Is something wrong with my 4870X2

[Viral]

I don't know what to say, just finished extensive testing. After testing a 4850 in my PC there were no problems in Crysis or windows. Of course I was running at high not very high. So I was ready to say "yes" to the title of the thread.

I wanted to be sure, so I took both my PSU and 4870X2 to my mates place to test in his PC. He has an E6600 @ 3.06GHz, 4GB Geil, Gigabyte P43 and Samsung 750GB with my old Viewsonic P95f+. Well well, what would you know but at his place my 4870X2 on my PSU ran just fine! Still not the best performance in Crysis @ 1600x1200 2xAA Very High, between 50 and 17FPS, pretty much the same as 1920x1080 no AA.

The only difference was that we were using the 8.9beta drivers as we didn't have the 8.9's on us and his internet was shaped. So I brought it back here and tried again, no luck, crashed after 2 mins.

So this tells me what? It's got to be something in my rig conflicting with the X2, either that or the X2 pushes the power draw over the edge for my wall socket (I find this kind of unlikely).

So what could it be considering I've already tested RAM.... My TV, my motherboard... can't think of anything else.

I know this has dragged on for a long time but any advice from those still keeping up is very welcome! :headexplode: Is it worth testing the X2 in a different PCI-E 16x slot? I'm not going out tonight so I want to try whatever I can.

[Xion X2]

Yeah, try testing it in the bottom PCI-E slot and see if you can get it to work.

Your poor performance in Crysis could be due to the x8/x8 bandwidth on that P45. Crysis on very high uses up a ton of bandwidth. I know the card runs in a single PCI-E slot, but you're still running in Crossfire mode, so I wonder how it affects it.

I don't have a link on me, but go check out Tweaktown and their review on PCI-E bandwidth between the P45/X38/X48 on Crysis. There was quite a difference in performance.

[Lfctony]

Viral, have in mind that Crysis V.High is at times CPU limited(shadows,physics,particles). The dips in performance you are experiencing might be from your CPU and not your video card. You can test this by increasing AA levels. If your card performs the same, you are clearly limited by your CPU.

[ATi]

hope u fix it!

[AGibbon]

Wasn't there issues with the P45 chipset and the X2? Too tired to look around at this point in time. If so, maybe an updated MB bios?

[Viral]

It's the latest BIOS afaik, I'm thinking of getting an X48 for the hell of it. I didn't realise they were only $40 more. I'll get to testing soon, I didn't want to deal with it anymore after all the part swapping yesterday.

I'll read up on P45 limitations though, but I thought it was only P35 was was 8x/8x? I sware P45 was 16x/16x. Regardless an X48 would be nice for improved raid performance if not anything else.

Oh, and it really doesn't make sense that a P45 would have problems while a P43 wouldn't. Unless it is an issue that only needs a bios update to resolve.

EDIT: Ok great, I now know that P45 was a bad purchase, definitely only 8x/8x. Think I'll pay the extra for a Gigabyte X48-DS5 over the DS4. Too bad it's not in stock.

Just did a google search too and it seems that at least some people with gigabyte P45's are having issues with 4870x2's. Heh.

[Viral]

Ok well switching to the second PCI-E slot actually worked!. I played through the second half of relic and half of assault. Performance at this point is very lack-lustre. The worst so far is in the cut scene at the start of assault where you look at the AA guns with your bi-ops, dips to 10fps momentarily before going back up to 15fps. But it's hitting 15-18FPS all the damn time in assault :(

Enabling 2xAA loses me a couple of FPS, but I'm going to try overclocking as this board could still be limiting performance somehow and I want to rule that out.

[Viral]

Overclocked to 3.4 stock voltage with RAM at 4,4,4,12 timings. Perfectly stable, prime for 45 mins and then 45 mins of crysis. Performance is much better, but still gets too low in heavy action (18FPS). I know what the performance is limited to with an E6600 @ 3.2 GHz, it's as if crysis sees no benefit at all from quad core. I'll have to try and push to 3.8 at least.

I've got Crysis Warhead now so I think I might just stick to playing that from now on. Crysis at VeryHigh 1080P will probably never be playable with this rig.

