ATI 4770 Crossfire

Acelightning

Distinguished
Apr 18, 2008
5
0
18,510
Hi Guys my problem is ati crossfire
My system is as follows.
Gigabyte Motherboard GA 48X DS4
Gigabyte 2 x ATI 4770
2 x 2gig Kingston ram
600watt PSU
On the 3dMark06 with 1 card I score 13000 points
with Crossfire anabled (2 cards) I score 16000 thats only 24% improvement.
On the write ups there say 80%.
I know they are using i7 Intel with 58 chipsets Is this the problem
Regards
Acelightning
 

efeat

Distinguished
Jul 13, 2008
272
0
18,790


You didn't list your processor...what are you running?
3Dmark06 is not a very good test for sli/xfire, as it is extremely sensitive and dependent on your CPU power for a large portion of your score. The test suite on the article used 3Dmark vantage, which is quite different. Try using a different benchmark (such as a real game) to get a better idea of your real world performance.
 

Acelightning

Distinguished
Apr 18, 2008
5
0
18,510


Sorry the CPU is a Intel Q6600 clocked 2.9GHZ
 
Well, the Q6600 at only 2.9 would be holding you back a bit. Crossfire introduces significant CPU overhead so that's why you're not seeing the improvement you wanted. Still, most games that are GPU dependent on your system should show a pretty good improvement so I wouldn't worry about it ^_^. After all synthetic benches like 3DMark greatly favor extra CPU speed when running dual card configurations. Real world games though are a different story and as I said you should see more of an improvement there, except in cases where your CPU would hold you back of course.
 

Acelightning

Distinguished
Apr 18, 2008
5
0
18,510
Ok maybe the cpu is afecting it a bit. The same computer with my 9800GTX scores 14500 point 3DMark06 test. The crossfire scaling is rely bad value.
I'm using XP Pro 64bit would Vista Home Premium 64bit be any better.
Regards
Acelightning
 
Well, it's not that it's really bad, but like I said your CPU is holding it back. Anyway going to vista would only help for getting them pretty DX10 visuals. With two 4770s you may as well. You can also dual boot, which isn't a bad idea so long as you have sufficient Hard Drive space :). I use XP for some of my older games, notably Gothic 3.
 
To put it bluntly the drivers are crap.
the reviewers had differant drivers to the ones we have on the disc's. im expecting a good performance improvement when we finally get some properly supported drivers. May 13th last i heard for Cat 9.5.

Mactronix
 
G

Guest

Guest
Nice system, im a little jelous 4770 crossfie is cool, you dont mention what cooling you have on the 6600, but with a good cooler you should break 3.2ghz without breaking a sweat and that will definately help, heck even 3.4ghz with a voltage bump will be good on that mobo.


i agree though, dont worry to much about synthetic benchmarks, real world performance is where it counts and I dont think you will be lacking any of that with your system, I would definately go Vista 64 with it though so the Os sees all of your yummy 4gb and the 4770 xfire make use of dx 10/10.1 (hawx especially for 10.1) Also the 4770 is so new that the drivers currently do not optimise for them, but they will soon and they will rock! ATti will shift many 4770 xfire setups because of the performance for the price so will definately get the drivers sorted ( 4770 xfire outperforms their 4890 easily except above 1920x1080 if they are only 512mb cards)
 

eklipz330

Distinguished
Jul 7, 2008
3,034
19
20,795
what resolution are you running at? if its lower than 1680x1050, your cpu might cause bottleneck. if its higher, you shudn;t worry too much about your 3dmark score
 

Acelightning

Distinguished
Apr 18, 2008
5
0
18,510
Ok Guys thanks for your help. I dont think I eplained well enough so I will add a bit more information. The other issue is I play CoD 4 / 5, Crysis and far Cry 2 they didnt show much inprovement. The frames if any better at all were maybe 0-5 FPS better. Crysis went backwards around 5 or 10 FPS.
Regards
Acelightning