Anybody heard of gtx690 running on older 775 platform?

[harvardguy]

Hi,

I have been assured that sli certification is not an issue with a dual-gpu card like the GTX690, but another issue has come up - will the card even run on my older hardware?

I have a 775-slot Q9450 oc'd to 3.6 ghz, on an asus p5e motherboard, 8 gigs DDR2 Ram, pci-e 2.0, and a toughpower 750 psu that I have been assured will run a card like the GTX690. I realize I will likely be cpu bound.

I run a 30" dell 2560x1600 monitor, and one game I am looking at in particular is BF3 on ultra settings. I am okay with 30-35 fps, and less on occasion if I can keep the minimums at least in the mid 20s - let's say if a mortar goes off nearby or if there is a lot of heavy fire.

But a forum participant, smorizio, brought up a good point - he mentioned that the GTX690 might not even boot.

So my question now is, not if the dual-gpu card requires sli certification, which I understand it doesn't, but - has anybody heard of it running on an older platform like mine? Thanks in advance.

Rich

 

[Deleted member 217926]

You would have a huge CPU bottleneck. See this thread.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=33&post=355433&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

That is with a single GTX 580. I would think you would need a Sandy or Ivy Bridge system at about 4Ghz to not bottleneck a GTX 690. Or an AMD FX system at about 5Ghz.

 

[vrumor]

Better to spend $600 on a CPU, mobo and RAM upgrade and $400 on a new vid card. It would be a waste of money to put a $1000 vid card on a system worth under $200.

 

[blazorthon]

AMD FX (Bulldozer) would need to be around 6GHz to be as fast as a 4GHz Sandy for gaming (more like 6.3GHz to 6.5GHz against a 4GHz Ivy). It would also use several times more power and need exotic cooling. However, I will admit that it could run stably if it had a good motherboard. FX is good at being more limited by cooling than by the chip itself when it comes to overclocking.

Like above posts say, don't even consider putting such high end graphics in any LGA 775 system. It should have either a Sandy Bridge i5 overclocked to around 4GHz (I'd go a little higher) or an Ivy Bridge i5 overclocked to around 4GHz (again, I'd go a little higher, but an Ivy Bridge i5 shouldn't need to go as far as a Sandy due to it's slightly improved performance per Hz), or else you would have a huge CPU bottle-neck.

 

[xtreme5]

what? Are you alright my friend, you're wasting $1000 on a $80 motherboard, better to spend this money on i5 build.

 

[jeet_shek]

I have experience of older and slower H/W combinations in system. I was running a HD-4850 on a Pentium 4 processor. it was terible setup because I was getting same performance as of a Nvidia 7600Gt.
Then i upgraded to dual core it was kind of a medium buff. Now i am running the same 4 and 1/2 half year card on intel core i5 2500k, Gigabyte GA P67A UD7 B3 MOBO and corssair Vengeance DDR-3 Ram @1600 MHZ. With my current setup i am getting 40-50 FPS in all games at 1440X900 ( i will upgrade my GPU and display very soon ).
What my point is Q9450 can not give you the same performance which you can get with a i5 or i7 even AMD FX series. I dont think there will be issues of booting in LGA 775 if you make a setup of GTX 690 on it. but it will going to bottle neck you system and you might get a performance of a 4870x2 or may a 5850. Because GTX 690 is a real beast running at memory clock of 6.008GHz.

I will suggest you to change you CPU to i5 2500k or i5 3770k or AMD FX-8150, and get a PCIE 3.0 support methodboard as GTX 690 also support PCIE 3.0.
Considering you resolution you will get ultimate speed and quality.

 

[blazorthon]

I have experience of older and slower H/W combinations in system. I was running a HD-4850 on a Pentium 4 processor. it was terible setup because I was getting same performance as of a Nvidia 7600Gt.
Then i upgraded to dual core it was kind of a medium buff. Now i am running the same 4 and 1/2 half year card on intel core i5 2500k, Gigabyte GA P67A UD7 B3 MOBO and corssair Vengeance DDR-3 Ram @1600 MHZ. With my current setup i am getting 40-50 FPS in all games at 1440X900 ( i will upgrade my GPU and display very soon ).
What my point is Q9450 can not give you the same performance which you can get with a i5 or i7 even AMD FX series. I dont think there will be issues of booting in LGA 775 if you make a setup of GTX 690 on it. but it will going to bottle neck you system and you might get a performance of a 4870x2 or may a 5850. Because GTX 690 is a real beast running at memory clock of 6.008GHz.

