I've updated the Motherboard's bios to a realease from late September. This has seen a slight improvement in the reported figures but not performance. The clocks will drop to 600/900 every three or four seconds but immediately revert back to 850/1200. The GPU load is now at 0% but spikes to 21% every five seconds or so. Both of these are at idle. All the playback and performance issues remain. I've tried turning off aero, not installing the ATI audio drivers and video playback in VLC - while the problems differ slightly (more flickering in Media Play and more stuttering in Quicktime) it is far from satisfactory. I'm going to have a detailed look through the bios to see if there are new settings to adjust.
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HIS Radeon 5870 performance problems
- Thread starter Ryx
- Start date
D13, I've just tried that again - essentially the only other thing currently connected to the board is the RAID card (hardware RAID5). This time it seemed to work, clock speeds dropped right down and CPU usage at 0% when idle. Unfortunately all of my HD media is on the RAID array, so having one without the other is not really an option!
Starting to look like the old BIOS wasn't helping but essentially there's some sort of conflict with the Highpoint card. Very frustrating.
Starting to look like the old BIOS wasn't helping but essentially there's some sort of conflict with the Highpoint card. Very frustrating.
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I'm about 90% certain it's a conflict with the RAID card or a mobo issue when multiple PCI-E slots are in use - it's working perfectly now with the new BIOS installed and the RAID card unplugged.
As for the old hardware - I just never throw anything out, much to my girlfriend's irritation. One faulty motherboard, that went wrong out of warranty, hardly makes me heavy handed...I hope. This is the first real problem I've had in years of building PCs, I may try Asus tech support - ATI's has not been very helpful.
As for the old hardware - I just never throw anything out, much to my girlfriend's irritation. One faulty motherboard, that went wrong out of warranty, hardly makes me heavy handed...I hope. This is the first real problem I've had in years of building PCs, I may try Asus tech support - ATI's has not been very helpful.
Well it's hardly ideal as I can't use the RAID card and the 5870 at the same time and as all my HD media is on the RAID array it renders it kind of pointless
The RAID card, though hardware, is very processor intensive so I'm thinking of switching to a more powerful card. Sadly RAID controllers are very expensive when they get good. I can't use the onboard RAID as it will only take 6 drives, which won't give me sufficient storage.
The RAID card, though hardware, is very processor intensive so I'm thinking of switching to a more powerful card. Sadly RAID controllers are very expensive when they get good. I can't use the onboard RAID as it will only take 6 drives, which won't give me sufficient storage.
The mistake I made was buying a cheap RAID card and I've regretted it ever since - I went for a high end spec on everything else and then got a £200 RAID card, in hindsight foolish. The entry level Highpoints, while claiming to have hardware RAID, make the CPU do a lot of the work (I have since established this from reading around, most reviews were positive) while a more expensive card £600+ should do it all. Highpoint are also very bad at updating their drivers and card BIOS (nothing has happened since April 2008). The motherboard should have no problems coping with the 5870 and a RAID card, which was why I got it in the first place - it was meant to be one of the first consumber boards that could cope with mass storage and a high end graphics card. I guess my only option is a more expensive RAID card but there is no guarantee it will improve performance.
I thought you might be interested to know I have sorted the problem - as I suspected in the end, the Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 was killing the performance by throttling the north bridge.
I've replaced the 2320 with a RocketRAID 3560 (upgraded to 2gig of onboard RAM) and it is now flying. The RAID5 array is reporting a transfer rate in excess of 500mb/sec in HD Tune, yet there is 0% CPU usage (it was around 15% with the 2320).
This has freed up the 5870 which is now excelling - I just got 23000+ in 3dmark without configuring it properly and on the old drivers. All of the previous problems are now corrected. So it would seem that you can have a media server and gaming machine in one...you just need to spend a lot on the RAID card
For those that are interested the spec of the system is now:
Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer
Intel i7 950 @ 3.07 ghz
6gb of RAM
350gb Raptor – boot drive
2tb Seagate- network drive
9 x Seagate 1.5tb drives in a RAID 5 array via a Highpoint RocketRAID 3560 (2gb of onboard RAM)
Pioneer 5090 Plasma display @ 1920 x 1080
Corsair HX450W running RAID array and a 1000w supply feeding the rest
I've replaced the 2320 with a RocketRAID 3560 (upgraded to 2gig of onboard RAM) and it is now flying. The RAID5 array is reporting a transfer rate in excess of 500mb/sec in HD Tune, yet there is 0% CPU usage (it was around 15% with the 2320).
This has freed up the 5870 which is now excelling - I just got 23000+ in 3dmark without configuring it properly and on the old drivers. All of the previous problems are now corrected. So it would seem that you can have a media server and gaming machine in one...you just need to spend a lot on the RAID card
For those that are interested the spec of the system is now:
Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer
Intel i7 950 @ 3.07 ghz
6gb of RAM
350gb Raptor – boot drive
2tb Seagate- network drive
9 x Seagate 1.5tb drives in a RAID 5 array via a Highpoint RocketRAID 3560 (2gb of onboard RAM)
Pioneer 5090 Plasma display @ 1920 x 1080
Corsair HX450W running RAID array and a 1000w supply feeding the rest