Bought an Asus 5970, Benchmarking PCI-E 1.0 vs PCI-E 2.0 5970vs5870, 5970/5870/5850CF

[Apocalypse23]

As some of you may know I made a post at the CPU Overclock section of the forums about a possible upgrade path to the core i7 setup since my E8400 was a bottleneck, especially when dual GPUing...you can read that thread here

I decided to bite the bullet and stumbled upon a killer $697CAD with shipping and tax deal on a Diamond 5970 and ordered it....I'll be selling either the Asus 5850 or the Asus 5870 that I bought to make up for the price, and I decided to sell the E8400 in rig 1 in my sig and upgrade to a Q9550 for now (quad will be better for multi-gpuing and games like BC2)..I only hopy my P5ke/wiki board's pcie 1.0 lane doesn't effect the 5970's performance...

Will keep you all posted...any suggestions, please post here.

Thanks.

**edit** - Q9550 upgrade plans have been scraped, going for a i7 upgrade.. ---these plans were scrapped

UPDATE--I've decided to go with an i7 920 build, parts arriving, once things are all at one place, I'll assemble the system. My Asus 5970 is coming in FedEx mail tomorrow 5 pm PSTish, will post pics and more soon. I'm getting pretty excited

Still waiting for my i7 920 and ram to arrive (hopefully tomorrow or on Monday (Friday is a holiday)..once that arrives I'll go ahead and pick the mobo and heatsink up for my build..

I'm hoping to atleast benchmark pcie 1.0 vs 2.0 on the 5970, also run a 5970+5870 setup on my crappy mobo to see any difference...more to come.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

i7

 

[dguy6789]

Your PCI Express 16x 1.0 lane is going to hurt performance for sure.

 

[zagood]

The upgrade path to i7 was based on needing more bandwidth, and now you're going to starve a dual-gpu video card of bandwidth? Random.

 

[Will Robinson]

i7

How's he going to run a Core i7 on a 775 motherboard?:\

 

[RussianSensation]

PCI Express 16x Gen 1 is equal to PCI Express 8x Gen 2. A single 5870 provides 98% of the performance of PCI Express 16x Gen 2 in 8x mode.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html

I wish someone did 5970 PCI Express scaling.

 

[crisium]

See here for some pics on benchies compare 5970 on pci-e 2.0 16x and 8x (equal to 1.0 16x).

You're gonna take a hit in some situations.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Your PCI Express 16x 1.0 lane is going to hurt performance for sure.

The upgrade path to i7 was based on needing more bandwidth, and now you're going to starve a dual-gpu video card of bandwidth? Random.

Hmmm, how much of a performance hit?

I could swap my brother's rig2 in my sig as it has a newer P5Q pro board with pcie 2.0 lanes instead...

My other option is to scrap the P5Ke /wifi board and cpu and buy another p5q board...or buy a cheaper i5 setup...or i7????

 

[RussianSensation]

Ya just swap the board with your brother then. For his 5870, PCIe First gen won't make any difference.

 

[happy medium]

Hmmm, how much of a performance hit?

I could swap my brother's rig2 in my sig as it has a newer P5Q pro board with pcie 2.0 lanes instead...

My other option is to scrap the P5Ke /wifi board and cpu and buy another p5q board...or buy a cheaper i5 setup...or i7????

No, take some benchies with the 5970 with the pci-e 1.0 board first.
Then we can compare.
I think the hit is less then 5%.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Your PCI Express 16x 1.0 lane is going to hurt performance for sure.

The upgrade path to i7 was based on needing more bandwidth, and now you're going to starve a dual-gpu video card of bandwidth? Random.

No, take some benchies with the 5970 with the pci-e 1.0 board first.
Then we can compare.
I think the hit is less then 5%.

Well the idea is to install it on the E8400/p5ke board first, and then swap the q9550 with the p5ke to try the 5970, then see any comparisons between both procs, from my dual gpu benchmarking with the 5850+5850 crossfiring on my current board i got horrible fps and choppiness, my single 5850/5870s fared better on my system than crossfire setups..reasons were the E8400bottleneck...

So the quad is a must, ill see what i can do

But for pcie lane comparisons, I'll see how it goes if my brother lets me swap everything, chances are his harddrives have data and I think he may not be able to boot his windows if his proc or mobo is changed or swap...In that case i might have to buy another mobo all together...

I'll see..hopefully if i test the 5970 in his e8400 rig, he still lets me take it back after testing...

 

[1h4x4s3x]

Go all red and get a X6. :sneaky:

 

[blanketyblank]

Just go for a cheap i5 setup. Q9550 is like $200 on sale already and a good deal for a i5 and mobo is about $300. Of course you need new RAM, but considering DDR2 is also pretty pricy now you can make up for that by selling your old RAM.

I know your prices are a bit different where you are, but I'm sure you'll find something similar if you shop around enough.

 

[RussianSensation]

...from my dual gpu benchmarking with the 5850+5850 crossfiring on my current board i got horrible fps and choppiness, my single 5850/5870s fared better on my system than crossfire setups..reasons were the E8400bottleneck...