I will suggest you to change you CPU to i5 2500k or i5 3770k or AMD FX-8150, and get a PCIE 3.0 support methodboard as GTX 690 also support PCIE 3.0.
Considering you resolution you will get ultimate speed and quality.

A high end Core 2 Quad CPU would actually beat an FX CPU in gaming performance, especially an overclocked S model that is far more energy efficient than FX. Don't forget, FX CPUs have worse performance per Hz than Phenom II CPUs and the performance per Hz difference between Phenom II CPUs and Core 2 Quad CPUs is even greater, especially 45nm Core 2 Quad CPUs. This adds up to FX being far behind Core 2 Quad in performance per Hz. The S models can overclock much better than FX with a similarly performing cooler.

Also, since different games vary widely in CPU dependance, different games will get wildly different performance numbers when you have a CPU bottle-neck. They won't be consistent with any weaker card because with less CPU dependent games, the bottle-necked graphics card will be able to churn out closer to its full performance than on more CPU-heavy games.

 

[jeet_shek]

A high end Core 2 Quad CPU would actually beat an FX CPU in gaming performance, especially an overclocked S model that is far more energy efficient than FX. Don't forget, FX CPUs have worse performance per Hz than Phenom II CPUs and the performance per Hz difference between Phenom II CPUs and Core 2 Quad CPUs is even greater, especially 45nm Core 2 Quad CPUs. This adds up to FX being far behind Core 2 Quad in performance per Hz. The S models can overclock much better than FX with a similarly performing cooler.

Also, since different games vary widely in CPU dependance, different games will get wildly different performance numbers when you have a CPU bottle-neck. They won't be consistent with any weaker card because with less CPU dependent games, the bottle-necked graphics card will be able to churn out closer to its full performance than on more CPU-heavy games.

I dont have any sort of experience of AMD processor as I never used any. The reason why I choose I5 2500k over FX 8150 is its gaming performance. But now considering the price drop of AMD FX 8150 after ivy bridge release its not a bad deal, considering it has 8 cores running and 3.9 GHZ, which makes it 31.2 GHZ overall . But still as you mentioned gaming performance in must better in I5 and I7 compared ot FX.

 

[xtreme5]

FX hahaah are you kidding, it's was just beaten by core 2 quad..

 

[blazorthon]

I dont have any sort of experience of AMD processor as I never used any. The reason why I choose I5 2500k over FX 8150 is its gaming performance. But now considering the price drop of AMD FX 8150 after ivy bridge release its not a bad deal, considering it has 8 cores running and 3.9 GHZ, which makes it 31.2 GHZ overall . But still as you mentioned gaming performance in must better in I5 and I7 compared ot FX.

No. Multiplying core count by frequency does not tell you anything about FX's performance. FX has horrible performance per Hz and games can't use more than 4 threads (they generally can use more than two threads efficiently). For that last reason, the FX-8150 is hardly any better at all than the FX-4100 for gaming. Also, the 8150 runs at 3.6GHz and 3.9GHz is a Turbo frequency, not a base clock frequency. Even $70 Intel 2.6GHz dual core Sandy Bridge Pentiums (Pentium G620) can consistently meet or beat the 8150 in gaming performance and a i5 with a similar price to the 8150 would fly past the 8150.

 

[harvardguy]

Hey guys,

These comments are very helpful. I looked at the GTX580 cpu bound article - but he was running just 1680x1050. That is only 40% of the pixels of my 2560x1600 system. That makes a huge difference - in other words, my cpu is less likely to be the bottleneck, the higher my resolution, and the more AA I ask from the graphics card.

But .... be that as it may, I agree, I'll be cpu bound. The other thing about the article, the guy was running his 6600 at stock 2.4. I'll have this Q9450 at least around 3.6 by the time the graphics card expenditure hits $1000.

I am moving back to thinking of a 7970 - just one for now for about $500, and then adding another later. Whether by the time I add the second 7970, I will have moved to another platform - we'll see. I think we're talking at least $600-800 for quality mobo, i5 or i7, and quality ram.

So, this is new graphics hardware, a 7970, on an older Quad core - BUT keep in mind, it's 30" gaming. So my Quad 9450 puts together the frame, and the graphics card has to fill in 4 MB worth of pixels with full eye candy and AA. On the tougher titles, like BF3 on ultra settings, I'll be running some logs to see if my cpu is running flat out 100%, vs gpu humming at 60-70% - then I'll know I'm cpu bound. LOL

Speaking about that - what is a good way to capture that type of logging?

Rich

 

[alrobichaud]

Hey guys,

These comments are very helpful. I looked at the GTX580 cpu bound article - but he was running just 1680x1050. That is only 40% of the pixels of my 2560x1600 system. That makes a huge difference - in other words, my cpu is less likely to be the bottleneck, the higher my resolution, and the more AA I ask from the graphics card.

