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My 5870 experience - Problems

Aurhinius

Aurhinius

Aurhinius

Associate
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
1,495
So I decided to upgrade my GTX280 for a 5870 seemed a reasonable performance increase and then the problems started.

Seems ATI do something strange with bios memory space reservation.

Install ATI card - BIOS starts, Adaptec raid controller loads okay. Onboard intel raid controller goes to load and I get the following error

no space to load PCI option rom.

PC fails to boot.

Hrrmmmm

Switch intel onboard raid controller to AHCI. Pc boots fine.

Go to try my favourite directx 9 game. 5870 frame rate is worse than GTX280. Switch game to directx 10. Things improve by almost 100%.

Hrrrmmmm


Needless to say the card is being returned.

I am sure there are many happy 5870 users out there. Is it a bad card? No.

Is it right for me, NO!

1. I shouldn't have to disable a raid controller to get my pc to boot because ATI is doing something obscure in the bios. Nvidia doesn't do this.

2. Directx 9 support should be strong games are still primarily directx 9.

Before anyone suggests it. Bios is the latest one for my board. This is not a board issue it is an ATI GPU issue. Works fine with an nvidia card :-)

So be warned, your experience may vary ;-)
 
I've had nothing like that or even heard about it before. Update your BIOS?

And you try the card with one game? ONE game. And return it because of that... seriously, are you joking?? The card is on BETA drivers at the moment.

I've found many small bugs with 5870 BETA drivers, but have tried my crossfired 5870's with over 25 games, and while certainly not up to NV driver standards, theres no show stoppers. And miles better than the 4xxx series release day drivers. Give it some time, then decide.
 
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not a foxconn mobo is it? if so thats your problem, someone else having similar issue, foxconns dont seem to be able to handle RAID and high PCI-E load, if not foxconn then dunno
 
Fair point about the one game though if that one game is the game I play the most then it has an effect on whether I would keep the card.

Bottom line is that on my board. Biostar Tpower X58 it is reserving some bios memory space that it shouldn't be that causes the board to not boot.

Yes I can run the intel controller in AHCI but I shouldn't have too.

Directx 9 is rubbish and yes they might be beta drivers but launching a product with substandard drivers is pretty silly.

I'm not an nvidia fanboy otherwise I would not have bought an ATI card but I have to say I have never had an issue with an nvidia card or found substandard performance in backward compatible titles.

I say backward compatible because I give ATI the credit that the 5870 is directx 10/11 hardware.

One thing I do think that ATI are doing with the 5870 that is great is the surround gaming support. I would love to have that and I am sure nvidia will pick up on it.

Sound through HDMI is nice too.

So big props for ATI in that respect.
 
I also have a X58 board which obviously has the same intel controller and do not have them issues, so it's likely a Biostar thing, and not really ATI's fault. It would almost certainly be a BIOS issue with that board.

And you've still only used one DX 9 game right? but then go on to say DX 9 support is rubbish... well like i've said i've tested atleast 25 games now, most of them DX 9, and i've not had any performance problems like you mention (but a couple of other bugs). And if that game runs fine in DX 10 mode anyway, whats the problem?

I always found ATI's drivers sub standard on product release, they just aint as good as Nvidia's. But atleast wait for the next set of drivers and see if they improve things.
 
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Aurhinius said:
Loadsamoney - it works fine if you switch the intel raid off or in to IDE/AHCI mode.

Ludomundo - not sure how you figure this is my inability to configure my pc. Considering it was me who found the work around for it.

I'll be waiting for GT300 regardless
Click to expand...

well u have found the work around but u havent fixed the problem? Remap ur pci addresr? Change ur pci slot? Update bios? No?
 
i've had this before on a amd motherboard. theres a limit on how many bios's are loaded on some motherboard. raid controllers have they own rom/bios's, also graphic cards.
 
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if you read, you will see he is on the latest BIOS


the ATI card is on beta drivers so its going to do strange things in gaming to start off with, I m not going to mention that one game as someone already did.

Saying that, what makes you so sure the GTX300 isnt going to do the same, if the mobo has a design flaw? when the PCIe is under load
 
AMG said:
if you read, you will see he is on the latest BIOS


the ATI card is on beta drivers so its going to do strange things in gaming to start off with, I m not going to mention that one game as someone already did.

Saying that, what makes you so sure the GTX300 isnt going to do the same, if the mobo has a design flaw? when the PCIe is under load
Click to expand...
yeah

but its nothing to do with drivers for the error part..

has he saying it says no space to load PCI option rom, (at post)when raid is on. no drivers are loaded at post.

that why i've said theres a limit on how many rom/bios's are loaded on some motherboards.
 
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Firstly I would start off with, comp specs, what mobo, what raid controller etc, etc.

As for instantly claiming its not the mobo because Nvidia card works fine, well, thats an incorrect conclusion, all you can say is the mobo works well with the Nvidia card, thats it. The bios might simply be geared to a Nvidia card and the way Nvidia initialize because the mobo makers were working with Nvidia cards.


There have been issues with certain bios's and X2 cards because the bios needs to know which bios (for which core) to boot first, almost everyone had fixes for that. It was also a mobo issue, not a bad design, bios's just hadn't implemented a feature to check which core to boot first even though they should have. It was just an unused feature that should have been there ready to work. It was fixed within days of release on almost every mobo.

If I recall correctly, there were tonnes of problems in the past with new Nvidia cards also, needing new bios's on loads of mobo's and not booting with certain PSU's.

It happens, new hardware you can almost be certain will work to the industry standards, the problem is old bios's don't have to adhere or work with every standard, to still get 99.999999999999999% of systems running fine. They often won't spot bugs, if they simply don't come up.

That doesn't mean the mobo makers did anything wrong, nor ATi. The fact the card works for most people out the box suggests they did nothing out of the ordinary, just some small bug never cropped up before and its 99% a bios issue with your mobo. Latest bios does not equal no bugs, not even close.

I'd suggest talking to the mobo makers asap, detailing your spec(fully) and the issue and seeing if they can't come up with a fix.

Likewise there could well be things to do first in the bios, which pci-e slot to initialise first could be the problem, could be one of many issues to be honest.

As for saying your favourite game isn't great in dx9, but is great in dx10, other than the fact I can't see a reason for not running DX10, name the game, it might be an easy fix anyone in this thread could have identified for you, its impossible, when you won't name the game though.
 
You can't come on here and say anything negative about the 5870 especialy as so many folks have bought them! I to have a GTX 280 but i'm waiting for the Nvidia card simply because the last few Nvidia cards (8800GTS 640mb, 8800GTS 512mb and GTX 280) have been fantastic with rock solid driver support. However if the new Nvidia card proves dissapointing i will go ATI but only when i've given Nvidia a fair chance.
 
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