So the quad is a must, ill see what i can do

Do you realize why your CF results sucked? You have a board which only has one PCI-E 16x Gen 1 slot, with the black slot a 4x Gen 1 slot! D:http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82e16813131196

 

[zerocool84]

Just go for a cheap i5 setup. Q9550 is like $200 on sale already and a good deal for a i5 and mobo is about $300. Of course you need new RAM, but considering DDR2 is also pretty pricy now you can make up for that by selling your old RAM.

I know your prices are a bit different where you are, but I'm sure you'll find something similar if you shop around enough.

I went from an E6300 @ 2.9 to a Q9550 @ 3.4 and it made a very noticeable difference in many games. He could go that route and save himself some money and I'm sure he could get a decent overclock on it as well.

 

[blanketyblank]

I went from an E6300 @ 2.9 to a Q9550 @ 3.4 and it made a very noticeable difference in many games. He could go that route and save himself some money and I'm sure he could get a decent overclock on it as well.

Yes, but a 5970 is quite a bit faster and more expensive than a 5870 so to get the most performance a better mobo and cpu will be good. I'm not saying Q9550 is bad by any means, but an i5 is faster in most games and not much more money at least where I am.
It's been stated that his current mobo is going to limit the GPU so if he's going to have to change the mobo anyways might as well change the CPU as well.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Do you realize why your CF results sucked? You have a board which only has one PCI-E 16x Gen 1 slot, with the black slot a 4x Gen 1 slot! D:http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82e16813131196

crap!

im looking at some used i7s atm, i might go that route after all..going cheap this time, i think the mobo is the only thing i will buy brand new...

 

[SunnyD]

My suggestion and rationalizations:

1. If you need the money, sell the 5870 AND the 5850.
Reason: Money, of course. You'll have a 5970, and adding a 3rd card isn't going to make much difference, period.

2. If money isn't an issue, sell the 5850.
Reason: The 5870 will TriFire up nicely with the 5970. The catch is you need a new motherboard ASAP. Reasons why have already been discussed.

 

[cbn]

It will good to hear you report back about the 5970.

 

[RussianSensation]

My suggestion and rationalizations:

Reason: The 5870 will TriFire up nicely with the 5970.

Sunny, CFing a 5870 with a 5970? hhee that's crazy overkill right now for a single monitor!

5970 will be producing close to 100 frames already for BF:BC2:
http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page5.html

 

[shaynoa]

its only overkill if the game runs ok on one card ,however im getting a ATI 5970 this weekend to replace 2 nvidia GTX9800 s so i can run trainz sim 2010 with a very big map

MOBO XFX x58i 3 way sli or ati, CPU I7 930 2.8 MHZ 1366, RAM coirsar 12gig 1600, ANTEC 1200 case, PSU 1500 watt Silverstone, 24 in lcd skreen asus , 7 hardrives ,1 dvd burner

 

[crisium]

Hmm:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034986682

 

[Hauk]

Nice find on the card OP. Very tempting. So close to grabbing one but can wait. Anyone looking for one, still in stock at time of post: http://www.ncixus.com/products/46685/5970PE52G/Diamond/

 

[SunnyD]

Sunny, CFing a 5870 with a 5970? hhee that's crazy overkill right now for a single monitor!

5970 will be producing close to 100 frames already for BF:BC2:
http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page5.html

I know this. But if he's going to be keeping one of the cards, might as well keep the one with more utility, no? That's why my other suggestion was simply "Sell both."

Plus now that he's updated he's going i7... TriFire just got a whole lot more appealing given the mobo and CPU will actually have the balls to handle that setup. IMHO, yeah, it's overkill anyway, but why not?

 

[Apocalypse23]

I know this. But if he's going to be keeping one of the cards, might as well keep the one with more utility, no? That's why my other suggestion was simply "Sell both."

Plus now that he's updated he's going i7... TriFire just got a whole lot more appealing given the mobo and CPU will actually have the balls to handle that setup. IMHO, yeah, it's overkill anyway, but why not?

Well my plan is to buy a brand new Gigabyte X58A-UD3R ATX LGA1366 X58 DDR3 4PCI-E SATA3 USB3.0 Sound GLAN CrossFireX SLI Motherboard --Link--this thing supports :

1. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1/PCIEX16_2) (Note 2)
2. 2 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8_1/PCIEX8_2) (Note 3) (The PCIEX16_1, PCIEX16_2, PCIEX8_1 and PCIEX8_2 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
3. 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
4. 1 x PCI slot

triple crossfire/SLI at blazing speeds, so my plan is to try to TRI-Crossfire the 5970/5870/5850 all together...since the 5850 and 5870 can be crossfired as one, i can probably oc the 5850 to 5870 speeds to fully sync it as a 5870, and then crossfire these with the 5970, so essentially that equates to having 4 5870s in Crossfire X, while only running 3 cards....I don't fully know if this will work


The i7 should be able to test it, unfortunately my max resolution is only at 1920x1080, but I'd have to play around with the settings to see any difference...

My question is how to guage the benchmarks, is there a tool that I can use that calculates the max/min/avg fps while gaming and then assemble an exel graph to compare the results?