But .... be that as it may, I agree, I'll be cpu bound. The other thing about the article, the guy was running his 6600 at stock 2.4. I'll have this Q9450 at least around 3.6 by the time the graphics card expenditure hits $1000.

I am moving back to thinking of a 7970 - just one for now for about $500, and then adding another later. Whether by the time I add the second 7970, I will have moved to another platform - we'll see. I think we're talking at least $600-800 for quality mobo, i5 or i7, and quality ram.

So, this is new graphics hardware, a 7970, on an older Quad core - BUT keep in mind, it's 30" gaming. So my Quad 9450 puts together the frame, and the graphics card has to fill in 4 MB worth of pixels with full eye candy and AA. On the tougher titles, like BF3 on ultra settings, I'll be running some logs to see if my cpu is running flat out 100%, vs gpu humming at 60-70% - then I'll know I'm cpu bound. LOL

Speaking about that - what is a good way to capture that type of logging?

Rich

I like your way of thinking. I would give your old quad core a try with a new gpu and then decide if an extra 1GHz of processor power is worth the upgrade. I also like the idea of trying a single 7970 first as it likes high resolution with lots of AA. You can run it with a fulltime 200MHz gpu and memory overclock on stock voltage and really manhandle that monitor.

 

[blazorthon]

I like your way of thinking. I would give your old quad core a try with a new gpu and then decide if an extra 1GHz of processor power is worth the upgrade. I also like the idea of trying a single 7970 first as it likes high resolution with lots of AA. You can run it with a fulltime 200MHz gpu and memory overclock on stock voltage and really manhandle that monitor.

By extra 1GHz, were you referring to the overclock on the Core 2 Quad or an upgrade to Sandy/Ivy Bridge?

@harvardguy A 2560x1600 frame is 16MiB (assuming 32 bits per pixel), not 4MB. 4MB is a 720p frame. 2560x1600 is a 4MP frame, but one pixel takes 4 bytes (again, assuming 32 bits per pixel). I also agree that it would be a good idea to examine how CPU limited you will be before taking action about it.

 

[alrobichaud]

By extra 1GHz, were you referring to the overclock on the Core 2 Quad or an upgrade to Sandy/Ivy Bridge?

I was refering to an upgrade not the existing 1GHz overclock he already has.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

The higher resolution may very well make you bottle neck less than the guy I linked to above but he was running that Q6600 at 3.4Ghz not stock. Stock is 2.4Ghz.

 

[panwala95]

man it would make much of a bottleneck. why dont you overhaul your system instead of buying a $1200 graphic card!!

 

[alrobichaud]

I think he decided on a $450 card instead.

 

[alrobichaud]

Unfortunately, I deleted my results from 3dmark11 with my old 6990 running on my i7 990X at 4.5Ghz. Here is my 6990 running on a Q6600 at 3.5GHz with 3GB of RAM on an ASUS Rampage Formula motherboard.

I know there are a few people here who have some results with a 6990 running on a much better processor so I am hoping one of you will compare your results for a stock 6990 to my results on the old socket 775 platform to show what kind cpu bottleneck harvardguy can expect to get. I tried searching for a benchmark result with the 6990 on a better machine but I ended up with this review from Tom's of the 6990 on an i7 990X running at 4GHz and I actually scored higher with my old Q6600. The physics score is not good but I don't think the graphics scores are much less than what they would be on an up to date system.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6990-antilles-crossfire,2878-5.html

 

[blazorthon]

Unfortunately, I deleted my results from 3dmark11 with my old 6990 running on my i7 990X at 4.5Ghz. Here is my 6990 running on a Q6600 at 3.5GHz with 3GB of RAM on an ASUS Rampage Formula motherboard.
http://i1175.photobucket.com/albums/r637/alrobichaud/6990Q6600.jpg
I know there are a few people here who have some results with a 6990 running on a much better processor so I am hoping one of you will compare your results for a stock 6990 to my results on the old socket 775 platform to show what kind cpu bottleneck harvardguy can expect to get. I tried searching for a benchmark result with the 6990 on a better machine but I ended up with this review from Tom's of the 6990 on an i7 990X running at 4GHz and I actually scored higher with my old Q6600. The physics score is not good but I don't think the graphics scores are much less than what they would be on an up to date system.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6990-antilles-crossfire,2878-5.html

Synthetic benchmarks are rarely representative of how graphics cards will perform in actual games. Also, a 6990 would most likely be more CPU limited than a 680 because Crossfire is more CPU intensive than a single GPU and Nvidia is known to be slightly easier on the CPU than AMD, even in single card situations. How well a graphics card scores in some synthetics isn't CPU limited like games are, so you can often get inflated results that aren't even close to how games act. In games, a 3.4GHz or 3.5GHz Core 2 Quad isn't bad, but it would bottle-neck a GTX 680 in CPU limited games.

