Crossfire rog matrix 5870's

[bigbcustom]

I currently have one matrix 5870, and was thinking I would get another for a crossfire set up. My questions are: with their stock cooling, how will the top card manage to get air into its fan (which would face right into the top of the second card)? Even though my board has three appropriate slots, it doesn't look like there is room under the current card for a second one.... I am wondering if anybody has a crossfire set up with these cards on a P6X58D-E?

System:
P6X58D-E
I7-930 stock frequency
6gb Corsair tr3x6g1600c8d
1 ROG matrix 5870
Corsair 800D case
Corsair hx850 power supply
Corsair H5O cpu cooler
ocz vertex 2 50gb operating system drive
Caviar black 1tb storage drive
Lite-on 424 drive
Hanns G 28" monitor
Case has stock fans along with 3 scythe sy1225sl12l fans in top mounting spots blowing out. Intakes are both filtered stock bottom and back through radiator.

Any other comments critiques are welcome, but be gentle as I am something of a newbie with the custom build. This is my fourth build, and the only one in the last six years.

Thank you for your help/comments!!

Brian

 

[blackhawk777]

I actually just received my second Matrix 5870 Platinum the other day, and I promptly dropped it in and crossfired the two. A couple things I noticed: It was necessary to use Catalyst 10.3a drivers to avoid the horizontal line issue many have been having (I am running an X3360 at 3.95 gHz on a Gigabyte x16/x8 mobo, 6GB Mushkin DDR2, Corsair H50, HAF932 AMD, Corsair TX750, 3x 22" Dell Pro Monitors in 5040x1050 Eyefinity). Also, I installed iTracker and attempted to overclock each card individually, but even with the exact same settings burned into the cards crossfire no longer worked. As you said, the airflow is more difficult for the top card, but it still is sufficient to run normally; however I have yet to find the right settings to make two of these monsters play together nicely. Even without the cards overclocked, the crossfire setup was not even matching the framerates of just a single card in Just Cause 2.

The reason I bought a second card was to crank up the speed in Eyefinity, but so far I have been disappointed as two days worth of tweaking has not resulted in the performance boost I was expecting. If anyone has a similar setup working I would love to hear how you did it.

 

[AlvinMaker]

I actually just received my second Matrix 5870 Platinum the other day, and I promptly dropped it in and crossfired the two. A couple things I noticed: It was necessary to use Catalyst 10.3a drivers to avoid the horizontal line issue many have been having (I am running an X3360 at 3.95 gHz on a Gigabyte x16/x8 mobo, 6GB Mushkin DDR2, Corsair H50, HAF932 AMD, Corsair TX750, 3x 22" Dell Pro Monitors in 5040x1050 Eyefinity). Also, I installed iTracker and attempted to overclock each card individually, but even with the exact same settings burned into the cards crossfire no longer worked. As you said, the airflow is more difficult for the top card, but it still is sufficient to run normally; however I have yet to find the right settings to make two of these monsters play together nicely. Even without the cards overclocked, the crossfire setup was not even matching the framerates of just a single card in Just Cause 2.

The reason I bought a second card was to crank up the speed in Eyefinity, but so far I have been disappointed as two days worth of tweaking has not resulted in the performance boost I was expecting. If anyone has a similar setup working I would love to hear how you did it.

Hmm...

I just got my 2 Matrix 5870 Platinums yesterday, and they are crossfiring, no issues. I am running 10.4 drivers with the 10.5 crossfire profiles. System specs below:

i7 920 @ 4GHZ
MSI Eclipse Plus
6GB triple chnl
Strider 1200 PSU
32GB SSD
1TB Cav. Blk.
2 x 5870 Matrix Plat. ROG
Thermaltake Armor +
3 x Dell 2209WA IPS = 5040X1050 Eyefinity res

I have run WH, AVP, and BC2, and so far, Crossfire is working, and while I am still OC testing, the numbers are already creeping nicely above the 5970 I am replacing.

