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ATI 5970 being bottlenecked?

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Hey guys :) 

I recently (yesterday) bought myself the ATI HD5970, apparently to be the best single slot GPU till date. Sadly I can't run most games more than 50FPS (about 5FPS or so more than my old GTX260) and Far Cry 2 and the STALKER series are too laggy (below 30FPS) to be playable on max! I'm playing everything on MAX with full AA/AF No Vertical Sync at 1920x1080.

I think I pretty much guess it is my processor that is overclocking it. My current config:

ATI HD5970
4GB RAM (1333Mhz I think)
Intel G6950 (don't laugh) 2.8Ghz overclocked to 3.6

What do you reckon the problem is? I was expecting my crappy processor to bottleneck the card a bit, but I was ok with that because in a years time when I can get some more cash I could buy a better processor/motherboard perhaps. But I expected it to bottleneck ONLY by about 30% max, maybe 20 or so FPS lesser on most games than optimal. Turns out it is Abysymal performance, which really does suck after spending an arm and a leg for the HD5970!

What do you guys think? Could my processor bottleneck my PCs performance by SUCH A LARGE AMOUNT? I had actually decided to get a better GFX card coz I couldnt run STALKERs and Far Cry 2 (and even black ops!) on MAX graphics settings & Full AA/AF with my GTX 260. I still can't play them :( 

Do let me know if my processor is actually capable for such horrible frame rates or if it could be something else.

I'm scared my card might be disfunctional because dxdiag prints out HD 5900 series, and my GTX 260 printed out specifically 'GTX 260' in dxdiag Display info (I'm just paranoid here). Also, Speedfan doesn't detect the temperature of the Card (worked with GTX 260) even though I checked the Catalyst OC page and the temperature shows. I did run a yougamers benchmark test which showed my current GFX card to be HD5970. Could this be some problem?

Do let me know on the above! Thanks fellas :D 

More about : ati 5970 bottlenecked

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Homebuilt system Expert

As long as you have the latest drivers for your card it should be running fine. Are you sure that the slot you put it in is a x16?

About your cpu...your 4 generations behind now lol...even though its a dual core @ 3.6 i think its causing the bottle necking. Luckily for you its socket 1156 according to newegg. So you could get yourself a nice i3/i5 from last gen, which as still great for gaming.

bavman said:
As long as you have the latest drivers for your card it should be running fine. Are you sure that the slot you put it in is a x16?

About your cpu...your 4 generations behind now lol...even though its a dual core @ 3.6 i think its causing the bottle necking. Luckily for you its socket 1156 according to newegg. So you could get yourself a nice i3/i5 from last gen, which as still great for gaming.


Hey thanks for your reply! :) 

Here's the info off from Catalyst page:
Quote:
Primary Adapter
Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by AMD
Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series
Device ID 689C
Vendor 1002

Subsystem ID C000
Subsystem Vendor ID 174B

Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16

BIOS Version 012.013.000.002
BIOS Part Number 113-C00001-OC8
BIOS Date 2009/11/16

Memory Size 1024 MB
Memory Type GDDR5

Core Clock in MHz 735 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 1010 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 129.3 GByte/s


Linked Adapter
Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by AMD
Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series
Device ID 689C
Vendor 1002

Subsystem ID C000
Subsystem Vendor ID 174B

Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x16

BIOS Version 012.013.000.002
BIOS Part Number 113-C00001-OC9
BIOS Date 2009/11/16

Memory Size 1024 MB
Memory Type GDDR5

Core Clock in MHz 735 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 1010 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 129.3 GByte/s


As far as I can tell it seems to be I did put it in 2.0 x16 slot from the above info.

Do you know why Speedfan doesn't detect it though? :( 

And lastly, could you confirm that now it 100% is my Processor bottlenecking the whole PC after looking at the above info? My graphics card is A-OK yeah? Just want to confirm this as I still have time to return my Graphics card if its faulty... :) 
Homebuilt system Expert

You would have been better off upgrading your CPU and adding another GTX 260 to run in SLI, assuming you have an SLI board. Anyway, I would definitely assume that your CPU is limiting your 5970. Crossfire also uses some additional CPU overhead which can further limit your card if the CPU can't deliver data to them fast enough. You can try lowering more CPU intensive options such as particles. If that gives you a measurable boost with your 5970 then you know it's the CPU holding it back. Also try running the games without AA and AF. If there isn't much of a change in FPS, then you know it's the CPU holding it back.
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Hey I had almost the same problem when I upgraded from my Asus EN9800GT to a ATI 5770. It seemed to get the same FPS in till I enabled triple buffering. Try to locate in advance video settings for (Triple buffering) it took my 60fps to 120fps. I have a Athlon II 630 Quad a bit different then what you are working with.

@megamanx, yeah I probably would have, but I had just enough for the fastest single-slot graphics card on the planet! Couldn't resist getting myself an HD5970 :p 

I'll also try decreasing the AA/AF and see the difference and post the results! Thanks :) 

@jetIP thanks for the info, sadly I haven't seen that option for Far Cry 2 but for all games I'll keep an eye out for that :) 

megamanx00 said:
You would have been better off upgrading your CPU and adding another GTX 260 to run in SLI, assuming you have an SLI board. Anyway, I would definitely assume that your CPU is limiting your 5970. Crossfire also uses some additional CPU overhead which can further limit your card if the CPU can't deliver data to them fast enough. You can try lowering more CPU intensive options such as particles. If that gives you a measurable boost with your 5970 then you know it's the CPU holding it back. Also try running the games without AA and AF. If there isn't much of a change in FPS, then you know it's the CPU holding it back.


Hey, I did as you said, This one part in Far Cry 2 where I get 59FPS... I saved there and brought down my AA from 8x to nothing. The FPS didn't change at all :)  Furthermore, I brought down ALL THE SETTINGS and the FPS didn't change much either, got perhaps about 3-4FPS fater :S Is that normal? Or could that also mean both my card and my processor can't get faster than that? :( 

Do let me know on this...
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