 

[blazorthon]

I was refering to an upgrade not the existing 1GHz overclock he already has.

A 3.4GHz Sandy/Ivy Bridge i5 would be almost twice as fast as a 2.4GHz Core 2 Q9450. GHz/MHz is not a measurement of performance; it's only one of many factors. It's only a good indicator for performance by itself when comparing CPUs of the same family and generation with the same core count and features.

 

[alrobichaud]

Yes that is all well and good but I think the idea was to figure out if getting what originally was going to be a 690 which now looks like it may be a 7970 will be bottlenecked by an older socket 775 quad core or should the OP upgrade. Of course we all say upgrade but I am simply trying to provide some real time results for the OP in the form of whether or not an old quad core running at 3.6Ghz can feed enough data to a high end gpu. I think we all know that there are many factors involved when it comes to how particular games will perform on different platforms. I know that synthetic benchmarks are not very good at representing how games run but if a 6990 ends up with about the same FPS in all of the graphics tests on an old core 2 quad running at 3.5Ghz compared to an i7 990X running at 4GHz then it would simply show that the old platform will run a high end gpu similar to what a newer platform would. Of course a cpu dependent game will not run as well on a 3.5GHz core 2 quad vs Sandy bridge running at 4.5GHz.

 

[blazorthon]

Yes that is all well and good but I think the idea was to figure out if getting what originally was going to be a 690 which now looks like it may be a 7970 will be bottlenecked by an older socket 775 quad core or should the OP upgrade. Of course we all say upgrade but I am simply trying to provide some real time results for the OP in the form of whether or not an old quad core running at 3.6Ghz can feed enough data to a high end gpu. I think we all know that there are many factors involved when it comes to how particular games will perform on different platforms. I know that synthetic benchmarks are not very good at representing how games run but if a 6990 ends up with about the same FPS in all of the graphics tests on an old core 2 quad running at 3.5Ghz compared to an i7 990X running at 4GHz then it would simply show that the old platform will run a high end gpu similar to what a newer platform would. Of course a cpu dependent game will not run as well on a 3.5GHz core 2 quad vs Sandy bridge running at 4.5GHz.

A CPU limited game would run better on a 3GHz Sandy i5 than on a 3.5GHz Core 2 Quad. A 4.5GHz Sandy Bridge CPU would be almost twice as fast in gaming as a 3.5GHz Core 2 Quad.

 

[harvardguy]

A CPU limited game would run better on a 3GHz Sandy i5 than on a 3.5GHz Core 2 Quad. A 4.5GHz Sandy Bridge CPU would be almost twice as fast in gaming as a 3.5GHz Core 2 Quad.

Wow! Well I figured clock for clock about 40% faster, and multiply by 45/35 the difference in clock speed, gives about 180% faster overall. Hmmm, so that makes sense.

(By the way, slightly off topic, but thinking long term, versus the original i7 on 1336, what do you give up with the easy-to-overclock Sandy bridge? They moved the pci-e controller to a place on-board the cpu chip, right? - didn't that have some negative affect on overall lanes of pci-e available to the graphics cards?)

You guys are very helpful.

Yes, for sure I have reigned in my former grandiose thinking about getting a GTX690 - mostly because it probably won't even boot up - and instead I will start pretty soon with just one 7970. That will launch me quite far from where I am with my 8800GTX.

I don't know if it will get me BF3 on ultra settings at full 2560x1600 - 4 million pixels, 32 million bytes per frame - but I'll try. If not, I won't play it - yet. And if I see that I am already cpu bound, then of course adding another 7970 wouldn't make sense - I would have to move forward with a new cpu.

BUT .... if I see that I am still gpu bound, like 100% gpu load, 80% cpu load, then maybe I WILL add the second 7970, which in that scenario might move me from 25 fps to 40 fps, where I would be happy. At that point the 7970's would be kicking back, at 70% load, and my old 9450 would be working up a sweat, flat out 100%, but so what, I'm playing the game. LOL

So it would be kind of interesting to do some charting, to figure out - am I cpu bound, or am I gpu bound?

So, let me ask you guys, how do I log my 9450 and 7970?