I think I still have the JC2 demo- I'll crank back up and see what kind of results I get. Wonder what the issue is?

 

[blackhawk777]

I don't know, but it's really driving me crazy. I tried the 10.4s and the 10.5s, and they both produced the horizontal lines across the center monitor so I rolled back to the 10.3a drivers. I know that I don't have the newest setup, but I assumed an X3360 at 3.95 and the x16 / x8 slots would be sufficient to handle these cards......maybe not? I'm going to keep tweaking over the weekend and hopefully get them running smoothly, but it is very frustrating that two cards worth 500 a piece are so difficult to properly set up together.

 

[AlvinMaker]

I don't know, but it's really driving me crazy. I tried the 10.4s and the 10.5s, and they both produced the horizontal lines across the center monitor so I rolled back to the 10.3a drivers. I know that I don't have the newest setup, but I assumed an X3360 at 3.95 and the x16 / x8 slots would be sufficient to handle these cards......maybe not? I'm going to keep tweaking over the weekend and hopefully get them running smoothly, but it is very frustrating that two cards worth 500 a piece are so difficult to properly set up together.

Damn- what a bummer. Good luck with that.

My only complaint with these is the heat. They get hot FAST. My 5970, even OC'd , didn't get over 78C. These RACE to the high 80s as soon as you start pumping cloks and voltage.

So far, my best stable clock on the core has been 980 at 1.35v.

I was definitely expecting to hit 1 GHZ. Not sure if they need more juice, or what. I am gonna continue testing, and by this afternoon I should have some final results. I may disable Xfire temporarily and see if just OCing one makes a difference. (I have never owned 2 seperate ATI cards in Xfire before... 5970 of course took care of itself, and before that, I was a "green" guy )

More to come...

 

[Rizen]

Damn- what a bummer. Good luck with that.

My only complaint with these is the heat. They get hot FAST. My 5970, even OC'd , didn't get over 78C. These RACE to the high 80s as soon as you start pumping cloks and voltage.

So far, my best stable clock on the core has been 980 at 1.35v.

I was definitely expecting to hit 1 GHZ. Not sure if they need more juice, or what. I am gonna continue testing, and by this afternoon I should have some final results. I may disable Xfire temporarily and see if just OCing one makes a difference. (I have never owned 2 seperate ATI cards in Xfire before... 5970 of course took care of itself, and before that, I was a "green" guy )

More to come...

Running at 1.35v on air and you are complaining about high 80s? Those are GREAT temps for that voltage and clock speed.

 

[AlvinMaker]

Running at 1.35v on air and you are complaining about high 80s? Those are GREAT temps for that voltage and clock speed.

Yeah, I guess I worded that wrong...

I am thrilled that it's under control on just air/stock MATRIX cooling, was just hoping to hit the magic "GHZ" mark, that's all.

On a side note- is it worth it disabling Xfire and trying individually? As certain cards tend to vary, could it be that one is the "weakest link" when OCing? Just curious...

 

[AlvinMaker]

Running at 1.35v on air and you are complaining about high 80s? Those are GREAT temps for that voltage and clock speed.

I guess the other thing is, I seem to get artifacts when it hits the 80s over 980MHZ.. Is this the heat? Mabye memory heating up? Just wonder WHAT is buckling at this point?

 

[Rizen]

I guess the other thing is, I seem to get artifacts when it hits the 80s over 980MHZ.. Is this the heat? Mabye memory heating up? Just wonder WHAT is buckling at this point?

I have heat problems at the high 80s, so thats a possibility. What type of artifacts are you seeing? GPU lockups tend to throw a driver display error and shut down your app, whereas memory issues tend to be tearing.

 

[AlvinMaker]

I have heat problems at the high 80s, so thats a possibility. What type of artifacts are you seeing? GPU lockups tend to throw a driver display error and shut down your app, whereas memory issues tend to be tearing.

I am using Furmark, and it "pixelates" into squares, ususally pretty quickly...

