Out with 5870's in with 69's

O.k. well both of my 6950's came in yesterday and finally got around to installing them tonight. I got the ASUS 6950 Direct CUII models and getting two 3 slot cards into a ATX case isn't easy.

I had to do some re-arranging but they fit.

They run cooler than the reference 5870's obviously on average of about 20 degrees Celsius under full Crysis load (2560x1600, 4AA, V-sync off. They also run about 10-12 cooler at idle (35C)

FPS is another story though. I lost about 25 frames in F1 2010 (40 on average with high of 102FPS with the new cards) on the same settings as Crysis. Hopefully drivers will pick this up though as we move on. No impact in CODMW2 of course maxed at 91 FPS. Crysis I have yet to a FPS comparison but will update later as I do it.

More to come guys and I am running 11.3. No installation or X-fire issues yet. Overclocking is coming as well.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by z06psi on 04-01-2011 at 03:09:29 AM

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

SWEET! Can I have your old 5870s?

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to christop

christop wrote :

SWEET! Can I have your old 5870s?

Already sold and will be in the new owners hands tomorrow.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

haha, you have an i7 at 4.8 ghz! your cpu is bottlenecking your setup, you need 5 ghz for 6950's are you thinking of BIOS flashing to 6970's?

Message quoted 2 times

------------------------------ INTEL CORE 2 Q6600 @ 3.49GHz, CM Hyper TX3, ASUS P5N-D, 8GB DDR800 RAM, Powercolour HD6850, 650w Antec Trupower New PSU
Reply to iam2thecrowe

You cannot flash the ASUS CU II's. Voltage differences prevent that. However the ASUS is designed to be ran at 950Mhz core were it runs on par with a reference 6970.

I would venture to think eventually the shaders could be unlocked though.

Update. I am OC it to 900 Mhz on the core and 1300 on the memory and it is only running a tick hotter 37C at idle and the same at full load as the fans just spin higher now. Gained back about 10 FPS in F1 2010. Will go to 950 tonight and see what that gets me.

Message edited by z06psi on 04-01-2011 at 11:51:01 AM

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

iam2thecrowe wrote :

haha, you have an i7 at 4.8 ghz! your cpu is bottlenecking your setup, you need 5 ghz for 6950's are you thinking of BIOS flashing to 6970's?

I dont think this system is cpu limited running at 2560x1600, 4AA. The last review here shows cpu limits really only appear when running xfired dual GPU cards - and then at low resolutions.

You have done nice z....

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to vvhocare5

vvhocare5 wrote :

I dont think this system is cpu limited running at 2560x1600, 4AA. The last review here shows cpu limits really only appear when running xfired dual GPU cards - and then at low resolutions.

You have done nice z....

I think there was a bit of sarcasm in there.

Update: OC'ed to 900 Mhz core and 1300Mhz memory and gained 10-12 FPS back with no real obvious change in heat. Fans did kick it up a notch though but nothing noticeable. Gonna mess with 950 tonight.

Hopefully someone will get a Bios to unlock the shaders only for the CUII. As far as I know the ones out there will not work on the CUII's

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

damn nice i think it's better than best 570 SLI *2-way* when OCed

Reply to shrkbay

This looks pretty similar to what I'll be using soon enough, it looks beautiful!

Reply to FrozenGpu

Well its been a long day.

Tried doing any overclock over 900Mhz and everything is a no-go. I must have gotten a pair of duds.

So I said WTF I will go ahead and unlock the shaders. Well one eventually finally came unlocked to 1536 but the other one just would not do it. I tried every combination as well as procedure. No luck.

I ran my 6950(6970) by itself on F1 benchmark mode and got fantastic results. 80FPS average with a low of 70FPS. (2560x1600 4AA and no vsync) That was on 873Mhz core.

When I threw the other 6950 in there and X-fired the frames fell to 50FPS. WTF AMD you are supposed to fix this crap!

Rumor had it that 11.4 fixed some X-fire issues but no dice. Still 50FPS

Frustrating day as I have a 6970 and a 6950 now that are supposed to Crossfire well but do not.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

what are you minimum fps like on various games in crossfire compared with just a single card? what is you minimum fps loss with 6950s in crossfire?

