Powercolor 4870x2 problems

[Retromatic]

I got one of these the other day and I've had nothing but problems with it, first of all it would not run Crysis Warhead at all, crashing every time before the game loaded and artifacting loads in Warhammer Online. After a battle with installing 8.8/8.9 drivers with errors and a couple of reformats I managed to get the 8.10 drivers which at least ran the games. Now Warhead runs but trips up quite badly every time I turn the character around and when I enabled 8x AA the pc reset itself.

Warhammer runs pretty well now but it's struggling to do so. The only game I've found that runs 100% perfect is UT3, but that pretty much did on my 8800GTS.

To be honest I haven't got a clue whether it's a bottleneck in my system, ATI driver problem or a faulty 4870x2, so some advice would be much appreciated.

My system specs are : Asus PK5-E/Wifi-AP motherboard, E8400 3.0ghz processor, 4GB OCZ Platinum ram, 850W Coolermaster Power Supply, 24" Benq monitor, 32-bit Vista Home Premium

Edit - Idle temps are 80-90 for both cards and don't seem to change when under load

 

[Retromatic]

As a follow up, heres some Crysis Warhead Benchies :

10/06/2008 08:51:46 - Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium 32-bit Service Pack 1


DirectX 9.0c GAMER 3X @ Map: ambush @ 0 1920 x 1200 AA 0xx
==> Framerate [ Min: 11.79 Max: 55.21 Avg: 38.14 ]

DirectX 10 GAMER 3X @ Map: ambush @ 0 1920 x 1200 AA 0xx
==> Framerate [ Min: 16.88 Max: 45.05 Avg: 30.23 ]


DirectX 10 ENTHUSIAST 3X @ Map: ambush @ 0 1920 x 1200 AA 0xx
==> Framerate [ Min: 13.20 Max: 30.76 Avg: 22.35 ]


Note : Running the actual game ran worse than the benchies in those settings.

 

[kitch9]

You're running 32 bit Vista with a 2GB Video card. 32 Bit windows can only see 4GB max, it may be a touch less than that, so a large portion of your usable ram will be used by your video card leaving your system a little RAM starved. The stuttering you are suffering will be because your system is moving data around too much to accommodate this limitation. There can be stability issues too when the OS starts to run out of physical ram and has to use the page file too much.

I'd consider the move to a 64 Bit OS now you have a 4870x2......

 

[Retromatic]

Thanks for the reply, I was considering that, or just getting an 280 GTX, I'd prefer not to though, so i'd likely see a big performance increase with 64-bit? At the moment the 4870x2 runs not much better than my 8800GTS.

 

[kitch9]

Thanks for the reply, I was considering that, or just getting an 280 GTX, I'd prefer not to though, so i'd likely see a big performance increase with 64-bit? At the moment the 4870x2 runs not much better than my 8800GTS.

I would say 64-Bit would allow your system to use all of its resources and provide a performance boost. When games stutter or crash its a sign that data is being pulled from page files etc, thus halting the game momentarily or crashing it when the data it expects does not tip up in time.

The 4870x2 will be limiting you rather than helping you at the minute as it is taking up a over half of the ram available to your OS. Do you have HDD activity at the time of your stuttering and crashing? That is a sure sign that data that should be in ram is being paged to your HDD.

Why are you holding back from 64bit?

 

[Retromatic]

There is no hard drive activity that I can tell when stuttering occurs and slowdowns occur.

I've managed to get MS to send me a 64-bit version for an extra £17, so thats pretty cool.

Would chucking in an extra 2gb of Ram help at all? Or will the upgrade to 64-bit be enough you recon?

Thanks again.

 

[kitch9]

I've got 4gb ram with a 4870x2 and I've never maxed it out. I think you'll be good. 4Gb seems to be a sweet spot unless you are doing heavy duty graphics editing or something. Most games tend to be 32bit so they can only address a certain amount of memory themselves. The beauty of having a 64bit OS is that it can allocate the app its own pool of RAM, and move all the other stuff in your ram to another pool that does not need to be addressed by it.

Maybe dual boot with your 32bit install and compare to two. I find 64bit windows to be generally more responsive.

*Edit* I find Crysis and Warhead run better with texture streaming ON. Turning it off via the CVARS causes me big framerate problems. I can run both maxed with 8XAA at 1680x1050 and get around 30FPS with the odd dip. With the 8.10 beta drivers I find I get more frames with 8xaa on than off......Weird.