And for those interested, I am running them in PCIe slots 1 and 3, so they have room to breathe...

 

[Rizen]

I am using Furmark, and it "pixelates" into squares, ususally pretty quickly...

And for those interested, I am running them in PCIe slots 1 and 3, so they have room to breathe...

I would back down on the GPU in 5MHz increments until it goes away.

 

[AlvinMaker]

I would back down on the GPU in 5MHz increments until it goes away.

Would that the fact that at some speeds, it does it RIGHT away, like as SOON as you hit go on Furmark, it freezes pixelated, mean anything specific? It's pretty immediate , too. For instance, it ran at 975, voltage at 1.3, for quite a few minutes, and once fans got up to speed, it stayed RIGHT at 80/79...bumping up to 980 yields IMMEDIATE freezes/pixel artifacts... Won't even launch? Mabye I am at the threshold for this particular batch of chips/ram etc...? Very curious...

 

[Rizen]

Would that the fact that at some speeds, it does it RIGHT away, like as SOON as you hit go on Furmark, it freezes pixelated, mean anything specific? It's pretty immediate , too. For instance, it ran at 975, voltage at 1.3, for quite a few minutes, and once fans got up to speed, it stayed RIGHT at 80/79...bumping up to 980 yields IMMEDIATE freezes/pixel artifacts... Won't even launch? Mabye I am at the threshold for this particular batch of chips/ram etc...? Very curious...

Well if it would run the speed at 1.35v, and crash at 1.3v, it sounds like the limitation was simply voltage.

Heat will also play a factor. I'm going to probably move to water cooling on my 5870s.

 

[blackhawk777]

I hit a similar wall when OCing my first Matrix with iTracker. It seemed that it wouldn't run stable over 975 core no matter what voltage or mem settings I used. Now at 975 the card is no slouch, even in 5040x1050; but I am baffled by the numerous accounts I have seen from tech blogs and also product reviews on Newegg where users claimed 1040 core and 1300+ mem settings.....it would seem that temps would be too high to run stable at those settings, and what drivers would let them get there in the first place without locking up?

 

[AlvinMaker]

I hit a similar wall when OCing my first Matrix with iTracker. It seemed that it wouldn't run stable over 975 core no matter what voltage or mem settings I used. Now at 975 the card is no slouch, even in 5040x1050; but I am baffled by the numerous accounts I have seen from tech blogs and also product reviews on Newegg where users claimed 1040 core and 1300+ mem settings.....it would seem that temps would be too high to run stable at those settings, and what drivers would let them get there in the first place without locking up?

I guess that is where I am as well... Just about EVERY review out there has em hitting 1000+ mhz rock solid. I am at a WALL above above 972. I am still tweaking, of course, but so far, it doesn't look like I am going to be able to go any higher than this. My only other option is to pull card 1 , and see if card 2 does any better alone. (I disabled Xfire and ran some tests, and it got a TOUCH higher by itself, but not much better...power limitation, mabye? ) That would mabye expose my limiting factor.

The other variable that differs for me is I am testing Xfired, whereas all the reviews at 1000+ are of course testing a single card...hmmm....

 

[Rizen]

I guess that is where I am as well... Just about EVERY review out there has em hitting 1000+ mhz rock solid. I am at a WALL above above 972. I am still tweaking, of course, but so far, it doesn't look like I am going to be able to go any higher than this. My only other option is to pull card 1 , and see if card 2 does any better alone. (I disabled Xfire and ran some tests, and it got a TOUCH higher by itself, but not much better...power limitation, mabye? ) That would mabye expose my limiting factor.

The other variable that differs for me is I am testing Xfired, whereas all the reviews at 1000+ are of course testing a single card...hmmm....

Try bumping up your northbridge voltage a tad on your motherboard. Maybe .1v.

