5970 BE - woo, how many problems!?

[Zukky]

Hi peeps!

Well, I have to become slightly colder in my tone because I have been having relentless amount of problems with my 5970.

Comp Specs:

Q6600 - 3.2Ghz

Antec 900 - Enough fans and great air-flow (lovely neat wiring ^_^)

5970 Black Edition

Coolermaster M1000w PSU

8GB DDR2 RAM 850Mhz

XFX 780i MoBo

I upgraded from 5870 expecting that I would have a major increase in FPS in DX11. And the fact that my 5870 died lol.

I have to get my head-clear, I have a feeling that the card may be broken but can someone turn my thoughts around? I have searched for 2 days around google and forums and I still cannot find the correct answers.

Q's:

- Metro 2033 - When M4XAA is enabled for Anti-aliasing, the lag is utter disgusting, the frames are around 5 - 15 on the 5970. However, on the 5870 it plays sweet and smooth. Nice 30 FPS, maxxed out with 1920 x 1080.

WTF?

Is this a driver issue? I have 10.9 with all the latest drivers - I have uninstalled drivers and catalyst -> driver sweep in safe mode -> deleted Nvidia drivers -> re-installed catalyst and drivers -> played with tons of 3D settings (now just left it to 'Use Application Settings' with multi-sample AA.

My CCC settings on my 5970 and 5870 are exactly the same, so it can't be that....surely?

- Street Fighter 4 - Frames half from 60FPS (Vsync enabled) to 30FPS and stay that way. Everything is slow and sluggish? It drops randomly after like 15 mins of game time. However, the 5870 had no issues as such? It would run flawless and smooth.

Again, Driver Issue?

There is no word on the internet about 11.0 Catalyst and updated drivers? I just moved from nvidia and damn, so much frustration! Nvidia, I never had any frustration, everything ran so smoothly with any card.

- Anti-Aliasing doesn't seem to work? - The one major thing I love is Anti-aliasing, I absolute hate jaggies! It ruins the gaming experience for me. The 5970 cannot Anti-alias! I maxxed out anti-alias on Heaven DX11 Unigine Benchmark and it has jaggies! 8x AA PLUS Super-sample PLUS 16x Edge-detect. Still....rubbish? Metro 2033, Alien VS. Predator etc... I paid £400 for a graphics card so it can't AA?!

- Left 4 Dead 2 - Doesn't even play?! Such a great game, works on 5870 not on 5970. Get onto main screen, jump into a game, plays 1 Frame and starts locking off - Stock clocks.

Can someone try out Metro 2033, Street Fighter 4, Left 4 Dead 2 with above settings and tell me if anything of such happens to you?

If it does, then it's a driver thing, it isn't then my card my be defective.

Anyone have issues with the 5970? Come on AMD, give me a hand my brudda's!

 

[wa1]

So, what is your card temp? idle? full load?
It could be an overheating...

If your previous card is died then it could be PSU issue, since you can afford HD5870 and HD5970 then why you don't want to spend about $100 for a quality PSU like Corsair, Antec, OCZ, Seasonic, SIlverStone...

 

[sirkillalot]

sounds like a faulty card
ps did you get another 5870 cause it should of had a 3 year warranty

 

[Zukky]

Hi,

Naa, the card didn't die because of my system. It was something else.

The PSU is quality, trust me. I have ran tons of tests on it and had user - reviews taken into consideration. It works flawlessly.

The temps on idle 59C, Load - 78C.

The temps are fine, I have really good wiring done inside my case (spent hours and hours on the wiring). The airflow is fantastic, it's even got a 120mm S-FLEX 1900RPM fan blowing directly on to it, for cool air.

Can anyone add anything extra?

 

[BeCoolBro]

Have you tried formatting the hdd?Maybe there are still traces of the nvidia drivers causing conflicts.Also try ocing the q6600 to something like 3.4-3.6 to see if it is causing a bottleneck even though I don't think it is it(trying doesn't hurt).Also how did the 5870 die?Maybe it's death caused damage.

 

[BeCoolBro]

Sorry for the double post but I can't edit my previous message.Look at this thread:http://www.overclock.net/ati/615858-will-5970-bottlenecked-q6600.html .A guy states his q6600 bottlenecks his 5970 and it gives him lower scores in 3dmark06 than his 4890.He might have other issues but you should look into it.

 

[reccy]

Coolermaster are seemingly a bad quality of PSU according to most people on here, but everyone else seems to think there good, and i agree they are a good brand. So i dotn think its your PSU, the only think i can suggest is a reformat of Windows as i had a similar problem many a year ago, swapping from Nvidia 5200 to a Radeon 9800Pro. (AGP mind)

Awesome upgrade - extreme problems, headaches, many wasted hours reinstalling this and that to eventually get it to work after a FULL reformat.

 

[rv10]

I had the same issue, i just bought my sapphire 5970, same 8gb ram as you but I have an AMD phenom II x4 2.8ghz. Mainly on crysis i was getting poor fps till i ran it on 32bit version instead of 64bit.

so try running the games in 32bit if they have that option: i was getting 15-20 max fps on crysis on 32bit all maxed out 8xAA. now im getting 30-60+ on the same settings just by running the 32bit version. why i dont know- maybe the 5970 doesnt like 64bit - im not a computer wizz so i dont know why.

your full load temps are ok at 78'c but id try to get them down to 70-75 max - i have the antec 900 case too. turn the fans to high and adjust your 5970 fan speed in ati overdrive to 35 % and this shoould cool it by 5% or so.

I cant imagine your processor is bottlenecking the card - mine does slightly but my cpu isnt as good as yours and i still get great performance on all games taking this into account -

therefore it could well be a faulty card. im not sure how good your mobo is, someone else may have to advise. my advice is purely based on my own recent experiences with the same card, not my technical expertise lol!

 

[Zukky]

SOLVED!

Thank you everyone for all your help! However, I have seemed to find the golden FIX!

I was told in 'AMD Graphics card forums' that having a 'Nvidia chipset motherboard' (I had XFX 780i MoBo) with a pre-crossfired card such as 5970 will cause problems (which it obviously did!). If I put the card into an 'Intel chipset' motherboard everything would run flawlessly. Also the fact that having a 'Q6600' would seriously bottleneck the 5970 as it was recommended to have a Core i7.

For anyone that has this problem in the future, here is how I fixed it:

- Go download the latest BIOS update for the 780i. I read the release notes and it states: Improved GPU compatibility. XFX motherboards only have the 'P09' BIOS update on their website (If you have registered, if you haven't, you can register without serial).

- I updated with P09 but there was no improvement. The GPU still didn't work.

- I searched around and found 'P10 BIOS update'. It is not released by XFX but released by EVGA. Luckily, a great coder has re-coded the BIOS file for XFX boards, here is the link:

Download the one with SLIC. The second download link.
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/18163-XFX-780i-P10-SLIC-2.1-%28DELL%29-MEDIA-SHIELD-v9.87-AWD894

- Extract P10 from zip file onto desktop.

- Goto nTune and BACKUP YOUR ORIGINAL BIOS, it'll be a button called 'Save Bios'.

- Once saved, click 'Load Bios' AND tick 'Clear CMOS' (not good to change BIOS with any overclocked settings, even if its not overclocked just do it!) - goto the P10 '.bin' file, press enter .

- Wait, Reboot, Re-do all your BIOS settings.

WALLA! The 5970 is now compatible with a Nvidia chipset!

It took me ages to figure this out, so I had to write down everything for people that may have this problem!

Cheers, Zukky !

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey