My 6970 is getting slow performance. Bottleneck?

[grimzkunk]

I just upgraded from a 5850 to a 6970 and performances and pretty under what it should be.

I would like to have some opinions about this.
Could it be a bottleneck? Would I need a fresh win7 installation? Want me to test any benchmark for comparison?

First, here is my setup:

Asus M4A78 Plus
AMD X4 940 @stock 3ghz
6gb Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 @stock
XFX HD-697A-CNFC 6970 2gb @stock
Corsair 520HX 520w
Auzentech Prelude
2 x 64gb SSD
2 x 2tb HDD
Corsair 600t White w/4fans
Hanns-G 28inch
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Benchmarks I did :

3dmark 2011 Performance
Score 4718
GPU Score 5214

Crysis 2 w/Adrenaline Bench Tool
Ultra / 1920x1200 / DX9 / 4x AA / Edge AA off
Time Square : 49.7 avg fps 10.2 fps minimum
Downtown : 48.9 avg fps 16.4 fps minimum

Dirt 3 Ingame Benchmark
@Ultra 8xMSAA 1920x1200
64fps average

PassMark G3D Mark (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html)
2852

- My UPS LCD is showing 450w of utilization during benchmarks, so I would think that my PSU is not a bottleneck.
- I tried overclocking CPU by raising multiplier so its 16x200mhz , 3400ghz, but scores dont move that much.
- Tried reseating memory
- Did full ATI driver uninstalled, including crap in registry and all over C:\ partition

Any idea?

Thanks,

 

[rolli59]

Well if it is not picking up fps with CPU overclock then there is another reason for a bottleneck. What is your memory configuration (3 sticks, 4 sticks)? Take it your OS is 64bit.

 

[borisof007]

Your benchmark performance for 3dmark '11 is right on:

http://guru3d.com/article/radeon-6950-6970-review/23

For the games, it also seems to be very close to what you're seeing as well. If I were to point to anything in your system that might not be keeping up with the other parts, I'd say it's your RAM. DDR2 800? That's kinda old.

 

[larkspur]

Your GPU score is spot-on. Since O/Cing your CPU isn't improving things much I'd say your RAM is probably keeping you down.

 

[grimzkunk]

Well if it is not picking up fps with CPU overclock then there is another reason for a bottleneck. What is your memory configuration (3 sticks, 4 sticks)? Take it your OS is 64bit.

My memory setup is 2x2gb and 1x2gb. I tried with only 2x2gb and I lost ~3fps in Dirt3 bench.

Your benchmark performance for 3dmark '11 is right on:

http://guru3d.com/article/radeon-6950-6970-review/23

For the games, it also seems to be very close to what you're seeing as well. If I were to point to anything in your system that might not be keeping up with the other parts, I'd say it's your RAM. DDR2 800? That's kinda old.

If those scores are not GPU scores, then I'm way under 5449. They are not indicating anything about it so I guess this is the general score, not the GPU...

Your GPU score is spot-on. Since O/Cing your CPU isn't improving things much I'd say your RAM is probably keeping you down.

Any source for GPU score with single 6970?

 

[rolli59]

My memory setup is 2x2gb and 1x2gb. I tried with only 2x2gb and I lost ~3fps in Dirt3 bench.

Well that means that you are running in single channel instead of dual but more memory is more benefit than dual over single.

 

[megamanx00]

There are plenty of sources for GPU scores with a single 6970.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/crysis-2_5.html#sect1

I'd say that your low scores in Crysis 2 are due to your CPU. Adding another 2gb stick and running all four of them in dual channel (which requires they all be set at the same timings and be stable at them of course) along with a decent CPU overclock should smooth it out.

 

[megamanx00]

By the way when you took out a stick if you did not set dual channel specifically in your BIOS then all you did was take out 2GB so 3fps lower doesn't seem odd ^_^

 

[grimzkunk]

Ok. Thx to all of you for precious info&advices.

I will wait for AMD Bulldozer and upgrade board/cpu/ram/psu. Ouch...my wallet...