 

[blackhawk777]

The only thing I could think of that might be making it more difficult is that running the three 22" monitors (in my case) probably requires a good amount of boost in core voltage; so much so that it would prevent reaching the 1K mark due to temperature constraints. As it stands, I needed at least 1.3v to run stable at 975, and after that run I touched the back of the card and it was blazing hot!

BTW I ran through these scenarios with the second card completely removed. From what I understand I believe iTracker is only burning clocks into the primary card's bios when used with xfire, but I may be mistaken.

 

[AlvinMaker]

The only thing I could think of that might be making it more difficult is that running the three 22" monitors (in my case) probably requires a good amount of boost in core voltage; so much so that it would prevent reaching the 1K mark due to temperature constraints. As it stands, I needed at least 1.3v to run stable at 975, and after that run I touched the back of the card and it was blazing hot!

BTW I ran through these scenarios with the second card completely removed. From what I understand I believe iTracker is only burning clocks into the primary card's bios when used with xfire, but I may be mistaken.

Very interesting, indeed.

Seems you and I are only a couple of MHZ apart in our experience...

 

[blackhawk777]

Got my two cards last week; maybe they were the same batch of GPUs? Regardless, I would love for one of these tech blogs to try and overclock the card in 3x1 Eyefinity (as it is the most common Eyefinity setup it seems); and see the results of that.


BTW, downloaded the 10.4 Catalyst suite and the 10.5 CFX profiles; going to try them when I get home and see if anything changes.

 

[AlvinMaker]

Got my two cards last week; maybe they were the same batch of GPUs? Regardless, I would love for one of these tech blogs to try and overclock the card in 3x1 Eyefinity (as it is the most common Eyefinity setup it seems); and see the results of that.


BTW, downloaded the 10.4 Catalyst suite and the 10.5 CFX profiles; going to try them when I get home and see if anything changes.

Yeah, that help in determining our limiting factor...other than what you suggested, we just got a batch that won't go that high.

Do post your results either way...

 

[Lateralus]

Even without the cards overclocked, the crossfire setup was not even matching the framerates of just a single card in Just Cause 2.

The reason I bought a second card was to crank up the speed in Eyefinity, but so far I have been disappointed as two days worth of tweaking has not resulted in the performance boost I was expecting. If anyone has a similar setup working I would love to hear how you did it.

This thread may help, there seem to be other people experiencing the same issue of degraded performance in Crossfire Eyefinity compared to a single card.

 

[vjcsmoke]

Would that the fact that at some speeds, it does it RIGHT away, like as SOON as you hit go on Furmark, it freezes pixelated, mean anything specific? It's pretty immediate , too. For instance, it ran at 975, voltage at 1.3, for quite a few minutes, and once fans got up to speed, it stayed RIGHT at 80/79...bumping up to 980 yields IMMEDIATE freezes/pixel artifacts... Won't even launch? Mabye I am at the threshold for this particular batch of chips/ram etc...? Very curious...

I use one of these in between my two GTX 480.

Vcool slot cooler.
http://www.compuplus.com/Video/Antec-VCool-VGA-Video-Card-1012181.html

It appears to drop my gpu load temps by 2-5c each which is fantastic considering how cheap this part is. Basically all it does is blow cool air from the outside onto the video cards. Idle temps are also lower, but the load temps are most important to me.

What is the default voltage on those Matrixes? I had an XFX 5870 that overclocked to a sweet 1ghz core speed and 5ghz memory at 1.3v. If it didn't have the GSOD issues I would have happily kept it.

 

[AlvinMaker]

I use one of these in between my two GTX 480.

Vcool slot cooler.
http://www.compuplus.com/Video/Antec-VCool-VGA-Video-Card-1012181.html

It appears to drop my gpu load temps by 2-5c each which is fantastic considering how cheap this part is. Basically all it does is blow cool air from the outside onto the video cards. Idle temps are also lower, but the load temps are most important to me.

What is the default voltage on those Matrixes? I had an XFX 5870 that overclocked to a sweet 1ghz core speed and 5ghz memory at 1.3v. If it didn't have the GSOD issues I would have happily kept it.

