Low FPS from ATI Radeon HD 5770

[fishingcat]

I just upgraded from an 8800GT to a XFX 5770 1GB, but am experiencing similar performance on my new card as on the old one (20-25 FPS in Crysis on high, 20 FPS on World in Conflict benchmark on very high and similarly low frame rates on dirt 2 and far cry 2). The card runs the desktop and older games fine but makes most new ones unplayable (although Stalker Call of Pripyat seems to run smoothly). I removed all Nvidia drivers with driver sweeper before I installed the new card.

(all games played at 1440x900 no AA)

My system:
Q6600 @ 2.4ghz
4gb RAM @ 667mhz
Asus p5n-e motherboard
Windows Vista 32bit
650W generic PSU

Anyone know whats going on?

 

[thescreensavers]

650 Watt Generic PSU.. hmm this might be it.

On a side note you might want to get a 64bit OS so you can use your 4gb of ram.

 

[fishingcat]

I thought about the PSU, but it ran my 8800GT fine (except when it overheated and died) and the 5770 has lower power requirements (I thought insufficient power lead to artifacting and crashes as well, and I haven't experienced that). Also thinking about upgrading to win 7 64bit.

(hope I can fix this before Bad Company 2)

 

[jtisgeek]

5770 are very low power psu shouldn't matter. I always do a fresh reload when you which card company's . Am never had good luck with drive sweepers and such just not the same as a fresh system. 7 will be much better cause a old vista install will always be slow lol

 

[Daedalus685]

A PSU is either going to work or not, it isn't going to make the card perform slower. A bad PSU will cause errors, corruption, and plain old BSOD/no boot, but it won't rob performance as it doesn't work that way.

That resolution might be a touch on the CPU limited side, could be as simple as that. Might want to have a look in GPUz to make sure the 5770 is clocking up from 2D correctly. Also, crank the AA and compare the cards again.

My bet is at that resolution and settings the difference is just too small to notice.

 

[fishingcat]

What do you mean by clocking up from 2d?
(thanks for all the responses)

Also I don't think resolution has an effect as I get the same FPS at 1280x800. Also other benchmarks show my card averaging 40 FPS @ 1680x1200 rather than 17 FPS @ 1440x900

My GPUz info

 

[waffleironhead]

pciex16 @ x1 , theres your problem

head into bios and set the pcie to x16

 

[Anarchist420]

Your PCI-e bus is running 1/16 as fast as it should. That's the problem.

 

[jtisgeek]

that's crazy if it's right. It's a wonder how it even runs that good.

 

[thescreensavers]

Easy fix, lucky it was that easy

1x is about 50% cut in performance

 

[fishingcat]

How would I change it in the BIOS?
(I'm new at this)

 

[alexruiz]

Make sure that in the catalyst Control center you also select "balanced" under "3D"

 

[fishingcat]

My ATI catalyst control centre is no longer accessible after I reinstalled my graphics drivers (don't now why)

 

[jtisgeek]

You will need to reinstall the control center with the drivers . It is always recommended to install the whole suite cause they upgrade the control center with the drivers.

On the pci-e 1x it will be in your bios have to maybe look it up in the book for you board but you should see it if you go threw the options. If you have problems tell us what motherboard you have maybe we can find it for you.

I also see you have a non pci-e 2.0 board not sure how much that hurts but maybe a little on the 5770.

 

[Silenus]

Running in a PCIe 1.0 slot will hardly make a dent in the performance, at least not on a 5770. I'm running one in a 1.0 slot and it works great.

 

[waffleironhead]

Running in a PCIe 1.0 slot will hardly make a dent in the performance, at least not on a 5770. I'm running one in a 1.0 slot and it works great.

I'm curious as to how much the 5770 uses the pcie bus. I realize that it is not near a 5870, but the techpowerup article shows quite a bit of performance loss on a x1 slot.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/1.html

 

[fishingcat]

I have a ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA775 Nvidia 650i motherboard and am unable to find a way of changing the PCI-E multiplier in the BIOS.

 

[MrK6]

I'm curious as to how much the 5770 uses the pcie bus. I realize that it is not near a 5870, but the techpowerup article shows quite a bit of performance loss on a x1 slot.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/1.html

Almost any graphics card (except for the extreme low-end) is going to take a severe cut in performance running at x1. It looks like imported_Silneus confused the subject. We're talking about the number of PCIe lanes operating, which matters greatly, not the version of PCIe being used (which matters only in the fastest cards).

I have a ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA775 Nvidia 650i motherboard and am unable to find a way of changing the PCI-E multiplier in the BIOS.

I haven't worked with that motherboard, so I can't tell you specifically, but check every menu for an option (should change between 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, and 16x, or any combination thereof). If you can't find anything, try looking for a "load optimized defaults" setting, which should also fix it. If that isn't present either, try flashing to BIOS to the latest version available.

 

[waffleironhead]

iirc the upper slot in the sli boards only lowered to x8 when in sli and defaulted to x16 when not, while the lower slot was capable of 1x, 2x, etc.

Which slot did you populate fishingcat?

MrK6- thanks, I missed that 1.0 versus x1. Makes sense.

 

[Pederv]

Waffleironhead has probably pointed out your problem.

I put a 5750 into a NForce4 SLI board and it didn't work in the top PCIE slot. I put the 5750 in the bottom PCIE slot and the card worked at 1X. In order to get the PCIE slot to run at a higher rate I had to enable SLI in the BIOS and now it works at 8X. The increase from 1X to 8X did increase the performance of the 5750.

I still don't know why the 5750 won't work in the top PCIE slot. It would be nice to run the 5750 at its rated 16X.

EDIT - Lonyo's post reminded me that I also had to change the position of the small PCB that he references.

 

[Lonyo]

I have a ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA775 Nvidia 650i motherboard and am unable to find a way of changing the PCI-E multiplier in the BIOS.

That's because you can't.

Assuming this is what your board looks like:

You need to take out that red board between the PCIe slots and turn it round so instead of being "Single Video Card" it's "Dual Video Cards", which will switch the slots to 8/8 instead of 16/1.

Or put your graphics card in a different slot and see if that helps.

 

[vj8usa]

A PSU is either going to work or not, it isn't going to make the card perform slower. A bad PSU will cause errors, corruption, and plain old BSOD/no boot, but it won't rob performance as it doesn't work that way.

Not quite.

I used to think that too, until I tried to use my current 4850 on my previous PSU (450W Antec SmartPowerII). My framerates were miserable in Crysis (below what my X1900XT was getting), but I didn't have a single crash at any time. Once I got a stronger PSU, framerates went back to normal.

 

[MrK6]

That's because you can't.

Assuming this is what your board looks like:

You need to take out that red board between the PCIe slots and turn it round so instead of being "Single Video Card" it's "Dual Video Cards", which will switch the slots to 8/8 instead of 16/1.

Or put your graphics card in a different slot and see if that helps.

Great post, that sounds the way to go OP

 

[fishingcat]

Flashed the BIOS to the latest version, which solved a boot time problem but did not affect the PCI-E multiplier. Reinstalled catalyst control centre and CCC is back. About to try card in different slot.
Thanks for all the replies.

Edit: Have now tried it with the SLI selector card in every different positions (including with the selector removed completely) and have been unable to increase the multiplier speed. However, the second slot did not work, although it could be clogged with dust.

 

[fishingcat]

The second slot will not work, regardless of the SLI switch position, I get not display output from the card. I think the problem is with the mobo, but I'm still open to suggestions.