Need 5850 Help from someone with an AMD build, 3DMark scores really low.

Guys & Gals,

I'm putting the finishing (for now... who's ever REALLY finished) touches on my recent build. The main idea behind the machine is to help me study for the IBM nSeries Cert test, this Friday, the VCP update (from v3 to v4), and my Commvault cert update (from v7 to v8), all before the end of the year.

That being said, I decided to go ahead and make it my gaming rig, as well, for now. I just loaded up the system yesterday, but my results are less than impressive. Keep in mind that this is NOT a normal build for most desktop gaming rigs, but I am hoping to get some comparisons, at the hardware level, to find the issue.

Okay, I a not a huge fan of 3DMark or Vantage as a reputable means of benching my system, but I loaded them up initially to use them as a very baseline performance comparison to my old system... just a measure stick, that's all... not trying to get high scores, just checking my system is performing in the range that I expected it to. It wasn't.

Here are my system specs:

Rocketfish full tower
Antec True Power Trio 650w
MSI K9ND Speedster v1.1 w/8MB BIOS (Barcelona and Shanghai support)
4x2GB PC2-5300 ECC Registered
2x Opteron 8354 2.2GHz quads
Dell SAS5/iR
4x Seagate 2.5" laptop drives in RAID-0 (for now...SAS drives + other disk stuff on the way)
XFX Radeon 5850

I first loaded up Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, patched it completely, installed all drivers, loaded up 3DMark06 and Vantage on it. I don't recall the Vantage score, but a quick Google Search revealed the GPU portion to be about 1/2 of what others with 57850s were getting (I want to say 7.5k on GPU). 3DMark06 score was just under 10k.

I double checked my BIOS settings, no issues. I checked the board's block diagram to make sure that I was using the correct slot, no issues. I verified GPU PCI-E link speed in CPU-Z, reported as x16. Checked GPU clocks in GPU-Z and CCC, no issues. Uninstalled Video driver using Driver Cleaner, then reinstalled, and re-ran 3DMark06... same score.

I then wiped Windows 7 and installed Vista x64. The scores were a few hundred points lower than Windows 7, about 9600-ish. I then uninstalled my ATI drivers, pulled the 5850, and installed an 8500GT that I had laying around. That got me a 3700, which seems in line with what other scores are for that GPU.

...Sooooo... Does anyone have a 5850 and 3DMark on an AMD platform at about 2.2GHz/core? Don't care if it's dual core, tri-core, quad core. Just needs to be AM2 or better with 4GB of RAM. This will get me as close to my system specs as possible.

I could really use the help. I am hoping that I will be able to put my 5850 in a friends machine which has a known 3DMark06 score, to verify that my card is not defective. I will also put his card in my system to compare scores.

I may just be CPU limited (and if so, that's fine, I can build a proper gaming rig after January), but I sure would like to know what is going on.

There is probably a very easy fix for this. Make sure you've turned V-Sync off, in your CCC display properties.

Your 3D-Mark won't bench properly if locked at 60FPS. Catch my drift?

Also, I don't use vantage, because different scores vary quite a bit when AA, anisotripic, etc. are at different settings. Don't pay too much attention to synthetic benchmarks.


Hope this helps.

I will have to check that V-Sync is indeed off or on, thank you for that. That being said, V-Sync would keep my framerates locked to 60 or below, right? I only saw one 3DMar06 test that got over 60FPS. Regardless, I will check it.

I am still reading this thread, found by googling: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/271679-33-3dmark-vantage-score-5870

not done reading it yet, but the issues described therein are exactly what I'm seeing.

sabregen said:

I will have to check that V-Sync is indeed off or on, thank you for that. That being said, V-Sync would keep my framerates locked to 60 or below, right? I only saw one 3DMar06 test that got over 60FPS. Regardless, I will check it.

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No Probs. That being said. I had a look at your specs, nice "workstation class" rig you got there. 8 full cores huh? Each CPU has dedicated banks of memory too? Must be buttery smooth....

thanks for the comment on the rig. I am waiting on my sas cables, a 8-in-2 (8x 2.5" drives in 2x 5.25" bays) hotswap sas enclosure, and 4x 2.5" 15k seagate savvios, to finish it up.

