Forcing 3870x2 to same 3d and low power 3d clocks?

[drunkenmaster]

How are people doing this mostly, bios flash to a hacked bios, or through rivatuner, not used rivatuner before to be honest and not sure if people are saying theres an easy option that i just can't find as its not recognising my version, or if you have to do a whole big profile thing which i haven't worked out how to do yet.

Any help appreciated, it seems to be dropping to the low power 3d clocks, or 2dclocks, not sure, while in game which really is a pain in the behind, doesn't do it for all games or doesn't seem to obviously. the rivatuner hardware monitoring is showing the speed popping up and down for sure. i dropped in the hacked rivatuner config from the vr-zone.com article on overclocking the 3870x2 , which let it recognise it so i can monitor hardware and have fan options now, but the fan options don't work, no difference setting to 20% or 100%.

Diff hacked config file for it anywhere to allow fan control?

I have the overclocked MSI version of the 3870x2.

 

[drunkenmaster]

are people that have problems seeing the 3d low power clocks being set or the 2d clocks. checking various threads everyone seems to say something different, but then most people don't seem to know theres a low power 3d mode so i'm assuming that would be the issue.

Getting another issue, think its phenom of this board but, a couple of games are barely using cpu power in game, but when i alt-tab to windows to check the cpu usage goes up to expected, but it shows that seconds before cpu usage was barely going. grrr, a touch infuriating. i wonder where the blame lies exactly as not everyone seems to have the same problem. ati, some cores, or misapplied bios settings from certain manu's. i assume it was design to do low power 3d in situations where literally almost nothing is being done, basic games or, i dunno what, but it really should stay in full power mode in things like cod4, cnc3 and so on. very choppy performance.

EDIT:- i also kind of get that feeling that overclocking isn't giving very big boosts in large part as its rop/bandwidth limited as opposed to needing more raw power. cheers for the bios info though, think i really need to do it as opposed to want to, this mobo/cpu has been so dodgey of late flashing seems a touch more risky than normal.

 

[drunkenmaster]

it will be cpu limited at 1280x1024, and in 3dmark and the like, but it isn't at 1920x1200 with max quality settings. the only app that shows any increase at all between 3/3.5Ghz and up to 4.5Ghz is 3dmark. who cares about it tbh, i certainly don't. Just waiting on mobo rma then i'm dropping it back in my Q6600 system.

the low power clocks are a pain, in cod4 and a couple others its not just dropping for a couple seconds at a time to low power clocks, it can be for a split second, or 10 seconds, 20, maybe even a minute at a time, ridiculous at the mo.

8.2's didn't come out that early in feb did they, thought it was roughly middle of feb which probably means at least a week or two, even 3 before we get the 8.3's.

i do use 3dmark to check a system's working well. even in 3dmark if you run it at 1920x1200 its not cpu limited anymore and overclocking really did very very little in terms of scaling score, even 1920x1200 and high aa/af settings. then again the MSI is default at 850 core so a touch higher and closer to that limit.

anyway, yay gigabyte to take over a month to rma my mobo, they don't even sell the higher end P35 boards anymore, no where in the uk (usual places including OCUK) have the Dq6/ds5 in stock. gigabyte probably won't replace it and will send out a spanking new X38, which the store could just have sent me a month ago anyway , grrrr.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Crap, not sure how to flash it, following this method basically

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2782722&postcount=12

but both the cores when checking info under dos show as being 64kb, where when i downloaded the bios's from windows through gpu-z one came up as 64kb and the other as 44 as it was supposed to.

Not sure if i should just make sure i flash the 44kb one to the slave bios and the 64kb to the master as it shows which is which in dos with atiflash. however i'm not quite sure.

EDIT:- just went back through and grabbed the bios's through dos and got the same sizes and the the slave came up as smaller so guess i'll go ahead and flash the smaller file to the slave bios and pray. Someone else mentioned on xtremesys that they had a similar issue and said it flashed fine but not sure if he did something different before flashing the bios's.

 

[drunkenmaster]

think the whole 3000 series has 3d full power, 3d low power and 2d clocks with uvd aswell which i assume is high def playback stuff right?

Either way the problem seems to only really be a lot of games where despite being mid action and needing full juice it will drop to 3d low power speeds, which is basically 2d speeds.

Either way, i've flashed the bios's i got out of gpu-z as they matched in size the files i got through ati flash from dos. Fixed the 3d low power clocks to same as 3d high power and first game i tried was noticeably faster within the first 30 seconds playing, WAY WAY better. Better to the point the card seemed completely crap without the fix and as good as I hoped it might be with the fix. Serious oversight by ATi and even worse that they didn't add in a powerplay on/off option in any set of drivers since release, or a hotfix, anything.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Thing is this problem isn't limited to ATi by any means. AMD and Intel have the issue to a lesser degree. The problem is everyones adding power saving stuff, but unfortunately even the best algorithms and software possible can't possibly account for every situation in which you might want either high or low load. Really the mistake AMD made with the 3000 series is you simply MUST have control over it to some degree, you have to be able to turn it off. To be honest there is probably a huge percentage of people buying 3850's and similar and running on a tiny resolution and don't ever mess with graphical settings and could do with a low power mode. But there are always going to be those of us playing max settings and we need the option to turn it off.

AMD really needed to add a powerplay on/off feature, actually with the 2nd or 3rd release after the 3870 non x2 was out as it was an issue then.

Now i just need my 2nd set of crucial rma'd to get back up to 4 gigs, and rebuild this comp with my old q6600 and new mobo as that finally got replaced. The phenom in all honesty seems more than powerful enough for gaming, the only issue is massive instability with this damn gigabyte board that loads of people seem to have issues with if its got a phenom in

 

[drunkenmaster]

same not run, will do it in a minute but i've not got high cpu clocks or tested 8.3 before flash for 3dmark so we'll see what comes up. I think if i pushed the cpu to 2.6Ghz or so it got 13.5-14k 3dmark, suggests that crossfire was enabled, didn't check on the 3d load thing but you simply won't get higher than that without higher clocked cpu.

Cod4 is way better for me, would have to reinstall crysis to check but then again i last played that on a 2900xt with a q6600 at almost 4Ghz and when it was first released so that ain't gonna tell me diddly squat


hmmm, very weird. A lot of people seem to be saying the 8.3's are giving very low cpu scores, i'm fairly sure my cpu score is down quite a bit but my sm3 score is up a lot.

lol, was just looking in rivertuner monitoring and their were some semi long periods stuck at 2d speeds, but i just realised thats obviously the 2 cpu tests mid way through theres brief drops between 2d/3d at quite large intervals which i assume to be loading the tests, and then sustained 3d speed through the tests would account for higher framerate(from what i recall) and much higher sm2/3 scores. Not a clue why 8.3 is killing cpu score so much and seemingly only in 3dmark. driver using a heck of a lot more cpu power than before maybe?