Sapphire TOXIC HD-6950/70 Owners Club & Informational Thread - Page 104

Originally Posted by KhaoticKomputing 

ok, I got the i5 stable at a nice enough OC to test at(4.7Ghz WOOT!). Only one thing stopping me now. I need a way to display my GPU usage temps and FPS ingame...but here is the catch.. I need to be able to oc my card at the same time. I can use afterburner form MSI to view how my card is doing, but it won't allow me to clock my card as high as Sapphire TRIXX will. So I made some attempts to see if they would play nice togeather..no dice lol. at this point with MSI AfterBurner I can test with my card at "Stock uncloked" that is 880 core and 1300 mem, Can raise the core to 950 and the mem to 1350.... nothing close to what it should be for my card...silly programs. If I can get Trixx to play nice I can have my silly card overclock along with my silly CPU clock it would be great lol.
I will say that after Overclocking the i5 it dose kinda stomp on the AMD 955 at 4.0 so far. but I want proof! I just have to swap my toxic into the 955 rig to re run bench's lol.

Originally Posted by ET900 

there's absolutely no question that the 2500k stomps all over the 955. i'd say its roughly the power of the 955 + 40% again just from my experience with it. but i suppose the question for you is how much difference will it make to your games. if the 955 wasn't, or was barely bottlenecking then i guess it wont be a huge difference but you've now got a nice amount of headroom for future graphics upgrades. i do think that actual game benchmarks are the way to go rather than stuff like furmark. its real world performance you want to see!
on a side note - there is a command you can use on the bf3 console which brings up a live graph showing stuff like cpu and gpu usage on a timeline so you can see what situations are making them choke. i've never used it and dont know the command but remember seeing it in a video about bf3 before it came out. might be worth looking into. wouldn't actually mind using that myself!

Originally Posted by KhaoticKomputing 

Yea, The i5 is totally more powerful. I just needed to get it clocked to show how much more. Still looking at some number's but it play's skyrim at full ultra(nothing turned down or off and a few mods) @ 20-30% CPU load most of the time (GPU at 99%). I was stuck with the stock i5 vs my OC'd 955. Not a massive improvement but overclocked the i5 is pretty nice. I still wanna do a comparo on the TOXIC with both CPU's If I could find a cheap card that would pair nice with my toxic I could see how the CPU change's the Xfire power:) but I'm broke after the intel swap lol

Originally Posted by KhaoticKomputing 

Hey guys. I just wanted to post some info. I just got done droping in a new i5 2500k and mobo in my sig rig and have been playing skyrim and BF3 like MAD to test the daylights out of it. I have come to one single conclusion. While the i5 2500k and mobo are both amazing products the performance I gained over my AMD set up was a joke with my single card. picked up a few frame's on the low end, but nothing noticeable. If I wasnt running an FPS counter I wouldn't have noticed it one bit. the only thing I have noticed is that when playing BF3 on ultra my CPU usage went from 80-90% with my Phenom II 955 to 60-70% with my i5 2500k.
All and all if your running a single card, an AMD 955 is more than enough to get the job done, No bottlenecking ever. I was able to get 100% usage out of my GPU set up. I will say if your going to run a second GPU then the i5 2500k is a must. my 955 would have choked with two Toxic's pushing, one had it almost taped out in BF3(handled skyrim just fine).
So there you have it. My thoughts on going form what I consider to be a nice AMD set up to a nice Intel set up.
Bottom line: 955 BE or similar AMD chip works perfect for single card setup's. i5 2500k is much more suited for SLI/XFire.
I will say my card seems to not want to clock as high with the new set up. I'm looking into it. I'll post back later with more info on that lol
I do have both my 955/UD3 rig and my i5/z68 rig running at the same time. Later I will try to post a formal AMD 955 vs i5 2500k
This will include skyrim and BF3 (let me know if you want any other game's or tests done). Test will be how the TOXIC reacts in stock 6950 and clocks, unlocked with stock clocks, and unlocked overclocked and +20%. I also want to check to see how the CPU overclock scale's with the card so the CPU's will be ran at stock, mild OC's and All out. It going to take me a while to polish my i5 OC so it will be a moment or two. Let me know if I should include anything in this mini review.

Originally Posted by geazy 

I'm getting ready to make this move. My setup is a little different from your because I run much higher resolution but my 3.9ghz 955 is maxing out on BF3 i run maxed with no MSAA and i average about 60-70fps except on a few maps like caspian where my fps will spike and drop to 40fps. I noticed my 955 was at 93-100 on all cores. I run 5256x1050 resolution so i put more work on my crossfire 6950's then most gamers but i've noticed some maps my gpu's are running anywhere from 75-99%. My 955 is bottlenecking slightly even with higher then normal resolutions. So i'm going to slap a 2500k in my rig and a Z68 board and see what happens.

Originally Posted by KhaoticKomputing 

ok, I got the i5 stable at a nice enough OC to test at(4.7Ghz WOOT!). Only one thing stopping me now. I need a way to display my GPU usage temps and FPS ingame...but here is the catch.. I need to be able to oc my card at the same time. I can use afterburner form MSI to view how my card is doing, but it won't allow me to clock my card as high as Sapphire TRIXX will. So I made some attempts to see if they would play nice togeather..no dice lol. at this point with MSI AfterBurner I can test with my card at "Stock uncloked" that is 880 core and 1300 mem, Can raise the core to 950 and the mem to 1350.... nothing close to what it should be for my card...silly programs. If I can get Trixx to play nice I can have my silly card overclock along with my silly CPU clock it would be great lol.
I will say that after Overclocking the i5 it dose kinda stomp on the AMD 955 at 4.0 so far. but I want proof! I just have to swap my toxic into the 955 rig to re run bench's lol.

Originally Posted by Washer UK 

What temps and what cooler?

Originally Posted by ET900 

12.1 final release drivers are out (link to Windows 7 x64 version): http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx#1
Gonna test them now and see what i think. BTW when you guys have them installed can you look in Device Manager and tell me the driver date please? For me it says "05/12/2011" which dont seem right...
Edit: Also i am trying to OC but Trixx wont let me take the voltage past 1187. Anyone know why this is?

Originally Posted by nvidiaftw12 

12.2 also released. And could you further explain the problem with the voltage.