Upgraded from 5770 to 6870 and I get lower FPS in BC2

[Hoflich]

Hello guys. First post here.

Upgraded from 5770 to 6870 and I get lower FPS in BC2

I tried searching but didn't find anything useful so here I am.

I had an ATI 5770 that worked very good, I play only two games, Battlefield BC2 and Starcraft2.

I have never overclocked any of my rig's components, I run everything at stock speeds and I've been able to enjoy my games with decent framerates.

In BC2 I got 50fps when in heavy action and explosions in game, it's always been playable even in the most demanding maps. Starcraft has always run smoothly.

So I uninstalled ATI drivers, rebooted in Safe mode and driver sweeped the remains. And installed newest drivers for the 6870, ran BC2 and framerate dropped to 23-25fps. I also upgraded the PSU from a 520w to a 600w)

I tried installing previous drivers (10.12) and same results on BFBC2. Starcraft Seems to operate smoother and I run everything on Ultra.

I didn't change a single video setting on my games when I switched video cards so I could notice the "improvement" only to see a drastic decrease in FPS to my dismay. I used to get 50fps on heavy action in Battlefield BC2 (online) with my 1 y/o XFX 5770, and with the "upgrade" I get 25fps when in heavy loads and explosions in game I get 17fps, just unplayable.

Need help!!!
Thanks.
Höff.


These are my system specs (everything running @ stock speeds)

i3 540
Asus P7P55 LX
8GB
XFX 6870 10.12 (XFX 5770 before)
23" HP Monitor running desktop and games @ 1920x1080
XPOWER780 600W (OCZ 520w before)


XFX 6870 Card

Primary Adapter
Graphics Card Manufacturer Powered by ATI
Graphics Chipset AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
Device ID 6738
Vendor 1002

Subsystem ID 3100
Subsystem Vendor ID 1682

Graphics Bus Capability PCI Express 2.0
Maximum Bus Setting PCI Express 2.0 x1

BIOS Version 013.006.000.006
BIOS Part Number 113-687AZNF-10
BIOS Date 2010/10/07

Memory Size 1024 MB
Memory Type GDDR5

Core Clock in MHz 900 MHz
Memory Clock in MHz 1050 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth in GByte/s 134.4 GByte/s

 

[wolfram23]

Humm that's definitely not right. It should be averaging around 50fps at max detail at 1080p.

I'm kind of wondering about that PSU. It's not exactly a good one. Actually I'd say try plugging your old PSU in and see if it works better.

 

[Hoflich]

Humm that's definitely not right. It should be averaging around 50fps at max detail at 1080p.

I'm kind of wondering about that PSU. It's not exactly a good one. Actually I'd say try plugging your old PSU in and see if it works better.

Unfortunately I already got rid of the old PSU and video card.

This PSU was working great with the 5770 card, I don't see why it wouldn't work as well with the newer 6870.

Is drastic lower fps a symptom of power starvation?

Everything else runs great, even starcraft2, I didn't notice any negative effects on SC2 as in BC2.

I even set AA to 4x and AF to 8x in BC2 to see how low fps would drop but it still runs @ 23-25fps.

 

[wolfram23]

Yeah if it can't draw enough power it'll have crap performance.

Your PSU has 3 split 12V rails. It shows 24A max, 780W total power. But it doesn't say what the wattage for the 12V rails is. Can you find it on a sticker or in the owner's manual or anything?

Because 12Vx24Ax(3 rails) = 864W and that's not considering the 3V and 5V power so obviously that's not right. I would say at best it has 350W on the 12V rail. So that's ~30A total between the 3 rails.

Now, the 6870 uses just under 150W at stock, which is 12.5A on the 12V. I don't know how that PSU split the 12Vs up but if right now the GPU and 24 pin mobo connector are on the same rail you might be getting limited to 24A.

Try using different physical plugs for the card? It would be great if you could find out which plugs are on which rail and what the total rail wattage is.

 

[Hoflich]

Yeah if it can't draw enough power it'll have crap performance.

Your PSU has 3 split 12V rails. It shows 24A max, 780W total power. But it doesn't say what the wattage for the 12V rails is. Can you find it on a sticker or in the owner's manual or anything?

Because 12Vx24Ax(3 rails) = 864W and that's not considering the 3V and 5V power so obviously that's not right. I would say at best it has 350W on the 12V rail. So that's ~30A total between the 3 rails.

Now, the 6870 uses just under 150W at stock, which is 12.5A on the 12V. I don't know how that PSU split the 12Vs up but if right now the GPU and 24 pin mobo connector are on the same rail you might be getting limited to 24A.

Try using different physical plugs for the card? It would be great if you could find out which plugs are on which rail and what the total rail wattage is.

Hello.

This is the PSU I'm using.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817339036

The psu has 2x6 pin video card connectors which are the ones I'm using in this card.
I have 3 HD's and 1 DVD Rom drive but I don't suppose those are power hogs.
HD's fans I have distributed those between the other power connectors to even things up.

Thanks.
Höff.