And by the way I appreciate the comments about overclocking the 7970 - I hear it overclocks very well. Would you guys recommend a model with a better heat sink for that reason - easier to overclock - rather than the stock turbine? Do you guys like XFX equipment? I game with headphones, so I figured - well turbine is okay, if I can set the fan speed to 100% and blow the hot air out of the case. But I can't remember if Catalyst allows manual fan settings. Ati try tools does, but I don't know if the author, Ray Adams, will have his program up to speed on 7970s already. Maybe riva tuner is already working on that card - I have become familiar with it for my current nvidia card.

Back to logging - I know that furmark has some logging on the gpu side - it doesn't run for very long. Would you guys use Sandra, or Everest, or some tool like that?

Like I said, I like ATT with the OSD showing gpu %, and cpu % load real time while I'm gaming. With that in the OSD, you don't need logging. But again, if Ray has not yet gotten hold of a 7970 from one of his fans, then ATT won't read the sensors yet.

In which case some logging tools would be handy. Any ideas?

thanks,
Rich

 

[blazorthon]

A CPU limited game would run better on a 3GHz Sandy i5 than on a 3.5GHz Core 2 Quad. A 4.5GHz Sandy Bridge CPU would be almost twice as fast in gaming as a 3.5GHz Core 2 Quad.

Wow! Well I figured clock for clock about 40% faster, and multiply by 45/35 the difference in clock speed, gives about 180% faster overall. Hmmm, so that makes sense.

(By the way, slightly off topic, but thinking long term, versus the original i7 on 1336, what do you give up with the easy-to-overclock Sandy bridge? They moved the pci-e controller to a place on-board the cpu chip, right? - didn't that have some negative affect on overall lanes of pci-e available to the graphics cards?)

You guys are very helpful.

Yes, for sure I have reigned in my former grandiose thinking about getting a GTX690 - mostly because it probably won't even boot up - and instead I will start pretty soon with just one 7970. That will launch me quite far from where I am with my 8800GTX.

I don't know if it will get me BF3 on ultra settings at full 2560x1600 - 4 million pixels, 32 million bytes per frame - but I'll try. If not, I won't play it - yet. And if I see that I am already cpu bound, then of course adding another 7970 wouldn't make sense - I would have to move forward with a new cpu.

BUT .... if I see that I am still gpu bound, like 100% gpu load, 80% cpu load, then maybe I WILL add the second 7970, which in that scenario might move me from 25 fps to 40 fps, where I would be happy. At that point the 7970's would be kicking back, at 70% load, and my old 9450 would be working up a sweat, flat out 100%, but so what, I'm playing the game. LOL

So it would be kind of interesting to do some charting, to figure out - am I cpu bound, or am I gpu bound?

So, let me ask you guys, how do I log my 9450 and 7970?

And by the way I appreciate the comments about overclocking the 7970 - I hear it overclocks very well. Would you guys recommend a model with a better heat sink for that reason - easier to overclock - rather than the stock turbine? Do you guys like XFX equipment? I game with headphones, so I figured - well turbine is okay, if I can set the fan speed to 100% and blow the hot air out of the case. But I can't remember if Catalyst allows manual fan settings. Ati try tools does, but I don't know if the author, Ray Adams, will have his program up to speed on 7970s already. Maybe riva tuner is already working on that card - I have become familiar with it for my current nvidia card.

Back to logging - I know that furmark has some logging on the gpu side - it doesn't run for very long. Would you guys use Sandra, or Everest, or some tool like that?

Like I said, I like ATT with the OSD showing gpu %, and cpu % load real time while I'm gaming. With that in the OSD, you don't need logging. But again, if Ray has not yet gotten hold of a 7970 from one of his fans, then ATT won't read the sensors yet.

In which case some logging tools would be handy. Any ideas?

thanks,
Rich

If you're going to overclock your graphics, then don't you dare buy a 7970. The 7950 overclocks equally well and is less than 5% slower at the same frequencies.

With the LGA 1366 versus LGA 1155, you go from 32 PCIe graphics lanes down to 16 and you go from a triple channel memory configuration to a dual channel memory configuration, but overall, the LGA 155 platform is still a faster gaming platform. The PCIe lanes lost aren't too important and the Sandy Bridge CPUs have enhanced memory controllers, so even if they have one fewer 64 bit controller (three 64 bit controllers makes a triple-channel, two 64 bit controllers makes a dual-channel), they still have good memory performance. Sandy/Ivy Bridge's higher IPC than Nehalem and Westmere allow them to outperform even the six core i7-990X in gaming, even if not by much, all while using much less power.

 

[harvardguy]

"Sandy/Ivy Bridge's higher IPC than Nehalem and Westmere"

Great information - I followed everything but that very last part, can you clarify? - I'm not familiar with IPC.