Wow...believe it or not, I had one of those WAAAAAAAY back when I did one of my first builds- it hadn't even crossed my mind! Thanks for the idea...worth a shot for a couple of bucks!

Default is 1.2. I am still doing testing/tinkering/etc... Today, just for kicks, I plan on swapping cards to see if "card #2" has any more headroom than #1. More results to come...

 

[AlvinMaker]

Wow...believe it or not, I had one of those WAAAAAAAY back when I did one of my first builds- it hadn't even crossed my mind! Thanks for the idea...worth a shot for a couple of bucks!

Default is 1.2. I am still doing testing/tinkering/etc... Today, just for kicks, I plan on swapping cards to see if "card #2" has any more headroom than #1. More results to come...

WELL...

For giggles, and because I was out of ideas on what to try (until my Antec slot cooler comes in...worth a shot for 10 dollars), I pulled the cards and swapped 'em.

Well guess what...I just ran 997 core,/1.32v , temps JUST around 80, for a few minutes, which I could NEVER get to without an IMMEDIATE crash on the other card! Need to do some more testing, but these results are VERY intriguing! Stay tuned...

 

[AlvinMaker]

Well...an update of sorts...

First of all, I am a MORON as part of issue with the heat seems to be related to the fact that the "auto" fan mode , at least for me, does NOT work properly. It spools up and down too much to keep the heat under control. I JUST figured out that I could just set it at 80% and leave it there...

New results so far...

1050, at 1.32v, solid as a rock...temps? 70! MUCH better!! NOW- on to some more tuning! (I am liking these bad boyz more and more by the minute... )

 

[AlvinMaker]

I actually just received my second Matrix 5870 Platinum the other day, and I promptly dropped it in and crossfired the two. A couple things I noticed: It was necessary to use Catalyst 10.3a drivers to avoid the horizontal line issue many have been having (I am running an X3360 at 3.95 gHz on a Gigabyte x16/x8 mobo, 6GB Mushkin DDR2, Corsair H50, HAF932 AMD, Corsair TX750, 3x 22" Dell Pro Monitors in 5040x1050 Eyefinity). Also, I installed iTracker and attempted to overclock each card individually, but even with the exact same settings burned into the cards crossfire no longer worked. As you said, the airflow is more difficult for the top card, but it still is sufficient to run normally; however I have yet to find the right settings to make two of these monsters play together nicely. Even without the cards overclocked, the crossfire setup was not even matching the framerates of just a single card in Just Cause 2.

The reason I bought a second card was to crank up the speed in Eyefinity, but so far I have been disappointed as two days worth of tweaking has not resulted in the performance boost I was expecting. If anyone has a similar setup working I would love to hear how you did it.

I just finally re installed the Just Cause 2 demo. Ran the bench for ya'...

Crossfire enabled, everything max, 4XAA, 16XAF, 3x1680x1050 = 48.09 FPS bench result. That is with the ROGs OC'd to 1000MHZ core, mem stock.

I remember having problems with JC2 in Portrait, but I am landscaped right now, and it launched without a hitch. Still running 10.4 drivers, 10.5 xfire profiles.

Any luck with your setup?

 

[blackhawk777]

Sounds like your weekend tuning went better than mine, but I haven't had much time to work on it since I'm renovating a new house the wife and I just moved into.....

So here's where I'm at.... I had the two cards working in crossfire under the 10.3a drivers. Shut down, took one out, then booted up again and burned the "gaming mode" settings into the bios of one card. Shut the comp down, switched the cards, booted back up and repeated burning the same settings into the second card. Shut the comp down again, plugged in the second card in the next open slot, installed the CFX bridge and booted up.