 

[wolfram23]

Well, I'm not sure. I mean that PSU should be enough. I guess you can always try uninstalling the drivers again, and then reinstalling 11.2.

Those WEI screen shots, which is which?

Also you can try running 3DMark11 or some other games to see if performance is ok. Maybe BC2 is just being dumb?

 

[Hoflich]

Well, I'm not sure. I mean that PSU should be enough. I guess you can always try uninstalling the drivers again, and then reinstalling 11.2.

Those WEI screen shots, which is which?

Also you can try running 3DMark11 or some other games to see if performance is ok. Maybe BC2 is just being dumb?

Hello.

The top screen is from my older 5770 card, the one below which shows slight (??) improvement is with the new 6870. All hardware and video settings are exactly the same except for the slightly highet W PSU. Everything else is unmolested.

I'll dl and install 3dmark11 and see what happens.

Any other suggestions feel free to post them please.

Thanks.
Hoff.

 

[kaspro]

You should also contact ATI for this problem, they are realy very helpful!

 

[kingnoobe]

I think it's a software problem not hardware. Since on another game everything works better like it should. And isn't starcraft pretty hard on cards to (not sure never played it never really bothered looking at charts for it).

I would personally delete bf and reinstall it see if that helps (I always go with easy things first even if there's a slight chance it works).

 

[Viktory]

I had the same problem except I also got the low fps on valve games like css and tf2. However, my fps drops dramatically (20-30 or less!) as soon as i look at a tree?

Edit: System specs:

550w psu
intel pentium quad core
4gb ram
Ati HD raedon 6870
samsung 500gb 16mb cache hdd

Note: Could it be that my card is just faulty?

 

[jjb8675309]

anyone know how cat 11.4 work for 6 series crossfire setups? I thought 11.4 was only for the 6990, can someone clarify?

 

[Hoflich]

I'll try the cat 11.4

Some friends told me upgrading my cpu would work also, so I'll upgrade my i3 540 to an i5 760.

And somehow the card seems to be working better now, I'm getting more FPS without touching a single setting ot tweaking. No idea why. Still doesn't perform well as I expected compared to my former 5770 on Battlefield BC2 though.

Thanks... Will keep you guys posted.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i would have just kept the old ocz psu it will probalby be more reliable. Upgrading the cpu will gain you fps, but it wont fix the problem your having. you installed a better video card and got worse fps, that doesnt make sense. I would put the ocz psu back in for a start and try that. also, make sure vsync is turned off.

 

[Viktory]

My fps is fixed, I simply rearanged my power plugs for my gfx card (i was and am using a 2x 4molex to 6 pin adapter) since i discovered i was running both in the same rail. This seemed to have fixed the problem as my fps doesn't drop from 60 WHATSOEVER in css.

Thnx for the help!

 

[Viktory]

Though note the new amd drivers have literally halved the fps of many of my friends so if this occurred within the past month or two i would just wait for the new drivers.

 

[Derbixrace]

CPU bottleneck, BC2 is a CPU heavy game and requires a quad to to run smoothly. OC that CPU of yours and see if you get more FPS.

 

[Hoflich]

CPU bottleneck, BC2 is a CPU heavy game and requires a quad to to run smoothly. OC that CPU of yours and see if you get more FPS.

I'll either OC that i3 or getme an i5 760, still haven't decided.

The PSU has 2x6 pin connectors which are the ones I'm using on the video card.

 

[Derbixrace]

first try to OC that i3 a bit and see if it improves FPS to confirm that its actually is a CPU bottleneck, would be a shame if you bought a new CPU and still had this problem hehe

 

[Hoflich]

first try to OC that i3 a bit and see if it improves FPS to confirm that its actually is a CPU bottleneck, would be a shame if you bought a new CPU and still had this problem hehe

Thanks buddy. I'll try that first.

Any idea how much can it be OC'd with stock fan? I'm kind of on a budget so any suggestions for a better than stock fan that won't break my piggy bank is appreciated.

Hoff.

 

[Derbixrace]

you can OC a bit with the stock fan, im not sure how much but just keep the temps under 70C and you will be perfectly fine

if you want to get a great CPU cooler low price i suggest the cooler master hyper 212+.

 

[Kewlx25]

"Because 12Vx24Ax(3 rails) = 864W and that's not considering the 3V and 5V power so obviously that's not right. I would say at best it has 350W on the 12V rail. So that's ~30A total between the 3 rails. "

The total wattage for a given rail can be higher than the rated max for the whole unit.

My 750 PSU has 4 rails, each rail benchmarked to at least 400watts, but the reviewer's tester could not test beyond 33amps for a single rail, so it could be higher. My PSU is also capable of outputting 100% of it's power on 12v, so don't think 3.3v+5v+12v can't add up higher than the rated wattage.

 

[Hoflich]

Hello Guys... Just to let you know I upgraded to an i5 760 and it seemed to fix the problem. I got very healthy and stable FPS. I guess there was a bottleneck issue?

Thank you all for your help.

 

[Hoflich]

Best answer selected by Hoflich.

 

[Derbixrace]

glad it worked out for you, happy fragging