[Heinz68]

Ok well switching to the second PCI-E slot actually worked!. I played through the second half of relic and half of assault. Performance at this point is very lack-lustre. The worst so far is in the cut scene at the start of assault where you look at the AA guns with your bi-ops, dips to 10fps momentarily before going back up to 15fps. But it's hitting 15-18FPS all the damn time in assault :(

Enabling 2xAA loses me a couple of FPS, but I'm going to try overclocking as this board could still be limiting performance somehow and I want to rule that out.
GREAT that you had it fixed at least partially. I was always thinking is better to use the slot one.

[slaWter]

Crysis at VeryHigh 1080P will probably never be playable with this rig.

There is no need for that. Just try one of the many very good custom configs and use DX9. Performance is much better and the visuals are very close to Very High, sometimes even better.

[Viral]

I used DX9 on my old rig, but never got into the custom configs. I'll definitely have to do that.

Warhead runs great, it's basically stuck on 24FPS (refresh) with 2xAA which along with the games edge AA I find enough for 1080P unless you stop and enjoy the sights too much. I've had some weird slowdowns that seemed more like bugs. The action was minimal and it just didn't make sense that it would slow down where it runs fine in really intense scenes with over 3000 tris.

I'm running my cpu at 3.6GHz with a .5v vcore bump, I went up from 1.225 stable at 3.5GHz so I may be able to lower it and still be stable with 3.6GHz. I'm very happy with my CPU and RAM. The ram is running a 50MHz OC and is still going fine at 4,4,4,12 timings. I'm confident that it will go well over 1066MHz with 5,5,5,15 timings if I need it to. So it will pretty much be my northbridge that limits me.

Thanks for the help everyone! I'm glad to have finally got this monkey off of my back. I'll just have to stick with the P45 board now. On the plus side the CPU won't have a long black oven right next to it, the back side gets pretty damn hot. Strange that slot one causes issues though...

Oh and just for the record, with my current overclock windows loads anywhere between 1 and a half and two and a quater on startup - These SSD's are great! They use barely any energy; like 1 watt and run very cool and completely silent. I'll have to undervolt my CPU and turn off all my case fans and run something hard drive intensive to see if they make any noise at all, but I really dont think they would. SSD is the future! lol

[wizkid]

Got my rig up and runnin a couple of days ago with the specs in my sig. Other things to note are case fans, two intake 120mm @ 1200rpm, 4 exhaust @ 1900rpm and 1 @ 1900rpm on thermalright HSF, so plenty of cooling, but I don't have any intake on the side panel as the 200mm cosmos fan didnt clear my HSF.

The problem is with temps of the two GPU's. Can other people with X2's please tell me what they are getting at idle and load because mine are VERY different.

When I first fired my rig up in the BIOS etc the air coming from the back of my X2 was very hot. In windows it got a bit cooler but I think this is because it was moving less air so I couldn't feel it as much. Anyway my temps on the first GPU were around 80C, and 42C on the second.... This can't be normal. Anyway I fired up Crysis and after playing for 30 mins and having a temp monitor on in the BG I saw that the temps hardly went up on the first GPU but went up a bit on the second. After that however, the first GPU dropped down to 52C idle. So there was only a 10C delta.

Where I'm at now... well most of the time the first GPU idles around 70-78C while the second is usually 40-48C. The first creeps up to the 80's when playing Crysis but the second GPU gets nowhere near that.

Also, on performance, I'm getting between 15-30 FPS in crysis DX10 Very High 1770x1000 (can't get 1080P in the menu havent bothered adding a custom res yet). It's not really playable..... I thought it might just be a CPU bottleneck but the first stage of my CPU overclocking to 3.4GHz hasn't seemed to help at all. I'm using Cat 8.9beta's and have had CatCrontrolCenter crash on windows startup a few times...? Also, now Crysis has corrupt images for the intro movies and menu (just the scrolling map part doesnt scroll properly), the game is fine except for white dots when you look at the floor in some buildings and very thin lines through some walls. This only happened on my last play through.

