Out side the box 6990 drivers working on 5850

[grahamie]

Right now i have hd 6990 11.4 drivers running on my 5850 BE reference card crossfire and its made a massive difference. I use Msi kombustor for short benchmarks and i have increased my score from 32000 points to 40000. ( direct3d 11 .... 1920x1080 .... time based benchmark) are my settings and my average fps has increases by 100 frames per second from 520 to 620
my question is will this cause damage or not ?
i would love to keep the drivers after seeing results like this but i also dont want to cause and issues with my hardware any info would be appreciated

 

[17seconds]

I don't think the drivers will cause any damage, but if it's too good to be true, it usually is. I wonder if they lowered the graphics quality on these drivers to ensure benchmark results and stability on the 6990? AMD has a recent history of doing that.

 

[benski]

If it doesn't overheat it I wouldn't worry about a driver doing any damage. Try some actual games though, I doubt you will see any performance increase. Kombustor hasn't had multi-gpu support in the past, this may be why the driver affects your frame rate in it. I would be shocked to see the same results in any games that were already crossfire enabled.

 

[grahamie]

thats somthing i was unaware of and had not considered is there software that would be better for grafix quality as aposed to fps or stability im using unigine heaven to run longer benchmarks and i have better scores with that aswell

 

[grahamie]

ill run crysis warhead for a bit and see if i get better preformance with that thanks for the tips
and ill report back when i have more info

 

[17seconds]

thats somthing i was unaware of and had not considered is there software that would be better for grafix quality as aposed to fps or stability im using unigine heaven to run longer benchmarks and i have better scores with that aswell

That's why it makes me wonder if there is an optimization taking place. This would be a more logical explanation than somehow AMD invented magic drivers that suddenly improve the tesselation performance of a 5000 series card. All the same, if you can't tell a difference in image quality, then enjoy the performance boost.

 

[grahamie]

ok i ran Crysis warhead with max settings and in my opinion it looks better but i may be by est because i want this to work LOL but i honestly think it looks better and it runs flawless.
my gpu teps are great never seeing above 45c (water cooled) so if this wont hurt my cards i dont see any reason not to run the crap out of these drivers
if any one else tries this id like to hear there results and opinions on it

 

[17seconds]

I wonder if your temps and GPU usage are less than they were with the older drivers. That might indicate that an image optimization is being implemented in the new drivers.

 

[firebird]

What are your system specs grahamie? I'm running 5850's in Xfire and have been stuck on 10.10 because of my 2nd monitor and the "flickering" with the crazy memory clock adjustments.

 

[grahamie]

my temps are hard to gauge due to the fact the cards are on the same water loop as the cpu and motherboard block but i have 0 increase it overall temps cards still idle at 34c and max out around 45c and none of my other components are running any different than before and as far as gpu usage im noticing that media players are using less gpu than the last drivers blu-ray runs at 14 percent max and it used to hit 35 percent with the same media player

 

[grahamie]

system specs are.... amd 1090t BE, crosshair 4 extreme, xfx 5850 refrence card crossfire all on liquid cooling and mushkin ddr3 1600

i have experenced the same flicker while i was overclocking my video ram if this is your situation try setting the memory timings in want 1, want2, and want 3 to the same memory clock speed

 

[firebird]

I was able to set my RAM speed when I use the old-style CCC. When using the new CCC I changed the values in the profile .xml file (the one that I could find anyway) to always be 1000 on want1 and want2, with want3 being 1150. It didn't seem to change the values at all.

What I noticed was that there was no area in the .xml for "overdrive" settings. I believe if I create my own profile with the old-style CCC I can then edit that .xml's overdrive area with the settings I want.

Or I'm mental and none of what I just said is true...

 

[grahamie]

google radeon bios editor you can set all your settings with it and it saves to the bios on your cards now i was highly advised to use at my own risk and to be VERY carefull with it and MAKE sure you back up your origanal bios all the support you will need is on there forums and i would advise any one that doesent know what there doing to NOT do this.

 

[grahamie]

to stay on topic could you try running the 6990 11.4 drivers and see if it makes any difference to you stock performance or not im quite curious if any one else gets good results for these drivers ?

 

[grahamie]

also instead of mucking around with the video card bios and possibly voiding warranty you could try msi afterburner it may allow you to set your clocks better than ccc.

 

[firebird]

Well I figured out how to create a profile and assign the memory clocks I need to avoid flicker, so I installed 11.4 preview.

The only old benchmark I had was for 3DMark11, which was 7408 with HT off. I think I had my CPU @4 GHZ then, and I don't know what my GPUs were at....

Current benchmark results with CPU @4.2 GHZ and HT off are as follows:

3DMark11-->6610 @725/1000, 7455 @850/1100
Heaven --> 1920x1200, Shaders High, Textures High, Trillinear filtering, 4x AF, and normal tess = 56.6 FPS, 1426 score. 11.9 min FPS and 138.3 max FPS.
JustCause2--> 1920x1200, Highest details, 4xAA, 16x AF = 71.84 FPS in Concrete Jungle, 122.97 FPS in Desert Sun, and 93.9 FPS in Dark tower

I don't see any abnormal gains. My temps never went over 70 degrees C for the GPUs. *edit* Temps hit 79 degrees in Just Cause 2.

 

[grahamie]

well then.... i wonder why 11.4 works so well for me oh well i guess ill just enjoy it. as far as your flicker im guessing 11.4 made no difference? are you using a display port adaptor ? my display port adaptor flickers from time to time and it was recommended to me from xfx . Also do you get flicker when your not overclocking your cards ? when do you get flicker ?

 

[firebird]

I get the flicker when the drivers decide to clock my memory lower then 1000 usually. Now that I figured out how to make a profile to control my clocks with 11.4 I'm not getting the flicker as I've set the to be 1000 at idle.

What I did notice, however, is that when I was playing video the clocks went to 400/900 ( I must have missed one of the settings) and I still didn't have flickering. It's definitely there at 157/300 though.

On a side note: I've had Dragon Age 2 blue screen the PC or lock up a few times with this driver, even if my GPU is not overclocked. I don't have any problems with New Vegas or Batman Arkham Asylum.

 

[grahamie]

nice glad you got the flicker fixed i havent had any bsd or any issues at all so far with 11.4 but ill run a bunch of games today and do my best to get a crash is there any game i could get to run my cards any harder than crysis warhead ?

 

[benski]

The original Crysis.

 

[eyefinity]

It's the same driver. Catalyst 11.4 is known to bring some big improvements across the board, that's why you're seeing higher fps.

 

[ezcruci]

I considered to give the notion that grahamie dazzler contended here, a shot and i would give my reference to use Hd6990 driver (vs 12.6).The flikkering has stopped for now on the vga Hd 5850 that i utilize and as far as any frames and any pontential improvement ,I have not noticed anything extrodinary.

Admitting I cut back on playing games and drinking Beer in return for better grades.
Intill the teacher changed his opinion.