why is the 3870 poor at aa ?

[chaotic_uk]

why is the 3870 poor at aa ? , i tried it while playing bioshock @1680x1050 with 2x aa and 16x af . the result was 2 fps , is it the 3870 or something else ?

 

[Kursah]

Odd...I don't recall hearing the 3870 was bad with AA...what drivers you running? I have no experience with a 38XX series, but I would assume it should be able to do 4XAA and 16AF...my 1950pro and xtx both could run Bioshock DX9 on hi with AA and AF @ 1440x900...so I don't think you should be having such a drastic drop...are you forcing via drivers/CCC?

It's been so long since I've played BioShock I don't recall anymore lol!

 

[chaotic_uk]

i am using driver version 8.6 , i am running a clean install of windows xp pro sp3

 

[erocker]

Try 8.4 catalyst.

 

[chaotic_uk]

are they the best for the 3870 ?

 

[Darknova]

Odd...I don't recall hearing the 3870 was bad with AA...what drivers you running? I have no experience with a 38XX series, but I would assume it should be able to do 4XAA and 16AF...my 1950pro and xtx both could run Bioshock DX9 on hi with AA and AF @ 1440x900...so I don't think you should be having such a drastic drop...are you forcing via drivers/CCC?

It's been so long since I've played BioShock I don't recall anymore lol!

3870 is pretty bad with AA tbh. I can run 16x AF on most games, but crank up AA and I take a pretty big performance hit. Even with the 8.7 Cats which gave my 4870 a healthy boost.

 

[chaotic_uk]

it is ? , shame that as i like eyecandy . i cannot afford a new card atm and have my card maxxed out in ccc , so my options are limited ?

 

[erocker]

Running your card "maxed out" in CCC will explain the performance issue. Set CCC to default and adjust your settings in the game.

 

[chaotic_uk]

so overclocking my gfx card will reduce it's performance ? , but it is not just bioshock i have performance problems with aa running

 

[Kursah]

so overclocking my gfx card will reduce it's performance ?

By maxed out, erocker was probably assuming you had all the Image Quality stuff set to Max Quality...which will have a direct impact on gaming performance, you should set the IQ stuff to default if it's not...the OC part will of course help out with your GFX's performance, depending on the throughput that's allowed by the rest of your system.

 

[erocker]

so overclocking my gfx card will reduce it's performance ? , but it is not just bioshock i have performance problems with aa running

Aye, I was thinking you cranked up all the AA and AF settings in CCC. No, overclocking is good. What are your current clocks?

 

[chaotic_uk]

it defaults to high quality in the mipmap part of ccc , i lowered it to quality and performance is the same

 

[chaotic_uk]

What are your current clocks?

max that ccc allows is 870 on the gpu and 1000 (2000) on the memory , stock speeds are 850/960

 

[iamajunky]

max that ccc allows is 870 on the gpu and 1000 (2000) on the memory , stock speeds are 850/960

Jealous my card only goes to 840 but to me i tested having my card at 900/1200 and didn't get that much of a approvement except for heat in games benching was a different story, but then again I have to use vysnc due to my 15ms response time

 

[chaotic_uk]

Jealous my card only goes to 840 but to me i tested having my card at 900/1200 and didn't get that much of a approvement except for heat in games benching was a different story, but then again I have to use vysnc due to my 15ms response time

your model has gddr4 ? , mine has gddr3

 

[FR@NK]

Maybe is the HDR+AA thats causing the slow down?

 

[chaotic_uk]

only game that i have good fps is stalker , but this keeps pausing for a second or 2 . never found out why neither , this used to happen with my old 8800gts 320 . only thing that is the same from that system to this i use now is the cpu , i have got a better mobo etc now and still get the pauses

 

[iamajunky]

your model has gddr4 ? , mine has gddr3

yeah gddr4

 

[imperialreign]

only game that i have good fps is stalker , but this keeps pausing for a second or 2 . never found out why neither , this used to happen with my old 8800gts 320 . only thing that is the same from that system to this i use now is the cpu , i have got a better mobo etc now and still get the pauses

STALKER is a little picky like that - it loads up an absolute ton of stuff, specifically textures, audio and models, even if you can't see or hear something, it's still processed and rendered. Keep in mind with STALKER, full dynamic lighting puts a major tax on hardware as the card is constantly changing and adjusting how textures, objects and models look.

Still a great game, though.



TBH, I think the 3000 series of cards have some big issues with AA, even more so with certain games. With my setup, I can average 30-50 FPS in almost all areas of Crysis, but throwing AA on will cut that in half.

 

[chaotic_uk]

true but even turning off the prefetching makes no difference on my system , even using static lighting changes little .it got so bad i uninstalled it lol . i have been thinking about changing my 3870 with something else , but max i have to spend is £120 and thats not enough for anything fancy

 

[Kursah]

9600GT maybe? Great card, usually pretty close to 3870 in performance, it loses a little here and wins a little there...the Palit Sonic 512MB version I have OC's quite well also..and it works great with newer drivers, I'm using 177.66 beta and they kick ass. I've played many games including STALKER, Mass Effect, C&C 3 + KW, Quake 4, WiC Demo DX10, DMC4 DX10, Crysis Demo DX10, CoD4, Assassin's Creed DX10, all play pretty damn good...Crysis is unplayable with AA though! Other than that I love my card!

 

[chaotic_uk]

i have a spare mobo which seemed better than my new ga-ma770-ds3 , it supports crossfire so would this be a way to go ? . i have always wanted to try crossfire and a mate has a week old 3870 spare , would this increase performance a little ? . i wanted this system to be all amd/ati this time around , did i make a mistake ?

 

[From_Nowhere]

3870 is bad at AA because it runs AA through the shaders. The new 4800 Series solved this issue and their AA performance is better than that of GeForce.

So if you have the cash get a 4850, but if you don't get an 8800GT or a 9600GT.

Oh and:

How are you getting 2FPS in Bioshock? I play that game maxed at the same res with my 3850 with no problems.

 

[chaotic_uk]

with my old mobo i got better fps in bioshock etc (Asrock ALiveXFire-eSATA2 R3.0 ) , but the pci-e slot broke and i swapped it for the mobo i have now (gigabyte ga-ma770-ds3) . reinstalled my os and performance has dropped compaired to my old setup , all the drivers are up to date . this new mobo will not let me overclock my cpu but my old mobo did , did i buy a faulty mobo ?

 

[From_Nowhere]

Make sure the PCI-E is at full speed. Check GPU-Z, and if it is at full speed should look a bit like mine [see attachment]

Should say:
Bus Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ X16 2.0


If it doesn't that could be why you are getting such low FPS.