X2 owners please give me your feedback and opinions I'm not having the best first impressions here, but I am sure something's wrong.

UPDATE: I just remembered that it has also has a quiet ticking sound coming from it only when in 3D. I'd assume its the fan.. the sticker on the fan is fine but maybe the higher speed is triggering something? I'm a bit scared of what could happen.

Wow guy, sorry to hear about your issues. I hope you get it all worked out because that really is an amazing GPU.

[jcossin]

Well I thought I'd chime in with my 4870X2 issues that are still on-going.

I was running a 9800GX2, went to a 4870 and all was well.

Then I got the upgrade urge and bought the 4870X2, and immediately on trying to run benchmarks my PC would reboot. I tried not overclocking my CPU/memory and still it would reboot, so I figured it was the power supply. I had a Rosewill 600W that was working good for 2 years so I went out and picked up an AMD approved Antec 650W power supply. After putting it in, I was able to run the benchmarks without rebooting (even after restoring my CPU/Memory overclocks), so I figured all was well. (At this point I definitely know the Power Supply makes a bid difference with this card.)

I then proceeded to play The Witcher with the new EE (Enhanced Edition) patch, and while playing I would crash to the desktop periodically. I never used to crash, using the 4870 and the 1.3 (pre EE version of The Witcher), but I figured the EE patch had just added some bugs. I finished The Witcher, but the crashes were pretty annoying at times.

This past weekend, I loaded up Lord of the Rings Online for the first time and started playing. Immediately I started getting crashes to the desktop and then the horrible reboots started up again! The reboots seemed to occur after pushing the game to 16XAF and 8XAA so I turned off AA and AF and it stopped rebooting, but still crashing with an error in the ATI driver. I stopped overclocking my CPU/Memory and tried AA and AF again and got the reboots again, so it's not CPU/Memory overclocking. I also tried reinstalling Vista from scratch (using the Cat 8.9 drivers) and still I get the reboots, so it's not a software issue.

My guess at this point was that the 650W Antec might still not be enough for this card and that AA and AF are causing an increase in power draw for the card. I took the 650W Antec back to Frys for a refund and since they had rip-off prices in store on higher wattage power supplies, I have ordered a 1000W OCZ, AMD Approved, power supply on NewEgg and I'm waiting for that to arrive (probably 10/1 or so it will be here).

If the 1000W Power Supply doesn't fix things up, I will RMA the 4870X2 back to NewEgg and get a new one, and if that still doesn't do it, I'm probably going to have to ditch the 4870X2 and try out an nVidia 280 or go back to a 4870...

So far a very frustrating upgrade. I'm really hoping the beefy power supply will solve my woes. Wish me luck and also give me any other ideas you might have!

[Xion X2]

Do you know how many 12v rails the 650w Antec had?

You want to stay away from dual 12v rail models unless they let you pull an additional load off the 12v1. Most duals don't, however, as they dedicate one of the rails to power the CPU & motherboard.

[jcossin]

No, I'm not sure how to tell?

I picked up the Antec Earthwatts 650W off of the approved AMD list for the 4870X2:

http://game.amd.com/us-en/crossfirex_components.aspx?p=3

And figured AMD would know enough if it was a good supply. But then I got to thinking that AMD wouldn't know the other components in my system and since I have two HDDs, an overclocked CPU/Mem and 4GB of RAM, then maybe 650W wasn't cutting it?

I dunno, but I am desperate since I tried everything else except an RMA on the 4870X2 that would leave me without a video card for my system for a week+. If I have to go the RMA route I'll probably pick up an nVidia GtX280 to try out in the meantime and then decide which card to eBay when the 4870X2 replacement shows up...

I went for the OCZ 1000W power supply since I like power supplies that have the big fan on them instead of the small fan in the back (noisy). Anyone know if the OCZ is any good? Anandtech seemed to think so from what I could tell...

[Viral]

The Antec Earthwatts 650w has 3 +12v rails, 1 and 2 are 22A, while 3 is 25A. It only comes with one 6+2 PCIE connector which I would hope is connected to the 3rd 12v rail. You must've used a 2x molex to PCIE 6-pin converter for the 6-pin connector, which rail you were getting power from would be pure guess work. If it were the same rail as the 6+2 connector that would most likely cause problems.

