HIS Radeon HD 5970 CrossFire

[pantherx12]

I want to see benches with 4ghz+ processors.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by pantherx12

I want to see benches with 4ghz+ processors.

send me one

Originally Posted by HTC

If memory serves, W1zzard said he would be doing a full re-bench in November. Was he referring to these reviews or not, dunno

will switch to w7 64 and do a full rebench after this round of reviews. i need about a month time window to do that, couldnt do it before

[pantherx12]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

send me one

I would make one myself if I had the card and a processor that could hit 4ghz.

but alas, I do not : [


It wasn't a request to TPU by the way, just an open statement.

[W1zzard]

mine wasnt a request to you either, open statement. send me your cpus!! :P

[HTC]

Originally Posted by pantherx12

I want to see benches with 4ghz+ processors.

Actually, and in order to reduce the eventual CPU bottleneck, 4.5+ GHz would be ideal. Even then, i'm pretty sure in some games would still have some CPU bottleneck, though not as severe.

@ present, the GPU is much more advanced then the CPU, generally speaking: unless there's some sort of breakthrough, the top high-end video card (ATI or nVidia) will be more and more CPU bottlenecked.

EDIT

Originally Posted by W1zzard

will switch to w7 64 and do a full rebench after this round of reviews. i need about a month time window to do that, couldnt do it before

Will be looking forward to it.

[pantherx12]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

mine wasnt a request to you either, open statement. send me your cpus!! :P

Come now I'm pretty sure you could get hold of a q9650 for "review purposes"

[mark84]

Hi W1zzard, would it be possible to do power readings for the HD5970 crossfire review you did?
Would like to see how much power such a system would draw.

Also, as it's been mentioned you'll be doing a full re-bench at a later date, could you also include power readings for some kind of 2D benchmark or Blu-Ray video play back?

[W1zzard]

i'll look into those power measurements. bluray playback is planned in the power numbers for next rebench

[amschip]

I wonder if LucidLogix hydra will be better at scaling two of those, Actually I really hope it will as I'm planning system upgrade next year.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by amschip

I wonder if LucidLogix hydra will be better at scaling two of those, Actually I really hope it will as I'm planning system upgrade next year.

dear lucidlogix, send me your vaporware, i'll write a review

[amschip]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

dear lucidlogix, send me your vaporware, i'll write a review

I know i know it seems like vaporware atm, but if it appears then I hope you write a good review about it :P
On the other hand you don't seem to believe that this thing is physicaly possible. Or am I wrong?

[TheMailMan78]

W1zz what's the reasoning behind the outdated drivers in your reviews? Also why not use a 64-bit OS? Is there no benefit in your opinion or is it something else?

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by TheMailMan78

W1zz what's the reasoning behind the outdated drivers in your reviews? Also why not use a 64-bit OS? Is there no benefit in your opinion or is it something else?

as i've said countless times it takes a long long time to rebench all cards with new drivers. so i do it in intervals of several months. 64-bit os has not much of an advantage, and if amd/nvidia dont provide 64-bit drivers for their launches i'm fucked. so i prefered to play it safe. new vga bench rig will be w7 64-bit, coming in the next months, this year probably.

show me your numbers where a gpu limited benchmark gains, say, 5% on 64-bit vs. 32-bit..

[KainXS]

whoa, bad drivers for sure, damn those are some bad drivers there.

[Olle P]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

... 64-bit os has not much of an advantage, ...

On your test rig it most certainly has.
Just count the RAM available:
Regular "CPU" RAM: 3x2 GB = 6 GB
Graphics RAM (for this test): 2x2 GB = 4 GB
Total: 10 GB

A 32-bit OS can use a maximum total of slightly less than 4 GB, which probably is the reason some of the gaming tests were totally unable to run at all. (All addressed RAM available for either the CPU or GPU, none available for the other?)
To address all that RAM you'll need at least the Business version of 64-bit Win7, which can handle up to 12 GB if I'm not mistaken. (Home Premium can only address 8 GB.)

32-bit OS is just fine as long as the total RAM is 4GB or less.