Interestingly, I have found people on several forums with my same issue, but it looks like that's just on the surface. most of those folks had the card in the wrong slot, etc...which I have already ruled out. Additionally, I saw a guy mention that at stock, he has the following system, with the following scores:

Q6600 @ 2.4
4GB PC2-6400
Sapphire 5870
All Stock clocks
3DMark06 score 12,000
Vantage Score 9k (overall)

This refreshed my mind on my vantage score, which was just short of 8k, overall. His 3DMark06 scores went to 19.2k after OC'ing to 3.8GHz on the CPU and also OC'ing the 5870. Maybe I am right where I should be?

check this out: http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1034720582&postcount=49

Gdeath n00bie, 39 Days

Gdeath is offline Report Post
I've been browsing other forums, and it seems there are several people making complaints about the 5800 series performance with respect to the 4800 series, especially people who are running AMD cpu's.

This leads me to believe that piss poor drivers are most likely the cause of the performance differential between the generations for the OP as well as the others, including myself. I have a Phenom 2 940 OC'd to 3.6 and my xfx 5850 (775 core 1100 memory) scored just below 10k in Vantage, while my 4850x2's best score is 11.5k.

I seriously doubt we are all having hardware problems. We just need for AMD/ATI to step up their driver game.

Either that or buy an I7 processor so you can get a good score despite the shitty drivers.
Reply With Quote

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from this thread: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1457532&page=2

Sabragen,

There is one more thing you can do to check out if it's your CPU. Drop the resolutions on your benchies and see if you get similar results at the max res of your display vs. something like 1366 x 768 or 1280 x 800, etc.

That's always a good indicator of being CPU limited. If you don't get super duper high fps, and yield similar framrates, you're CPU bound.

And yes, I've been poking around there does seem to be lower scores on benchies with AMD CPU/Platform. Kinda weird, that their video cards perform better on their main competitor's platform huh?

Hope that helps.

I also just read that there seems to be an issue on some cards where there's a BIOS problem, and reflashing it (everyone seems to be flashing to unlocked BIOS's) fixes the issue, as well.

FYI, my 3DMark06 and Vantage scores were at CPU/RAM/GPU stock settings, and all benchmark programs at total stock settings, as well.

My Windows Vista Experience indexes are: 5.9, 5.9, 5.9, 5.9, 5.9
My Windows 7 Experience Indexes are: 7.4, 7.7, 7.7, 7.7, 5.9

I ca wait to get home to try and figure this shit out...driving me nuts. I just wanted to finish up NFS Shift, Get FO3: GOTY ed installed, and replay from the beginning, and then play GTA IV on my new build... this crap sucks.

sabregen said:

I also just read that there seems to be an issue on some cards where there's a BIOS problem, and reflashing it (everyone seems to be flashing to unlocked BIOS's) fixes the issue, as well.

FYI, my 3DMark06 and Vantage scores were at CPU/RAM/GPU stock settings, and all benchmark programs at total stock settings, as well.

My Windows Vista Experience indexes are: 5.9, 5.9, 5.9, 5.9, 5.9
My Windows 7 Experience Indexes are: 7.4, 7.7, 7.7, 7.7, 5.9

I ca wait to get home to try and figure this shit out...driving me nuts. I just wanted to finish up NFS Shift, Get FO3: GOTY ed installed, and replay from the beginning, and then play GTA IV on my new build... this crap sucks.

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Well, flashing your GPU bios to the unlocked one will allow you to OC your GPU core and ram to higher clocks, but if you're CPU limited, which I think you're concerned about, flashing the bios and leaving everything at stock shouldn't change anything. I mean benchies may look higher, because the unlocked bios may have higher default clocks for the GPU, but you're talking a couple hundred points in vantage, not thousands.

