UPDATED, Part 4 of Benches out! E8400 vs Core i7 with my 5970,5870 and 5850

[Apocalypse23]

Is it possible to do the e8400 @ 3.9 with the crossfire setup and compare it to the i7 system?

It's nice to know my Q9550 will push a crossfire 5970 and 5870 crossfire setup. Thanks.

The last time I tried the E8400 couldn't handle the Crossfire setup well at all...I could try one later but the results for multi-gpu on dual cores are subliminal.

I'm almost done finishing 5970 numbers, I'm having a perplexing time comparing performance at different speeds at stock and oc, the 5970 kinda sucks at stock...will let you know. I think that your Q9550 will be fine for holding up crossfire configurations.

 

[spinejam]

nice work-up & thanks for the benches!

 

[Tempered81]

Great thread Apoc! Thanks for the benches, lookin forward to more.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Great thread Apoc! Thanks for the benches, lookin forward to more.

Thanks, spent a hell of a lot of time finishing these tests but here they are . The 5850 single test shall probably not happen but I might try the tri fire test later.

 

[Apocalypse23]

NEW Benches:

Unigine Heaven 2.0

Dirt 2 and Crysis Warhead

3D Mark Vantage - Performance

Metro 2033

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Just Cause 2 Demo

 

[Apocalypse23]

One brief conclusion I have made is that these two cards run really really superbly at the following settings:

Asus 5870 stock (850/1200) - @Overclock 1000/1300 - 1.300V - (Mild OC)
Asus 5970 stock (725/1000) - @Overclock 850/1200 - 1.162V - (Mild OC)
Asus 5970 stock (725/1000) - @Overclock 900/1200 - 1.274V - (Extreme OC)

 

[Apocalypse23]

Tri fire!!!

Vantage at 5970@900/1200+5870@1000/1300+5850@1000@1175 GPU score 39021 !!

 

[Apocalypse23]

Notes:
1)(5870+5850) and (5970+5870+5850) will not run titles such as BFBC2, Metro2033, Dirt 2 and Unigine Heaven.

2)(5870+5970) is the one combination that will run all games perfectly.

2)Crysis will run fine at 4x AA without any problems with any card combination, but will not run smoothly (extreme micro stutter) at 8xAA with a 5850+5870+5970 configuration.

3)If going tri-fire, it's best to use 5970+5870+5870 as the 5850 is really a bad mix.

4)950Watt Corsair PSU is sufficient to run a tri-fire crossfire combination on an i7 930 overclock.

I'm just going to run a 5850 single test and also update the graphs accordingly in the next 2 hours.

 

[blanketyblank]

Notes:
1)(5870+5850) and (5970+5870+5850) will not run titles such as BFBC2, Metro2033, Dirt 2 and Unigine Heaven.

2)(5870+5970) is the one combination that will run all games perfectly.

2)Crysis will run fine at 4x AA without any problems with any card combination, but will not run smoothly (extreme micro stutter) at 8xAA with a 5850+5870+5970 configuration.

3)If going tri-fire, it's best to use 5970+5870+5870 as the 5850 is really a bad mix.

4)950Watt Corsair PSU is sufficient to run a tri-fire crossfire combination on an i7 930 overclock.

I'm just going to run a 5850 single test and also update the graphs accordingly in the next 2 hours.

That's really more like quadfire if it's 5970 + 2 x 5870. Although it makes me wonder if you could do 2 x 5970 since 5970 + 5870 + 5850 actually works sometimes.

 

[Termie]

It looks like you get minor jumps in FPS when you overclock from 2.8 to 4.0 on the 5870 at stock, so I wonder if this suggests there could be a real CPU limitation for the faster GPU configurations. Maybe you could pick one game that is known to be CPU intensive (like BC2) and do a set of benches at various CPU speeds using the 5970 or 5870oc. I know you've focused on the best GPU setup, but it would be interesting to see the optimal CPU speed as well.

Thanks for the all the hard work on this. Very informative.

 

[Apocalypse23]

It looks like you get minor jumps in FPS when you overclock from 2.8 to 4.0 on the 5870 at stock, so I wonder if this suggests there could be a real CPU limitation for the faster GPU configurations. Maybe you could pick one game that is known to be CPU intensive (like BC2) and do a set of benches at various CPU speeds using the 5970 or 5870oc. I know you've focused on the best GPU setup, but it would be interesting to see the optimal CPU speed as well.

Thanks for the all the hard work on this. Very informative.