New problem: I can't see the second card when it is installed with the CFX bridge on it anymore....not in the device manager or in CCC. The weird thing is that if I shut down and take the bridge off, the card shows up in the device manager and also in CCC, but it says that I need to shut down and install the bridge in order to be able to use crossfire! WTF! These cards are driving me nuts! I tried returning them both to stock settings, re-installing windows and also using different drivers, but I can no longer see both cards when I set them up for crossfire..... very strange and frustrating. Anyway, I am currently only using one card now and it works great at stock settings, but that's not why I bought these now is it?

 

[Rizen]

Well...an update of sorts...

First of all, I am a MORON as part of issue with the heat seems to be related to the fact that the "auto" fan mode , at least for me, does NOT work properly. It spools up and down too much to keep the heat under control. I JUST figured out that I could just set it at 80% and leave it there...

New results so far...

1050, at 1.32v, solid as a rock...temps? 70! MUCH better!! NOW- on to some more tuning! (I am liking these bad boyz more and more by the minute... )

Download MSI Afterburner and use it's configurable fan profile. It's very easy to use and lets you set the cards to idle at whatever speed you want (I use 35% fan at idle) and then ramp up very quickly with temperature.

 

[AlvinMaker]

Sounds like your weekend tuning went better than mine, but I haven't had much time to work on it since I'm renovating a new house the wife and I just moved into.....

So here's where I'm at.... I had the two cards working in crossfire under the 10.3a drivers. Shut down, took one out, then booted up again and burned the "gaming mode" settings into the bios of one card. Shut the comp down, switched the cards, booted back up and repeated burning the same settings into the second card. Shut the comp down again, plugged in the second card in the next open slot, installed the CFX bridge and booted up.

New problem: I can't see the second card when it is installed with the CFX bridge on it anymore....not in the device manager or in CCC. The weird thing is that if I shut down and take the bridge off, the card shows up in the device manager and also in CCC, but it says that I need to shut down and install the bridge in order to be able to use crossfire! WTF! These cards are driving me nuts! I tried returning them both to stock settings, re-installing windows and also using different drivers, but I can no longer see both cards when I set them up for crossfire..... very strange and frustrating. Anyway, I am currently only using one card now and it works great at stock settings, but that's not why I bought these now is it?

Man- I wouldn't have any hair left if I was going through that! Geez... I wish I had some suggestions of other things to try, but you seem to exhausted all of the obvious (and then some!).

And it seems they BOTH work fine independently? How strange. I will be on the road on Thursday, but back to hopefully finish tweaking and settle on my final clocks by the weekend. Good luck- man I hope you can get these suckers working!

 

[blackhawk777]

Good news- I got the two cards working in CFX again after re-installing Windows 7 64bit for the thousandth time last night. Not sure what the issue was but I turned off HPET in the bios, upped the CPU to 3.95Ghz and then did a fresh install and the second card FINALLY showed up available in CCC. This is with the 10.3a drivers, and although I was extremely hesitant to do so for fear of screwing things up again, I installed the 10.5 CFX profiles and that also went smoothly. What a pain it has been getting these cards to play nice together, but they are definitely running much smoother than they were when I first set them up in CFX, and I believe it's due to the fresh install. Anyway, haven't installed iTracker2 again because I don't want to mess around (I'll wait to see your final results and decide whether or not to pursue overclocking at that point).

And now my new issue..... installed Burnout Paradise this morning, put all the settings on high, started the game and it was running smoothly; then all of a sudden the whole machine turned off and then started to reboot.... Gotta try lowering the CPU / memory clocks on the computer later on and do some more testing, but the important thing is my two Matrix ROGs are back in business!

 

[AlvinMaker]

Good news- I got the two cards working in CFX again after re-installing Windows 7 64bit for the thousandth time last night. Not sure what the issue was but I turned off HPET in the bios, upped the CPU to 3.95Ghz and then did a fresh install and the second card FINALLY showed up available in CCC. This is with the 10.3a drivers, and although I was extremely hesitant to do so for fear of screwing things up again, I installed the 10.5 CFX profiles and that also went smoothly. What a pain it has been getting these cards to play nice together, but they are definitely running much smoother than they were when I first set them up in CFX, and I believe it's due to the fresh install. Anyway, haven't installed iTracker2 again because I don't want to mess around (I'll wait to see your final results and decide whether or not to pursue overclocking at that point).