The people that are reporting issues on the AMD platforms have also found increase in their overall and GPU scores under 3DMark06 and Vantage by flashing the BIOS to the unlocked one, even without clock or voltage manipulation. Yes, I am concerned about being CPU limited, but I could live with it for a while, if that was the case. I am merely trying to make sure that I cover all of my bases. So far:

Fresh OS Install on Win7 x64 Ult
Newest Drivers Installed for all devices
Win7 Updated
3Dmark06 run ~9800
Vantage run 11k GPU

Fresh Win Vista Install
OS Updated
All newest drivers installed
3dMark06 run ~9600
Vantage not run under Vista

Checked motherboard block diagram to verify proper PCI-E slot being used (yes)
Checked CPU-Z for x16 graphics link (yes)
Checked GPU-Z for Card GPU and Mem speed (correct)
Removed SAS5/iR card, just in case
Uninstalled CCC + Drivers, removed 5850
Installed 8500GT, installed Drivers
3DMark06 run ~3500 (which is on-par)

My buddies 3.6ghz E7400 gets around 11K on vantage. I don't think your to far off. What was your CPU score on Vantage on the fresh install?

3dmark is severely CPU limited, and did I mention severely.

Copyright said:

My buddies 3.6ghz E7400 gets around 11K on vantage. I don't think your to far off. What was your CPU score on Vantage on the fresh install?

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E7400 with what GPU? A 5850? Bah... I can't recall my CPU score. I will have to rebench when I get home.

sabregen said:

...Sooooo... Does anyone have a 5850 and 3DMark on an AMD platform at about 2.2GHz/core? Don't care if it's dual core, tri-core, quad core. Just needs to be AM2 or better with 4GB of RAM. This will get me as close to my system specs as possible.

Click to expand...

This doesn't match perfectly, but hopefully it'll help somewhat. I just build a new system this saturday:
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II 945
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB
Sapphire 5850
Win7 64bit Professional

Here's the scores I got:
3DMark06: 16508
3DMark Vantage: P12150 (CPU: 10334, Graphics: 12905)

3.0GHz CPU...4GB...5850. Stock clocks on all (CPU/GPU)? Even taking CPU scaling into account...I would think I would be closer to your 3DMark06 score, like 14k or something. I do know that my Vantage GPU score was like 7500-8000

Yes, stock on everything. I've got bad luck overclocking so I gave up a while back.

One interesting thing I noticed: I ran the same tests right before taking apart the old computer. I had a C2Duo E6400, 2Gig RAM, 8800GT. My 3DMark Vantage CPU score actually went down after the upgrade. My old system's scores were:

3DMark06: 8563
3DMark Vantage: P6399 (CPU: 18604, GPU: 5251)

I've heard that it's because I was running an nVidia card and PhysX gives an artificial boost to the CPU score. True or not, it still gave me a bit of concern.

my current scores would seem to indicate that I did a sidegrade. I am within 200 points of my old system:

eVGA 590SLI
Athlon X2 4850e (2.5GHz)
2x2GB PC2-8500
Seagate 320 7200.11
ASUS GTX260 Core 192
3DMark06: 9600
Vantage: Can't recall

...wonderful

V-Sync was off in CCC. Turned all 3D options to off or application settings, Re-Ran... same results.
Uninstalled drivers, ran Driver Cleaner, rebooted
Installed Beta 9.11's or whatever they are on the Developers Site
Re-Ran 3DMark06 - same results.
Running Vantage now

For reference, 3Dmark06 score breakdown:

SM2.0 - 3006
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 4798
CPU Score: 3532

Ran GPU up to 775/1125 clocks, scored a 9949 (up from 9300), breakdown:

SM2 - 3136
HDR/SM3 - 4975
CPU - 3598

Motherboard BIOS has the option to OC the CPUs. I tried 10MHz over on the FSB. Posted, but did not get past BIOS, and had to clear CMOS. So....I guess that's out.

Beta 9.11's cause Vantage to crash.

went back to 9.10 WHQL so I can re-run Vantage to post scores. Decided to run 3DMark06 instead, first. with 9.10s w/5850 OC @ 775/1125, I get the following:

9628 3DMarks
SM2 - 3018
SM3 - 4826
CPU - 3493

Running Vantage now

well, vantage keeps crashing out at the same point every time, despite a re-install

reloading to win7 x64 ult from vista (was making sure OS wasn't causing the issue). This should also fix my Vantage score issue, and lockups. I will have to go to work before I can run the bench again though. Can any drop their AMD rig down to 2.2 with a 5850 and give 3DMark06 and Vantage a run?

HELP!!! This is what I get in Vantage:

reset CCC options, forced V-Sync off, re-ran Vantage: