Few Questions Regarding the Radeon HD7870

[IndigoAK]

Hi,

A few weeks ago (beginning of the month to be precise - Alaska PFD yay!) I purchased a Radeon HD7870.

Prior to purchase I did some light research and I was under the impression that by installing this card into a PCIe 2.0 slot I wouldn't be losing too much.

This is the card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150605
This the board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157163
This is what was replaced: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102856

Unfortunately, the performance I'm getting isn't much better than the HD5870. Thus, I have a few questions.

1. What am I losing in the PCIe 3.0 to 2.0 downscale?
2. Is this the primary cause of my not-very-much-improved performance?
3. Somewhat/maybe unrelated: the Catalyst Control Center for this card seems completely the same. I was under the impression that the CCC exposed different/newer options for these cards. If so, what's causing me to not see them?
4. Several games still show my graphics adapter as the Radeon HD5800 Series. When I installed this card, I did a clean driver sweep. Uninstalled the drivers, used Driver Fusion in safe mode(driver sweeper's replacement), rebooted, installed new drivers, rebooted. CCC says 7800 Series though, so I have absolutely no idea what's going on here.
5. Longshot: Sometimes when I move my mouse over a link in Firefox, the entire screen goes creamsicle orange and I have to do a hard reboot. This is the only instability I've encountered. Anybody else come across this? It's only in that very specific usage. Movies, music, games, whatever. Just fine. Hover over a link though and bam.

So yeah.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You dont lose anything PCIe wise.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/511?vs=548

Perhaps you overestimated what the performance would be? AMD also changed the naming in between. So in HD5000 days the 7870 card would have been a 5770.

 

[DiogoDX]

Format C: and see if the problem continues.

 

[IndigoAK]

Format C: and see if the problem continues.

What formatting tool would you suggest? I'm partial to using a Ubuntu live boot myself, but I'd be interested to know if there's anything you think is better.

You dont lose anything PCIe wise.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/511?vs=548

Perhaps you overestimated what the performance would be? AMD also changed the naming in between. So in HD5000 days the 7870 card would have been a 5770.

What I'm feeling now is akin to your father telling the family he bought a new car and coming home with Geo. =/

 

[blastingcap]

You are losing nothing with pcie 2.0, however creamsicle orange is a new one. Could be software* or hardware problem. If hardware, could be mobo or something else, but if you never encountered it prior to this card then it's probably the card. Return and either get a refund or exchange. Btw make sure you have enough amps on the 12v rail of your PSU and that all power cables are hooked up.

A stock 7870 is already in the stock gtx 580 range, and if you overclock, you will be at faster than stock gtx 580 speeds. Not too shabby.


* My laptop's Intel iGPU did this funky stuff for a while in Chrome browser, until Google finally fixed it like 2 months later:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=140739

 

[DiogoDX]

Just format no matter what method. I use the very old windows disc format method.:biggrin:

 

[IndigoAK]

You are losing nothing with pcie 2.0, however creamsicle orange is a new one. Could be software or hardware problem. If hardware, could be mobo or something else, but if you never encountered it prior to this card then it's probably the card. Return and either get a refund or exchange. Btw make sure you have enough amps on the 12v rail of your PSU and that all power cables are hooked up.

A stock 7870 is already in the stock gtx 580 range, and if you overclock, you will be at faster than stock gtx 580 speeds. Not too shabby.

I think I'm going to wait for a new version of Firefox before I return it. Since it only happens in Firefox and only when hovering over a link, I think I can deal with it until then to make sure. And even then, it doesn't happen every time. Maybe 1 out every 1,000 links.

As for performance, I probably should have done more research I guess, but at this point if the card itself isn't broken (we'll see), I'm just going to live with it. Can't afford to buy anything better at this point and there was more reason other than performance for ditching the 5870 (fan was dying and sounded like somebody was strangling a rabbit).

 

[zaydq]

Sounds like you've got driver issues. Use driversweep and remove all the drivers and then install 12.8 and see what that does.

 

[infoiltrator]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/511?vs=548

 

[Rvenger]

You dont lose anything PCIe wise.


Perhaps you overestimated what the performance would be? AMD also changed the naming in between. So in HD5000 days the 7870 card would have been a 5770.

Actually would be a 5830, not 5770. 5770 had a 128bit bus so that was in a different league to begin with.


Sounds like the drive needs reformatted with fresh drivers.

 

[Bull Dog]

I would definitely try a clean install first.

 

[raghu78]

I would definitely try a clean install first.

OP try a format and fresh install of the OS and 12.8 whql drivers with 12.9 CAP 1 .

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

If problems persist check with the previous version of firefox. if still doesn't resolve check with manufacturer's customer support whether its a driver issue or a hardware problem.

 

[SlowSpyder]

The 7870 is faster than a 5870, you aren't losing anything with PCIE 2.0. What CPU are you using? What resolution do you game at? To me it sounds like a software problem with the drivers. When I went from a 5870 CF setup to a 7970 I had to reinstall Windows, it was one of those things where I just couldn't get it to work right for whatever reason. It shouldn't be like that, technically, but sometimes that's the easiest and most complete way to get it working right.

 

[IndigoAK]

What CPU are you using? What resolution do you game at?

A 2.66GHz Core i7 920 "Bloomfield" and I play at 1080p. 6GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 memory if that makes a difference. My BIOS is up to date as well.

OP try a format and fresh install of the OS and 12.8 whql drivers with 12.9 CAP 1.

I can't really do a clean install right now. I have 150GB+ of stuff I'd need to back up (and I don't really have anything to back it all up to).

Also, not sure why I'd need to install CrossFire profiles for a single card setup.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/511?vs=548

Already saw that.

Sounds like you've got driver issues. Use driversweep and remove all the drivers and then install 12.8 and see what that does.

Did this and nothing really changed. Still a lot of weird stuff going on.

DXDiag and various games still detect this card as a 5800 Series. DXDiag also says the card only has 751MB of memory, which is wrong even for the old card (which had 1GB).

Windows itself and the drivers say 7800 Series. Windows says the card has 2GB of memory, while the CCC says the card has 4GB.

CCC still isn't exposing any of the options I've read that it should be for this card. No advanced AA, AF or VSYNC stuff.

 

[riversend]

Not really related to the video issues, but I'd say step one of your issues is to take care of that backup problem! Yikes.

 

[IndigoAK]

Well, I installed Windows 8. It was the only thing I could think of since I don't have a spare drive. Just created a new partition, moved my stuff over it and then installed Windows 8 from within Windows. Unlike previous version, you can do a clean install that way, it copies the install stuff to a hidden partition and then wipes C, then installs.

Anyway, Windows seems to detect it as the right card now and the right amount of memory, though I haven't really done any gaming yet to see how it performs since I've been so busy reinstalling a bunch of stuff (and sleeping).

It's really frustrating though that reinstalling Windows entirely was the ONLY way to get the drivers working right. Is this an AMD thing or is Microsoft partly to blame here too? Because it sucks. =/

 

[nurturedhate]

It's more a computer hardware thing. I've been lucky and changed from an Athlon 7750 to an I5 2500 and not had to reformat and have been on the other side having to reformat over a firewire addin card. Sometimes it's just something that has to be done.