New Radeon HD 3870 not working properly

[imported_Earth]

Hi all,

I just picked up a Powercolor Radeon HD 3870 yesterday, got it all setup, only to find that it's performing basically on par with the X800 Pro I had beforehand. Here's my current setup;

Asus M2N-E
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+
OCZ Gold ddr2 2GB
Powercolor Radeon HD 3870
Antec Neopower 500W psu

Anyhow, I uninstalled the old catalysts, ran driver cleaner, popped the card in, installed the new ones (7.12) and discovered that my fps was absolute crap in WoW, TF2 & 3dmark 06 was basically a slideshow -- surprisingly hellgate london performed fairly well. Anyways, its working about the same as the x800 pro did. So, I removed the drivers and went with the ones that came on the CD with the product, however, I got the same results.

Anyone know what I should do here ?

Cheers,
-Earth

 

[mruffin75]

Ok...for a start there's no way you have an Athlon64 X2 3200...it's either a typo and you meant a 3600/3800, or you really *do* have a 3200...in which case that's single core, not dual...

Maybe your CPU is a bottleneck?

 

[imported_Earth]

It's an x2 3600+, my bad. And no, it's not a bottleneck -- I had an x1950pro for a brief period of time and it outperformed the HD card in its current state by a fair margin.

 

[Killrose]

try re-installing DX9c off the driver CD. what windows OS are you running? XP?

 

[imported_Earth]

Running winxpsp2, yeah -- I will install dx9c again shortly and see if it makes a difference, although I'm not hopeful. ;S

 

[cmdrdredd]

Is your PCIe running at x16? Double check that as I remember some boards would only be running 1x with some newer cards. I think a BIOS update from the manufacturer of the culprit boards fixed things.

Worth a look.

 

[imported_Earth]

How do I go about checking what my PCIe is running at ? CPUZ?

 

[cmdrdredd]

CPUz should work

 

[JustaGeek]

You might also have to update the BIOS, to properly recognize the PCIe 2.0 bus in your Video Card.

 

[Killrose]

You could check PCi-e bus speed in Catlyst Control Panel too

 

[imported_Earth]

Just upgraded the BIOS to the latest version -- 3dmark06 is scoring at 7619. Isn't that horribly low?

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4361686

 

[JustaGeek]

That's about right for your CPU.

Check the Futuremark ORB to compare your results with the similar configurations.

 

[imported_Earth]

Yeah I was noticing that -- maybe it's just *horribly* optimized for WoW at this point. My fps in TF2 was pretty good just now.

 

[imported_Earth]

Do you think upgrading my cpu would be a good idea? Is getting an AM2+ cpu for an AM2 board a travesty?

 

[mruffin75]

I wouldn't think it was a travesty...

One of the dual-core 5000 black editions would probably be fine...

Hell at this point even a Phenom wouldn't be so bad..even with the TLB issue...

 

[JustaGeek]

I don't know enough about the AMD CPU's to answer that question, but I wouldn't worry too much about your 3DMark06 score.

Just play some games and see if the performance has improved.

If it is not satisfactory, you'll know that you need a new CPU.

Good luck!

 

[imported_Earth]

Yeah I dunno, it just feels like such a waste of $300. O_O I was hoping to just smash WoW.. its like a minor upgrade over the x1950pro which cost almost the same last year.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Earth
Yeah I dunno, it just feels like such a waste of $300. O_O I was hoping to just smash WoW.. its like a minor upgrade over the x1950pro which cost almost the same last year.

most MMOs and even WoW which is built on the engine used in Warcraft3 uses alot more CPU than GPU

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Earth
Yeah I dunno, it just feels like such a waste of $300. O_O I was hoping to just smash WoW.. its like a minor upgrade over the x1950pro which cost almost the same last year.

most MMOs and even WoW which is built on the engine used in Warcraft3 uses alot more CPU than GPU

This is definitely the issue.

 

[Killrose]

Are the FPS capped in WoW?

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Earth
Yeah I dunno, it just feels like such a waste of $300. O_O I was hoping to just smash WoW.. its like a minor upgrade over the x1950pro which cost almost the same last year.

If all your playing is WoW, you shouldn't have bought a HD 3870 anyway. It's way overkill for that game.

As others have said the problem is your CPU. You don't really need a new CPU if you overclock the 3600+. The 3600+ runs at 1.9GHz stock, I have mine running at 2.8GHz and 3GHz is not out of reach.

EDIT: It seems you have the 90nm X2 3600+, which runs at 2.0GHz but has only 256KBx2 of L2 cache. You're probably not going to reach 2.8GHz and definately not 3.0GHz with that CPU.

I'd recommend you upgrade the CPU.

 

[imported_Earth]

I don't play *only* WoW, I'm just disappointed that the performance of the game I play most is basically the same. I'll see how it is when I get a new cpu.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Earth
I don't play *only* WoW, I'm just disappointed that the performance of the game I play most is basically the same. I'll see how it is when I get a new cpu.

Are you running high-res + High AA/AF?

If you're getting 100 FPS with either card, then it doesn't really matter. Now if you're getting something like 20-30 FPS, then something is wrong.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: Earth
I don't play *only* WoW, I'm just disappointed that the performance of the game I play most is basically the same. I'll see how it is when I get a new cpu.

Are you running high-res + High AA/AF?

If you're getting 100 FPS with either card, then it doesn't really matter. Now if you're getting something like 20-30 FPS, then something is wrong.

This is pretty common in raids and shattrath for some people.

THeir dual core code doesn't work quite right. If you open up a youtube link and start playing it, it's like the wow dual core code kicks in and the game suddenly runs a lot faster.

That's hearsay from the forums, but I've talked with people here still getting poor framerates even with dual cores in raids. Bleh.