HD4870 512mb Problem

[siggsy]

Hello guys,

your help would be greatly appreciated



I have a pretty old pc that I'm slowly upgrading but have just come across a big problem after my 8800gt died on me.

My specs are;

AMD64 3800x2 s939 (toledo)
DFI Lanparty NF4 SLi-D
2Gb Gskill CL2
750w PSU
Gainward Radeon HD4870 512mb Golden Sample
WinXP 32bit Service Pack 3

I'm currently receiving really poor fps in COD4 with my new gfx card whereas before with my 8800gt it was running great. In fact I'm getting more unstable fps than with the 7800gtx that I installed directly after the death of the 8800gt. I know my system is a real bottleneck with the new card but surely it was with the 8800gt too?!

Just for more info, my resolution that I play at is 1680x1050 with a Samsung 226bw 22" tft.

Any ideas on what could be causing the problem?

Things I've done so far is cleaning off the old NVidia drivers and removing the crap from the registry before installing the new card and reinstalling and playing about with the ati ccc (currently running the 8.9 version). I've also started from a clean windows install and I'm still getting the same issue.


Just starting to wonder if the card is faulty

 

[ragsters]

Did you use driver sweeper?

 

[siggsy]

Yes I did - from Guru3d site

 

[cruiseoveride]

I have a similar spec machine but with a 4200+.

I only played COD4 @ 1280x1024. But i was able to max it out.

Why dont you try a fresh install of windows?

 

[yonef]

can you run GPU-Z on background and record some stats while playing COD4

This is well know issue with 4800 series, If you have slow CPU it somehow affects 4870 and they perform worse than some slower cards. (some other guy complaining of poor performanve with same CPU, after upgrade to Q6600 - boom! drastic performance boost!)

Can you run tropics demo as well, located here: http://unigine.com/download/files/Unigine_Tropics.msi
this bench measures PURE GPU performance irrespective of the CPU. Run it on highest possible resolution and maximum details which will ensure that the result is limited only by GPU.

 

[siggsy]

Well after another fresh windows install things have improved slightly but my fps is still a bit up and down at times and still not geting close to the 8800gt.

Here is the gpuz screen and the test from unigine;

I tried to make more screens of gpuz whilst playing (for the temps) but they came out blank for some reason. I did see the results and the card keeps at a reasonable temperature during load - haven't seen a temp over 55 degrees C yet.

 

[yonef]

as I expect, your HD4870 is working properly, just your CPU is huge bottleneck for the radeon. For example: on tropics demo, my AMD X2 OCed @ 3.2Ghz shows score of 818 at same settings as you do, because it is not CPU limited and this shows clear performance of the GPU; on the other hand - when I slip my old 8800GT on the same comp the result is ~350 !!
I'm prety sure that your CPU greatly limits the FPS with the games and I want to prove it to you. Just start some game wich performs bad, leave GPU-Z running on the background, play for couple minutes, then alt+tab printscreen of the GPU-z "sensors" tab (use "prtscn" key) and you'll see that you GPU-load is very low. This means that the GPU is seriously underutilized; I have the same problem, even I clock to 3.2 Ghz it still bottlenecks my GPU;
Your GPU temps are low because your GPU is using only 20-40% ot its "power"
Unfortunatelly, the researches I've made theese days leads to that: If you want to fully benefit of HD4870 you have to owe at LEAST Q6600 or Phenom 9950

P.S. Just try to monitor GPU-Load with GPU-Z and you'll find that GPU is strongly underutilized on lots of the games; (this not applys to Tropics Demo where GPU-Load is prety much at 99% all the time)

 

[siggsy]

Thanks for all your help yonef, it's opened my eyes to what I need to do. It seems that I'll have to upgrade some more over the next few weeks

Well at least I have an excuse now to tell the wife it's very much needed

 

[xizel]

Yonef
you think a E8400 would bottlenec with a 4870?

 

[yonef]

This E8400 will bottleneck your 4870 only on crysis. As I know Crysis is huge CPU demanded(and GPU of course), BUT this does not mean that your FPS will not increase. On crysis you'll probably get double fps or even more, while on the other games you'll get HUGE performance boost.
I'd like to recomend you Q6600 instead of E8400, they are about the same prize, but Q6600 is easily overclockable to 3.0Ghz+ and it is more futureproof because it is quadcore.
cheers.