I had to abandon my 6870 crossfire setup for absolute crap minimum fps and drivers, I will not be using AMD for a dual card solution for a long time

Minimum FPS is almost 40FPS between single card and crossfire. In both Crysis and F1-2010 I get 70FPS on a single and 30FPS in a crossfire setup. Using afterburner I can see both cards being utilized at 80-100 percent in both games but the performance is just not there.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

I wonder if it's worth the $600+? I am still considering a pair of DCII 6950's w/ a mild o/c.

Reply to FrozenGpu

I have went ahead and disable X-fire until AMD pulls their head out of their collective asses. A shader unlocked/Oc'ed 6950 pulls some great FPS's for sure.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

^yeah its a shame but your probably better off with a single card at this juncture

iam2thecrowe wrote :

haha, you have an i7 at 4.8 ghz! your cpu is bottlenecking your setup, you need 5 ghz for 6950's are you thinking of BIOS flashing to 6970's?

you have got to be kidding me, there is no way this setup is bottlenecking his gpus

Message quoted 1 times

O.k. for craps and grins I went ahead and re-enabled X-fire and I am better than the 5870 setup finally. Guess it needed time to burn in. LOL

F1 2010 2560x1600 4AAS no Vsync I get 95 FPS Avg with a 80FPS minimum. That is about 5-10% higher than the 5870's and I have 4 monitor support with one card. So I can run X-fire with my 4 monitors.

I remember even with the 5870's X-fire can be tricky like that. When my FPS's started to get low for some reason I would disable X-fire and then re-enable it.

I am a happy consumer now.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

Now if I could just get the other 6950 shaders unlocked all would be great. Basically I have a 6970 now X-fired with a 6950.

Message edited by z06psi on 04-04-2011 at 01:50:06 AM

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

thats good well its def not your cpu holding you back

While you may not be able to, or want to flash those cards to 6970's, but have you considered unlocking the shaders (this can be done without a flash)?

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to bystander

LOL..... like I said I think he was kidding. I did find them limits of my CPU though.
5.2 GHZ

Gonna do some Crysis benching now.

Message edited by z06psi on 04-04-2011 at 01:57:08 AM

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

bystander wrote :

While you may not be able to, or want to flash those cards to 6970's, but have you considered unlocking the shaders (this can be done without a flash)?

Got one to do it but the other just wont budge for some reason. You have to flash even to just do the shaders. What is weird about this is the modded bios is in the card because I can get the bios from the card and it show 6970 shaders unlocked but GPU-Z says only 1408 are actually unlocked.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by z06psi on 04-04-2011 at 02:04:23 AM

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

jjb8675309 wrote :

you have got to be kidding me, there is no way this setup is bottlenecking his gpus

lol, i was definitely kidding you. an i7 at 4.8 is insanely fast of course

------------------------------ INTEL CORE 2 Q6600 @ 3.49GHz, CM Hyper TX3, ASUS P5N-D, 8GB DDR800 RAM, Powercolour HD6850, 650w Antec Trupower New PSU
Reply to iam2thecrowe

yeah I mean my p2 at a little above 4 ghz will not see much of a bottleneck with that setup imo and they are comparatively a good deal slower than the 2600k for example but up to a certain point there are diminishing returns obviously

Message edited by jjb8675309 on 04-04-2011 at 05:16:43 AM

z06psi wrote :

Got one to do it but the other just wont budge for some reason. You have to flash even to just do the shaders. What is weird about this is the modded bios is in the card because I can get the bios from the card and it show 6970 shaders unlocked but GPU-Z says only 1408 are actually unlocked.

Actually to unlock the shaders does not require a flash at all. There was a script on page 16 of the how to flash guide that you run and it'll just alter the bios to unlock the shaders, leaving all timings alone

Check this link. It's on this page by W1zzard: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/ [...] 36&page=16

Reply to bystander

Yeah I tried that as well and no luck.

I tried the script
I tried the command prompt method
I tried the ATIwinflash

all without success on just one of the cards. I will tinker some more today.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by z06psi on 04-04-2011 at 02:52:45 PM

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

z06psi wrote :

Yeah I tried that as well and no luck.

