G'day everyone. I've been a long time reader of articles on Tom's Hardware, and appreciate the knowledge that some people here have. 
I recently bought a Sapphire 4870x2 to use in my new rig. Specs are as follows:
■CPU: Intel Q9550 @ 2.83GHz [stock]
■Mobo: GA-EP45-DS4P
■RAM: 8GB Corsair DDR2 1066 5-5-5-15
■PSU: 1200W GigaByte Odin Pro
■HDD: 1TB Samsung
■OS: Vista x64 SP1
■Drivers: 8.9
Before I received the 8GB RAM, I was using 2GB lent to me from a mate [the supplier shipped the wrong RAM initially]. Wanting to feel the power, I downloaded and fired up 3DMark06. I averaged 12000 marks, which in my expectations looked low. I was told that the RAM will be the problem there, so when I received the 8GB, I tested again and got ~15000 marks [still low imo]
Now to the problems.
■I now get capacitor squeal when the gfx card is under load, and it's quite irritating. Searches on the net have show that it's quite a common problem, and RMA'ing it will not necessarily guarantee acknowledgement by the supplier or replacement with a card that doesn't have the same problem. I don't know whether to RMA it or not.
■Crysis ingame performance is a joke. I know this is a badly written game etc etc, but according to benchmarks done by the guys here, they can achieve 30FPS at 2560 x 1600. I get just below 30FPS at 1152 x 864, which isn't great at all.
■Using ATi Overdrive in CCC, I can see that the card has been underclocked by Sapphire to 507MHz GPU and 500MHz Mem, whereas it should be at 750MHz GPU and 900MHz Mem. I enable overdrive and apply the newer settings for both GPUs, however the display at the bottom of the window under 'Current Clock' still says the old values. Using GPU-Z, I can see that the primary GPU's clocks have been modified, but the second GPU has not changed at all.
The driver CD [version 8.8 I believe] didn't install the graphics drivers as it was supposed to, so I had to download 8.9 from AMD's website.
Thanks for reading; what are your opinions? I'm not exactly thrilled so far.
I recently bought a Sapphire 4870x2 to use in my new rig. Specs are as follows:
■CPU: Intel Q9550 @ 2.83GHz [stock]
■Mobo: GA-EP45-DS4P
■RAM: 8GB Corsair DDR2 1066 5-5-5-15
■PSU: 1200W GigaByte Odin Pro
■HDD
■OS: Vista x64 SP1
■Drivers: 8.9
Before I received the 8GB RAM, I was using 2GB lent to me from a mate [the supplier shipped the wrong RAM initially]. Wanting to feel the power, I downloaded and fired up 3DMark06. I averaged 12000 marks, which in my expectations looked low. I was told that the RAM will be the problem there, so when I received the 8GB, I tested again and got ~15000 marks [still low imo]
Now to the problems.
■I now get capacitor squeal when the gfx card is under load, and it's quite irritating. Searches on the net have show that it's quite a common problem, and RMA'ing it will not necessarily guarantee acknowledgement by the supplier or replacement with a card that doesn't have the same problem. I don't know whether to RMA it or not.
■Crysis ingame performance is a joke. I know this is a badly written game etc etc, but according to benchmarks done by the guys here, they can achieve 30FPS at 2560 x 1600. I get just below 30FPS at 1152 x 864, which isn't great at all.
■Using ATi Overdrive in CCC, I can see that the card has been underclocked by Sapphire to 507MHz GPU and 500MHz Mem, whereas it should be at 750MHz GPU and 900MHz Mem. I enable overdrive and apply the newer settings for both GPUs, however the display at the bottom of the window under 'Current Clock' still says the old values. Using GPU-Z, I can see that the primary GPU's clocks have been modified, but the second GPU has not changed at all.
The driver CD [version 8.8 I believe] didn't install the graphics drivers as it was supposed to, so I had to download 8.9 from AMD's website.
Thanks for reading; what are your opinions? I'm not exactly thrilled so far.
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