFT Monitor (DVI to VGA Adapter)
DVDRW IDE Drive
4 Cooling Fans
OS: Vista Ultimate 64bit, but looking to maybe get Windows 7? Not sure on the differences between them.
 
a dual GPu graphics card cant run GTA San Andreas on max settings?

There is seriously something wrong here.

Recommended Graphics card specs for GTA:SA
128mb VRAM
Pixel and Vertex shader 2.0

your graphics card has
either 512mb or 1gb (whatever card you have)
pixel and vertex shader 4.1
1600 stream processing units
etc etc

even my emachines netbook can run it, and these specs are, Windows 7 x32, 1gb ddr2 ram, intel atom 1.66ghz, and on-board graphics..
 
Look, to put it this simple.
I had an olod ati 4350 512mb card in my old internet surfer, bare in mind its not even a gaming card, with just a fin heatsink and no cooling fan.
That still managed to play crysis warhead, Ok it only give me 8fps, but since its not even remotely a gaming card, it did well to be able to do that.
So (put it bland and simple terms)
If your two graphics cards (built into one obviously but there are still two), if your two graphics cards cant play a game that was made years ago and can run on my netbooks onboard graphics, then dudeeee, you have one serious problem indeed..
And i know my old 4350 could play gta:sa perfectly on highest settings. (and remember, not even a gaming card)
 
Try disabling crossfire for SA? Though, yeah, sounds like a driver reinstall would be the next thing to do, and the most likely problem.
 
I can get about 60fps but when there are a lot of cars or players around the fps drops. I expected it to be able to play on full settings, 100fps+, totally smooth (not with fps drops, which I see as lag). The drivers I got were directly off the AMD website, suppose it could be the problem though? The card in question is the HiS branded 4870X2. My old graphics card struggled too, used to have everything on low and never got amazing fps. That was a nVidia 9500GT 512Mb (with the silent cooler) and I'm guessing I may have under / over estimated the performance of one of the cards. I think my logic was, 4870X2 has 2 cards inside, proper cooling and more performance. It should therefore be able to play even GTA:IV on max? Is there any numbers / details I can get you that will make it easier to diagnose the problem?

Edit: Also just to add, I only play at 1280 x 1024 (highest resolution my monitor supports, vga).
 
Oh - and thank you for the replies so far :). Tbh I did ask on another forum, problem I had though was everyone having a different opinion on how to fix it.
 
Republic said:
Edit: Also just to add, I only play at 1280 x 1024 (highest resolution my monitor supports, vga).
Click to expand...

To let that card stretch its legs you really want at the very least a 1680x1050 resolution. Even then I'd be inclined to go further as to ideally recommend a 1980x1080 capable monitor.
 
hmm cant think of anything that can help mate...

I am still really skeptical, the 4870s are brilliant cards, i owned one myself a couple of years back, absolutely fantastic...
I really am stumped.

perhaps try overclocking it a little, Concentrate mostly on clocking the core, (if you are comfortable and experienced with overclocking).

if not, let me know, will see what i can do.

EDIT: but still, even on a lower res, that card should be more than good enough.
Im asking some of my mates now, they are IT technicians, and do it for a living, they should be able to advise something
 
I've got a 4870x2 and run GTA4 fine on high at 1920x1200 (with AMD 1055T @ 3.6GHz).

Sounds like it's more a CPU issue if you only get fps drops when there's load of cars/players about.
 
gamerdude1989 said:
ive been reading a little about your problem mate.
and its all leading to this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9KfXIkAQjA&feature=related

apparently GTA:SA and GTA4 have problems on the 4870x2 cards..
I havent managed to find a fix for this yet.
But im working on it.

EDIT: make sure you have 1.07 patch.. this has helped a few people fix their problem.
Click to expand...

I'm on the 1.07 patch (had issues getting it to work on my pc after not playing it for a long time, found this and loads of random other things at least made it work). Also tried doing that the description of that video link says, found it change nothing rather annoyingly. Thank you for you're help so far :).

tibbsey said:
I've got a 4870x2 and run GTA4 fine on high at 1920x1200 (with AMD 1055T @ 3.6GHz).

Sounds like it's more a CPU issue if you only get fps drops when there's load of cars/players about.
Click to expand...

It could be, but with 4 cores I'd expect to be ok. Just done the GTA4 benchmark too, results at the bottom of this post.

ThePengu1n said:
Try updating your gfx drivers
Click to expand...

When I got the card I downloaded the drivers from the AMD website, the AMD Vision Engine Control Center is version 2011.0728.1756.30366. Also as another point, it appears that it is in there twice when I right click on the icon at the bottom right, but when I adjust the performance within the program, only the first one (which it looks like it has associated with my monitor) has the fan adjustment. Is this helpful information?

GTA:IV Benchmark Results (what it doesn't tell you, is how much it jumped/lagged!).

Statistics
Average FPS: 25.54
Duration: 36.97 sec
CPU Usage: 70%
System memory usage: 81%
Video memory usage: 70%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1280 x 1024 (75 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Shadow Quality: Very High
Reflection Resolution: Very High
Water Quality: Very High
Texture Filter Quality: Anisotropic x4
Night Shadows: Very High
View Distance: 100
Detail Distance: 100

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 2
Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
Video Driver version: 8.17.10.1091
Audio Adapter: Speakers (SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio)
AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 Quad-Core Processor

File ID: Benchmark.cli
 
Also just tried running Test Drive Unlimited 2 on full settings - epic lag on that too. CPU needs a boost, or is this graphics card not running quite right?
 
use CPU-Z to check the mainboard graphic interface link width (should be x16 i believe)

if it says something like x1 then the card may not be seated properly. Might be worth trying to reseat the card regardless.
 
DavieJG said:
use CPU-Z to check the mainboard graphic interface link width (should be x16 i believe)

if it says something like x1 then the card may not be seated properly. Might be worth trying to reseat the card regardless.
Click to expand...

Just checked - all is well there. Going to try reseating my hsf, appears that my cpu has been running very, very warm. Confusing thing is that I've had no unexpected shutdowns etc or anything even when under load. According to CoreTemp 1.0, my CPU is currently idle at 54 Celcius. The stock cooler shouldn't be that bad surely? Graphics card manual override of 60% fan is sat at a cushty 35 Celcius. Time to order some new thermal paste I think...
 
Republic said:
Just checked - all is well there. Going to try reseating my hsf, appears that my cpu has been running very, very warm. Confusing thing is that I've had no unexpected shutdowns etc or anything even when under load. According to CoreTemp 1.0, my CPU is currently idle at 54 Celcius. The stock cooler shouldn't be that bad surely? Graphics card manual override of 60% fan is sat at a cushty 35 Celcius. Time to order some new thermal paste I think...
Click to expand...

chips overheating could cause the problems you described. back when i spent my days playing C&C generals on a crappy acer laptop i had to sit the laptop on stilts to stop it overheating. if it wasn't on stilts, after about half an hour of gaming the frame rate (and audio playback) would slow to a crawl for 1-2mins and then go back to normal. never had any unexpected shutdowns or anything - just frame rate troughs - but the stilts solved the problem.
 
Last edited:
Would it have done any lasting damage? Some of the temps I saw, if accurate were incredibly scary that I'm surprised it's still running. On another note, my laptop overheats on occasion if I don't make allowances for it...
 
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