I tried the script
I tried the command prompt method
I tried the ATIwinflash

all without success on just one of the cards. I will tinker some more today.

I had a thought, is the bios switch on the card in the #1 or #2 position? One of the two options is locked.

Reply to bystander

Well here is the deal on that. ASUS advertises in their literature that those switched on the DIrect CU II cards are for the DVI outputs. That is true but if I try to boot the computer with the switch in the position farthest from the back of the card it will not boot and the MB is saying a VGA fault. This would lead me to believe that they are somewhat associated with the Bios function. Only ASUS can answer this and they wont because of money loss.

I have another project ongoing and as soon as I get that done I will try a couple of more things.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

Update on OC'ing

Able to run up to 950 core and 1280 on memory on both cards.

Use CCC to overclock and smartdoctor to voltage tweak (and then I close it) and Afterburner to control the fan profile.

Can't someone just make a competent card adjustment program that will work even after a reboot?

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

yeah msi afterburner

Well I cannot get it to hold a steady overclock and also it will not do voltage tweaking at all.

I tried to run Afterburner exclusively but it did not pan out.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

what the hell is smart doctor btw never heard of it and I also can't do a voltage tweak in afterburner, tried editing the config files and a few different versions to no avail...

ASUS smartdoctor. Comes on the Cd with the cards.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

i see does it only work for asus/amd products?

Not sure about the ASUS only products. However ASUS does both NVidia and AMD cards so I would think it would work with either.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

z06psi wrote :

Not sure about the ASUS only products. However ASUS does both NVidia and AMD cards so I would think it would work with either.

It only works with ASUS products. Even if you flash to an ASUS bios, it will still not work. I'm not sure how it detects what card you have.

Message edited by bystander on 04-06-2011 at 04:52:06 PM

Reply to bystander

2560x1600 or 4360x1600. I have solved the FPS issues with driver updates and fiddling with X-fire.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

z06psi wrote :

Well here is the deal on that. ASUS advertises in their literature that those switched on the DIrect CU II cards are for the DVI outputs. That is true but if I try to boot the computer with the switch in the position farthest from the back of the card it will not boot and the MB is saying a VGA fault. This would lead me to believe that they are somewhat associated with the Bios function. Only ASUS can answer this and they wont because of money loss.

I have another project ongoing and as soon as I get that done I will try a couple of more things.

The more reviews I read on the Asus DCII 6950's tend to keep pointing out the "dual bios switch", not sure what it actually is anymore...

An intresting review on the DCII 6950's

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to FrozenGpu

Just a word of caution on ATI CCC 11.4. Drivers have random crashes. reverted back to 11.3 and all is well.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

FrozenGpu wrote :

The more reviews I read on the Asus DCII 6950's tend to keep pointing out the "dual bios switch", not sure what it actually is anymore...

An intresting review on the DCII 6950's

Yeah I read that one too and I don't know what to think. I wish ASUS would clarify but again they wont.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

^ hmm, i read from another thread that a guy also has issues with 11.4 running CF interesting... AMD started to make bad drivers again? :lol:

Reply to shrkbay

^just like never

I've already considered using the Asus DCII GTX570 instead of the 6950's...doesn't look too promising...really wish they would work on those drivers...

Reply to FrozenGpu

Well I have only had one freeze after putting 11.3 on. 11.4 was a pre release anyways.

So far 11.3 and X-fire have had no issues so I think your safe.

------------------------------ Thermaltake V9 Black edition case , ASUS P8z68-VPro, i7 2600K @4.8Ghz w/Corsair H70,Intel X25MG2 SSD, ASUS CUII 6950's X-fired, 16GB 1600 Ripjaw X, 4360x1600, Corsair 850, Win7 x64: Aspire H340, ASUS Direct CU III 7970's on the way
Reply to z06psi

Forum Graphics & Displays : Graphics Cards Out with 5870's in with 69's

Graphics Cards

TV Tuner Cards

AMD Radeon

Diamond Multimedia

Matrox

Nvidia

Palit

PowerColor

Please mind