Good call, I just noticed it now that the i7 performs very similarly at stock and 4.0Ghz speeds. I'd have to work out some test for that. I'm also wondering how the Thuban's would perform with these similar tests.

 

[Apocalypse23]

That's really more like quadfire if it's 5970 + 2 x 5870. Although it makes me wonder if you could do 2 x 5970 since 5970 + 5870 + 5850 actually works sometimes.

Yes two 5970s would work with no problems in any game, as would 3 5870s or 3 5850s. It seems the 5850 though is an outcast in the 5970/5870/5850 family, but any combination of 5970/5870 will work.

 

[Apocalypse23]

New updates: added 5850 and 5970+5850+5870 benches:


3d Mark Vantage

Unigine Heaven 2.0

Metro 2033

Just Cause 2 Demo- Benchmark

Dirt 2 and Crysis Warhead

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Scaling graphs based on Average FPS:

3D Mark Vantage GPU Score scaling

Unigine Heaven 2.0, Just Cause 2.0

Dirt 2, Crysis Warhead, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Metro 2033

 

[RussianSensation]

Dirt 2 and BF:BC2 are running slower on an E8400 @ 3.0ghz + 5870 vs. an i7 @ 4.0ghz + 5850. Talk about a cpu bottleneck.

That 5850 OC is also doing some damage!

 

[Apocalypse23]

Dirt 2 and BF:BC2 are running slower on an E8400 @ 3.0ghz + 5870 vs. an i7 @ 4.0ghz + 5850. Talk about a cpu bottleneck.

That 5850 OC is also doing some damage!

Ya and not just slower, I could feel the choppiness on an E8400 and then when I played with the same fps on a Quad i7, I noticed how smooth everything felt. It was definitely worth it imo.

 

[Termie]

I know you've said that you don't like the 5850 for BC2. I can see from your graphs that your stock 5850 really seems to perform poorly, 30% slower than the 5870 in that game, as opposed to the 20% in most of the other games you test (which is in line with expectations from other reviews and my testing). I wonder what's going on there. It could be that your high AA/AF settings cause a memory bottleneck that isn't present in other games or at lower AA/AF settings that reviewers have tested. Once overclocked, it's more in line with your other results.

 

[Apocalypse23]

I know you've said that you don't like the 5850 for BC2. I can see from your graphs that your stock 5850 really seems to perform poorly, 30% slower than the 5870 in that game, as opposed to the 20% in most of the other games you test (which is in line with expectations from other reviews and my testing). I wonder what's going on there. It could be that your high AA/AF settings cause a memory bottleneck that isn't present in other games or at lower AA/AF settings that reviewers have tested. Once overclocked, it's more in line with your other results.

Yes an interesting observation on your behalf, I honestly think it's probably a memory bottleneck or shader bottleneck. Those settings tax the card heavily and I'm not too surprised by the results. Mind you these BFBC2 benches were performed at very intense 32 player maps (Port Valdez) and thus the performance should be somewhat lower overall than reviewer benches. Constant framing through explosions, smoke, fog, etc hinder the fps significantly imo.

 

[dug777]

Great work mate

Loving the 5850 overclock scores (and stock scores, in the vast majority!), further validation of my decision

 

[Genx87]

That case looks really nice!

I am so torn right now and have been for months on whether to upgrade or just wait it out until Sandybridge and the next round of GPU's.

My problem is Summer and the only game I really playing right now is WoW.

 

[scooterlibby]

In general, what is the % scaling in the 5970+5870 setup?

 

[Termie]

In general, what is the % scaling in the 5970+5870 setup?

Looks like anywhere from 10% to ~60%, with the low being BC2, which is likely CPU limited, and the high being the synthetic benchmarks, Dirt2, and Metro 2033.

 

[Apocalypse23]

In general, what is the % scaling in the 5970+5870 setup?

Compiling Scaling graphs atm.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Scaling graphs based on Average FPS:

3D Mark Vantage GPU Score scaling

Unigine Heaven 2.0, Just Cause 2.0

Dirt 2, Crysis Warhead, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Metro 2033

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Wow it looks like the low stock clocks of the 5850 make it a real overclocking monster in terms of % gained.

 

[NoSoup4You]

I upgraded just last week from an E8400 @3.6Ghz to an i7 860 @2.93Ghz (at the moment). I've noticed the exact same thing, the fps aren't radically better in most games but the overall experience is buttery smooth whereas the E8400 was choppy at times despite high in-game framerates.

Quad-core is definitely the way to go.