The OCZ EliteXtreme 1000w has a single +12v rail. OCZ don't state the amperage on their site but I'm sure it would be over 60A which will be more than enough. If you like big fans you should've gone for one of the many PSU's with 140mm fans. But oh well, the OCZ is decently priced at least. It should be a solid PSU as OCZ have a good reputation.

It's too bad you don't have two PCIE slots as that would be my first guess. If that's still the problem then you're out of luck unless they've made a bios update for it.

[jcossin]

Thanks for the info. The Antec had a 6+2 connector and 6 connector so I used both of those. Not sure what rails they were on.

I'm really hoping the OCZ power supply is the bomb! It'll be here tomorrow and since it cost $100 more than the Antec, I hope it's worth it...

[jcossin]

Well I got my OCZ 1000 Watt power supply last night and put it in. I put my CPU overclock and memory overclock back in place, cranked up all the options in CCC to high settings and set Lord of the Rings Online to Ultra High DX10 settings and played for 2 hours with NO crashes or reboots at all!!

YEA, I think it was truly a power supply issue and all is well now! The 4870X2 is kicking some serious butt and cranking out some amazing visuals now with now issues. I guess it really does pay to plunk down $200 on a power supply!!

I'm a happy camper!

[Heinz68]

GREAT.
I'm glad you have the problem solved.
I want the HD 4870X2 badly to kick some butt. First I need to upgrade my PC, at present even my HD 4870 is hold back by my system on many games.

[jcossin]

Yes, I would agree with that. I noticed a big performance difference on my 4870X2 between running my CPU at the default 3GHz and my overclock of 4GHz!

[Viral]

Just goes to show that just following the AMD reccomended list won't always keep you out of trouble.

For power supplies, read reviews, go with trusted brands and just make sure everything looks good to YOU. Great news you got it sorted, you should be happy with that PSU for years to come. Happy gaming.

[Viral]

I'll just update on the HDTV issue here.

I bought Lost Planet today and I'm happy to say with the 8.10 RC2 drivers it works flawlessly in 1080P 60hz. The game also runs great with everything on high/enabled it's pretty much stuck on 60FPS until something intense happens then it may drop to 50FPS for a second. Loving the game too, it's very different and fresh and good enough to look past the annoyance of X360 gamepad controls always coming up when doing something new. The akrid remind me of starship trroopers, the rolling ones look spectacular.

I also bought STALKER clear sky but the damn lady at the store didn't even put the disc in the box, so I'll try that out tomorrow when I get more for my $50 than a cardboard box.

[jcossin]

That's great news Viral.

ATI is definitely giving this card some loving with driver updates. The 8.10 RC2 drivers though cause problems for me so hopefully they get those ironed out before officially releasing them.

Also, I wish they'd up the default fan speed on this card. 27% is not good, should be at least 35% since the noise difference is inaudible. I don't want to use the manual fan hack because I want my card to automatically adjust based on heat, but I think they definitely need to increase the floor to 35%...

[Viral]

I wouldn't worry about your card gtiving out, the fan speed is specified on temps. But i understand that it's annoying having one hot component in your PC when the rest are cool. I'm running at constant 40% cause my case fans are very audible but not annoying to me.

[Viral]

Bit of an update to hopefully finish this thread. I got a different monitor as the one I ordered was "discontinued" ie, they can't seem to get it in right now. Very happy with this monitor though, it seems to perform the same as the LG plus is looks nicer, bit pricier but I'm happy.

Anyhow, Crysis runs at an average of 30fps at vhigh 1920x1200 with 2xAA. It was just the 24Hz that was screwing everything up - causing massive tearing without vsync and slow framerates with. With CCC DX10 lvl 5 I seem to get a few fps more, havent tried DX9 yet.

Very happy with this system now that I've got it going. The only thing I'm angry at now is STALKER clear sky which seems to be more poorly coded than crysis.. to get it to run as good as STALKER shadow of chernoble it has to look worse than the original, makes no sense at all.