 

[Retromatic]

Okay I'll stick with 4gb for now then and await the outcome of the 64 bit version when it arrives. I assume in my case texture streaming would be on by default as I haven't done anything in the CVARS?

 

[kitch9]

Yup, streaming is enabled by default....

 

[Boogle]

Most games tend to be 32bit so they can only address a certain amount of memory themselves. The beauty of having a 64bit OS is that it can allocate the app its own pool of RAM, and move all the other stuff in your ram to another pool that does not need to be addressed by it.

Kind of. On a 32bit OS, due to the way memory is accessed, applications can address up to 2GB of RAM - no more. Often people say 'ah well with PAE you can access 4GB' - not true. PAE requires not only application support, but driver support too. Outside of some servers and a few select workstations PAE was not actually used even if enabled. The /3GB switch is similiar to this, it has very little effect. Additionally 32bit Windows NT (NT/2k/XP/Vista) limits user applications to a total of 2GB virtual address space between them all. This is a bit of a pain if you heavily multitask, but where the /3GB switch comes in. If you use the /3GB switch with a 1GB+ graphics card, your system WILL crash.

On a 64bit OS, 32bit applications can theoretically address up to a full 4GB all to themselves. The executable has to be specifically marked as allowing 4GB addressing - otherwise Windows will restrict it to 2GB. This is because apps that don't expect to access over 2GB can crash.

The amount of RAM actually used is fairly irrelevant. For example if a game requires 2GB of memory, and you have only 1GB - it will still work. Data that hasn't been referenced will be moved to the hard disk (page file), to make room for the fresh stuff. Performance could be dire - but it will work. This goes for every application on the system. This is why apps you've had minimised for a while take a while to appear again - Windows moved almost all of the application to the page file, and now its moving it back into RAM. Windows moves apps to the page file to leave plenty of room should a memory-intensive app (like a game) suddenly start up. Vista changed this behaviour slightly, which is why people suddenly started moaning about it being memory intensive. It's not that intensive - but it likes to keep stuff in RAM longer, and cache stuff in memory that you use regularly for fast opening (SuperFetch).

Same with multicore processors - one core isn't designated for 'other' stuff. Instead Windows picks the least active core at the time for performing the next task. That's why 9/10 on a dualcore system both cores have an even load. If one core has an excessively high load, then that shows poor balancing and therefore poor perofmrnace - unless of course a high priority single-threaded app is running.

 

[Retromatic]

Well it's installed and has improved things but not by much, here's my new benchmarks :

DirectX 10 ENTHUSIAST 3X @ Map: ambush @ 0 1920 x 1200 AA 0xx
==> Framerate [ Min: 13.46 Max: 37.74 Avg: 27.10 ]

 

[jonnylaris]

thats about right for your specs lev, but has the crashing eased up a bit?

 

[Retromatic]

thats about right for your specs lev, but has the crashing eased up a bit?

Yikes, looks like an overclock is in order then. I'm borrowing an XFX 280 GTX soon to give a comparison on my system.

The crashing was sorted with the 8.10 previously, it was just the general framerate issues in most games that was bugging me.

 

[jonnylaris]

well i get about 35fps average on very high on 1920 x 1200 (crysis benchmark tool) with the spec in my sig. You will probably find zero performance difference in crysis with the 280, maybe about 2/3 fps less.

I'l try the warhead test when i get home 2nite and let you know what i get there.

 

[kitch9]

Yikes, looks like an overclock is in order then. I'm borrowing an XFX 280 GTX soon to give a comparison on my system.

The crashing was sorted with the 8.10 previously, it was just the general framerate issues in most games that was bugging me.

When you say not by much you've increased performance by around 25%.......

Quite a bit in my book.... That E8400 is crying out for some extra FSB.

 

[Retromatic]

When you say not by much you've increased performance by around 25%.......

Quite a bit in my book.... That E8400 is crying out for some extra FSB.

I should have been clearer - on paper it runs better, unfortunately the Warhead FBWH tool looks and runs better than when i'm actually playing the game though, which doesnt seem all that different.

Edit Fraps gives it 19/20 fps at that RES, oh well I planned to OC the 8400 anyway, i'm sure that will help a fair bit