And now my new issue..... installed Burnout Paradise this morning, put all the settings on high, started the game and it was running smoothly; then all of a sudden the whole machine turned off and then started to reboot.... Gotta try lowering the CPU / memory clocks on the computer later on and do some more testing, but the important thing is my two Matrix ROGs are back in business!

Good deal, man! Wow, what a relief, eh?!

 

[dook43]

And now my new issue..... installed Burnout Paradise this morning, put all the settings on high, started the game and it was running smoothly; then all of a sudden the whole machine turned off and then started to reboot.... Gotta try lowering the CPU / memory clocks on the computer later on and do some more testing, but the important thing is my two Matrix ROGs are back in business!

Burnout is extremely mild on the system. You might have serious issues.

 

[blackhawk777]

I'm sorry, but I definitely don't have serious issues .... I've tweaked this machine and seen enough things happen to know that. As I said before I just raised the clocks on my CPU before running the game so that most likely is the issue as I didn't closely monitor the voltage level on the CPU or southbridge.

 

[blackhawk777]

Good deal, man! Wow, what a relief, eh?!

You bet, and what an adventure that was.... I'm just glad I got them running well before I decided to sell one off!

 

[AlvinMaker]

You bet, and what an adventure that was.... I'm just glad I got them running well before I decided to sell one off!

Yeah , I hear ya'... props on hanging in there!

 

[dook43]

I'm sorry, but I definitely don't have serious issues .... I've tweaked this machine and seen enough things happen to know that. As I said before I just raised the clocks on my CPU before running the game so that most likely is the issue as I didn't closely monitor the voltage level on the CPU or southbridge.

I haven't met a game that stresses my CPU overclock in any way. I sit between 5% and 14% during Crysis Warhead. Burnout Paradise is even more of a joke

You want stress? Start up Handbrake and convert a DVD to MKV using the x264 encoder.

 

[shansoft]

I haven't met a game that stresses my CPU overclock in any way. I sit between 5% and 14% during Crysis Warhead. Burnout Paradise is even more of a joke

You want stress? Start up Handbrake and convert a DVD to MKV using the x264 encoder.

in Crysis, that is because you turn HT on.

even if it is off, one of your core will be fully stress.

Crysis isn't much of multi-core optimize. that is why you see it doesn't use much CPU but it does..

 

[blackhawk777]

I haven't met a game that stresses my CPU overclock in any way. I sit between 5% and 14% during Crysis Warhead. Burnout Paradise is even more of a joke

You want stress? Start up Handbrake and convert a DVD to MKV using the x264 encoder.

Well ok then, you are definitely the expert in stressing CPUs Thanks for adding your productive two cents, I'm going to get back to diagnosing my "serious issues".....

 

[blackhawk777]

Just installed the 10.6 beta drivers along with the 10.6 Catalyst Profiles. All issues were immediately resolved and the cards are running in CFX like a dream. Just Cause 2 performance is outstanding with all settings on high, vsync and AA off. Finally hit over 75fps in the third benchmark, and the second desert bench they were hitting over 90fps. Makes the game much more fun.

 

[AlvinMaker]

Just installed the 10.6 beta drivers along with the 10.6 Catalyst Profiles. All issues were immediately resolved and the cards are running in CFX like a dream. Just Cause 2 performance is outstanding with all settings on high, vsync and AA off. Finally hit over 75fps in the third benchmark, and the second desert bench they were hitting over 90fps. Makes the game much more fun.

Sweet!

I have to hit the road today, but am off ALL day tomorrow, which means I'll give the 10.6s a whirl myself!

(things have been good so far- got that little Antec Cyclone to put in between , just to see if I can drop temps a couple more degrees.)