Cheers
Olle

[Delta6326]

w7 Home basic is 8gb, w7 home premium is 16gb and w7 pro and up is 192gb of max physical ram in 64bit os

[1Kurgan1]

Nice to see that in some games 2x 5970's seem to do almost double the fps of 2, but can obviously tell drivers need work as other tests it fail, still very nice to see they might have actually found a good way to sclae more than 2 GPU's.

[tuanming]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

show me your data

You will find the data when you use Windows 7 64-bit OS. Most serious or hardcore gamers tends to go with x64 OS anyway. I mean come on, if you have the hardware, why not go with 64-bit OS. Future OS will be mostly 64-bit and beyond. I'm just simply saying there could be better fps if you use the 5970 and 5970 crossfire in a 64-bit OS. But there's no guarantee that the gain will be significantly improve.

Also, if you can provide some pictures or video that would be even better. But that's only a suggestion because not many reviews of this card posted pics or video in their review.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by tuanming

Also, if you can provide some pictures or video that would be even better. But that's only a suggestion because not many reviews of this card posted pics or video in their review.

umm what are you missing? i took photos of everything the seemed of interest concerning the card in the single card review... crossfire is just 2 cards and a cf bridge

[Soylent Joe]

Oh Jebus, just look at what kind of performance a single 5870 will give you. I long for the day when I can play GTA4 @ 1920x1080 with everything turned up and get no less than 60FPS T_T

[a_ump]

eh idk bout all this 4gb maximum stuff. I mean i know that's how it works for motherboard memory but one thing that always makes me think otherwise is on my 680i LT it only registered 2.8gb of memory when i had 1 8800GT, when i had em in SLI, and now with my 7800GTX 256mb and the amount of memory never changed....if graphics memory did affect that total why doesn't the amount of graphics memory you have affect how much memory my computer can use? when i played crysis and had SLI 8800GT's my ram usage shot up to like 2.4/2.8gb. so 512mbx2 would be 1024mb of memory that should be subtracted from my 2.8gb total no? hsouldn't my total have read 1.8gb available memory?

nice review w1zz, i always enjoy yours the most out of others cause you include twice as many games as others and give price/perf and perf/dollar graphs, something else i have yet to see on another review site.

[DaC]

Nice review Wizz... about the 64-bit system, well like you said, it's coming, but indeed like the other guys said, gamers already switched to 64 bits OS, but I don't know if it's better or worst.....
It would be nice if you could make a review just like the PCI express from 16x to 1x on the hd5870. But this time taking two things in consideration: CPU bottleneck (comparing results at different CPU clock), and also the 64bit vs 32bit test.......
Well..... but this is a lot of work, I don't think you'll find time to do all that.... Your reviews are great and one of the most complete on the internet =]

[troyrae360]

Awsum Card, Awsum review!!

Only thing is (I dont wanna sound ungratful) I understand why you benchtest with old drivers, but then you say in the conclusion 'It should also be noted that the drivers do not seem to be in a fully finalized state yet.' well obviousley coz yor using drivers that were released 5 months befor the card, Prehaps in the conclusion you should say that you used very old drivers as opposed to saying 'drivers do not seem to be in a fully finalized state yet', it just sorta sounds bad when you put it that way.

Maybe you could do a couple of benchmarks with 9.11 drivers, prehaps just 3dmark, crysis and hawx that wouldnt take long and would give us an idea of what the card should be really be running like.

Dont get me wrong, Im not trying to complain i very much appreceate these reviews, and i always digg them

[niko084]

Originally Posted by eidairaman1

so much for this being a GF 295 Killer youd think it would be getting way more frames even for immature driver sets.

Um it pretty much takes the GTX 295 to town.
Especially in Crysis

Crossfire performance sucks... But ATI has been struggling with anything above 3 cards across the boards. Got some work to do guys.

[troyrae360]

Originally Posted by eidairaman1

so much for this being a GF 295 Killer youd think it would be getting way more frames even for immature driver sets.

Doubbles the preformance of 295 in Crysis!! and thats on drivers that were released almost 6 months before the card was released it stomps all over the 295