ATI HD4870X2 Owners Thread

[binormalkilla]

Originally Posted by go4life

well, women and shopping. Some times you just have to obey lol

at least you can bench later

Hehe, yea I sure did. I stayed up laaaaate last night. It seems that I'm 24/7 stable (unless gaming for more than 1 hour at a time crashes it) at 857/1000.
I also flashed my mobo to the Rampage Formula BIOS and optimized my settings at 475*8 instead of 423*9. I'm trying to max this new 8GB Geil Evo kit to get the highest bandwidth.

[go4life]

Originally Posted by binormalkilla

Hehe, yea I sure did. I stayed up laaaaate last night. It seems that I'm 24/7 stable (unless gaming for more than 1 hour at a time crashes it) at 857/1000.
I also flashed my mobo to the Rampage Formula BIOS and optimized my settings at 475*8 instead of 423*9. I'm trying to max this new 8GB Geil Evo kit to get the highest bandwidth.

hehe
I was quite late up to.. Tired lol
But one thing I have always wondered, why is it better to have a lower multiplier? I read something about giving more performance and lower temps. Is this true? (Sorry im still learning)

[binormalkilla]

Originally Posted by go4life

hehe
I was quite late up to.. Tired lol
But one thing I have always wondered, why is it better to have a lower multiplier? I read something about giving more performance and lower temps. Is this true? (Sorry im still learning)

Well the higher the FSB you will have much faster memory bandwidth on Intel platforms, as the memory controller is located in the northbridge.
Now with the case of the i7s the controller is now on the CPU die. I bet that timings will play a more important role in the i7 platform (as AMDs have normally.
Some people claim that CPU performance is better with a higher FSB, but that's debatable. I've never seen a performance difference in 3dmark with my set up when benching 475*8 vs 423*9. I see a huge bandwidth and latency difference between those settings those.
I'm going to push the memory further tonight to see what it can do. Now that I have my NB on water I can pump all the voltage I want through it. The X38/48 likes a lot of voltage with 4 DIMMs (especially with high clocks and 8GB.)

On your OC you can test it. Run the Everest memory benchmark to get your initial bandwidth. Try putting your BIOS to 494 FSB with a 9x multi and run Everest memory bench. You will see at least a gain of 1000MB/s.

[go4life]

cool! But I tried to do it once, but my pc weren't stable at all!
Do I have to change some other voltages to get it stable or what?

Oh, rep+ for explaining to me

[PhelanJKell]

I had a question for you'll, my board runs the PCI-E slots at 8x, think that will hamper any performance out of my 4870x2 that I have coming in? My 4870 right now doesn't seem to be held back, but I didn't know if any of you had experience with 16x-8x slot difference.

If so I may be looking at a x48 board, or a x38 *does it support two 16x in crossfire as well?* Thanks guys!

[Ch13f121]

Originally Posted by PhelanJKell

I had a question for you'll, my board runs the PCI-E slots at 8x, think that will hamper any performance out of my 4870x2 that I have coming in? My 4870 right now doesn't seem to be held back, but I didn't know if any of you had experience with 16x-8x slot difference.

If so I may be looking at a x48 board, or a x38 *does it support two 16x in crossfire as well?* Thanks guys!

It shouldn't, considering it's a PCI-E 16x 2.0 card. It only uses the bandwidth of one slot, not two.

I'm actually buying a P45 board now, and a 4870x2 within a couple of months.

[PhelanJKell]

It shouldn't, considering it's a PCI-E 16x 2.0 card. It only uses the bandwidth of one slot, not two.

I'm actually buying a P45 board now, and a 4870x2 within a couple of months.

I didn't think there would be, I've done plenty of review/studying but figured I'd ask around.

I've had my DFI JR P45 since they came out, and I love it to be honest. It is everything the P45 has but just in a small package. If support gets better in a year or so with drivers, I might add a second 4870x2, but time will tell.

Not too mention I can run my q6600 at 3.7ghz +, no fsb issues or voltage problems like many mATX boards.

Does rivatuner work with these cards??

[Robilar]

the newest rivatuner release works on the X2.

Phelan, you will run into issues with two X2's on a P45 chipset. Its the only instance I know of where the diminished PCI-E lanes on the P45 chipset interfere with performance. Two 4870's work fine though.

[ArcticZero]

I have a question. How far do you have to OC the 4870x2 to notice a significant difference in performance? I've upped mine to 790/950 for both cores and my FPS stays pretty much the same. Or is it that my Q6600 @ 3.4ghz is a major bottleneck? Does this hold true even for GPU-bound games like Crysis? I honestly haven't seen any improvement at all, and it's kinda disappointing.

[PhelanJKell]

the newest rivatuner release works on the X2.

Phelan, you will run into issues with two X2's on a P45 chipset. Its the only instance I know of where the diminished PCI-E lanes on the P45 chipset interfere with performance. Two 4870's work fine though.

Thanks Robilar +rep *invisible*, I was wondering when the P45 chipset would hold back the cards. Well down the road I'll just grab a x48 and another 4870x2 around a year or so now. I'll be getting the stuff Thursday, so I should be up and running on the new card that night.