HD5830 underperforming

[greenclaws]

Ordered an XFX 1GB HD5830 XXX yesterday and it arrived today.

I've installed it and got everything running but it's been running at 15 frames per second on Rift on High which isn't a very demanding game. So I used PerformanceTest 7 to benchmark it and it scored 1600 whereas the benchmark speed for the stock card is 2200 and this one is meant to be overclocked.

Is there anything I'm doing wrong? It seems that it's being underpowered. I have a Seasonic S12 II SS-500GB 500W PSU from 2007 and it has both power cables plugged in. One is a dedicated 6 pin, the other one is a 6 pin that has a further 2 attached on an offshoot cable.

Also, the fan squeaks

 

[greenclaws]

I have the latest drivers. As a side note, the fan was really going berzerk and loud before I put the latest drivers on and it was a 'default card'. Is that meant to happen?

I'm not running dual monitors. I'll check the GPU-z program you recommend.

 

[greenclaws]

The benchmark has now gone down to 1276 so that's half what it should be. I have no idea what this means but in GPU-Z the Sensor readings are:

GPU Core Clock 400 mhz
GPU Memory Clock 900 mhz
GPU Temperature 31 C
Fan speed 21%

This doesn't change when benchmarking, except the GPU Temp goes up to 42 degrees C

 

[greenclaws]

I know I'm posting on Overclockers but sadly I'm not much of an overclocker. I'm not using any overclocking software, it's the XXX edition of the card which has overclocking at the bios or hardware level, whatever it is they do xD. I have the latest drivers on.

Have we ruled out that it's not getting enough power from the PSU? I don't see why not as I've got the required wattage and two native 6 pin power plugs. Or was I supposed to use the enclosed adapters?

I don't have another PC to test it in but I was going to reinstall Windows 7 soon anyway, so I'll do it now.

 

[greenclaws]

Thank you Teal'c for all your useful advice I'll give it a go.

 

[greenclaws]

Overdrive is greyed out. I've done some digging and found out that it will only unlock if the SATA settings are set to IDE (!!!). I have mine set to ACHI because I have a flash based boot drive and setting it to IDE will actually slow it down and/or damage it.

 

[greenclaws]

I managed to get Overdrive working and now it confirms that it switches over to 840/4500 when doing the benchmark....

However...

Two of those have the same quad core CPU that I have so it's not like that should affect it. The other cards are close to the 2200 yardstick set by the 'generic'.

Also game performance is still bad, it struggles with Minecraft (!) and Rift runs at 20 frames per second but it seems more like 5.

 

[greenclaws]

Ummm! Very weird then... This is also the only time I've actually seen graphics run smoothly using the card.

 

[greenclaws]

You need to overclock the Q6600 to at least around 3.0GHz if you want to have half decent frame rate in games.

Ha, what a waste of money the Q6600 turned out to be huh. I bought it back when it was meant to be the future of computer power and 4 years later most programs still don't even use 64bit let alone 4 cores. I'd upgrade but I'm waiting for those bios-less motherboards to surface.

Now this is interesting. For fun I thought I'd try to overclock to 3.0GHz using some instructions I found on google. It involved setting a lot of things from Auto and Turbo to Manual and Normal (unlocked after setting to manual). It didn't work at all and the computer reset itself and dropped the CPU ratio and FSB frequency in bios, but kept all the Manual and Normal settings for RAM, memory and PCI-E frequency. This made the first benchmark go up over 400 points.

Everything still runs terribly but I at least know it's a motherboard setting somewhere... maybe?

 

[greenclaws]

Overclocked to 3Ghz using

9x333
Voltage 1.275
System Memory SPD 2.40
PCI-E frequency 100MHz

off a video on youtube xD Don't worry, I have a big CPU cooler as I don't like fan noise.

Overall PerformanceTest score went from 1094 to 1825
3D graphics score went from 1653 to 2340(!)

Windows 7 Experience index went from
Processor 6.1 Memory 6.1 Graphics 5.9 Gaming Graphics 5.9 HDD 7.7
to
Processor 7.2 Memory 7.2 Graphics 7.6 Gaming Graphics 7.6 HDD 7.7

It must have something to do with the automatic settings for PCI-E the motherboard has plus the speed of the CPU as was said.

Thank you everybody, this shows there's nothing wrong with the card. I think improvement to actual games might take place when I do a format?

 

[greenclaws]

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R. Setting it to 3.2 made it just reset itself, which is why I looked for a 3 Ghz solution. I don't really want to increase the fan as fan noise really annoys me for some reason