As you might have read in my earlier post , I received an ATI 5870 video card and I had to nickname it “the beast”, because this sucker is big, and that’s just how I like it. I’m upgrading from an ATI 4850, which is another fabulous video card, but I’m certainly not going to deny myself the opportunity to try out this latest one.
If you are interested in all the fancy numbers, you can view the technical specs here , but here are the main features from the ATI site.
As you can see in the images above, this is obviously a dual-slot card, meaning it’s going to take up two spots on the back of your PC. This wasn’t a problem for me as I don’t have any other PCI cards installed, but it’s something you need to take into consideration. Installation was quick, just make sure both slots are free, snap in the card, and hook in the power. After making sure it was securely in, it was ready to go. Next step was booting up and installing the latest Catalyst drivers, which is a straightforward installation and I didn’t run into any issues whatsoever.
On the card it has two DVI outputs, an HDMI output, and a DisplayPort output. In my current setup I have two 22” widescreen monitors hooked up to the DVI ports. I’m still contemplating on what to do with the HDMI port. Anyways, after the driver installation I had to go into the display properties and easily configure Windows 7 to setup the dual-monitors to display as I want them to which is the main monitor on the right, and the second on the left.
I just installed this a day ago, so I’m going to break it in for a bit, and then follow-up with a review on the performance of the card from a user point of view, not the super technical number crunches you often see.
Every other year? lol It would be nice if I had the money to build a new rig "every other year". Try every 4-5 years if I'm lucky. Putting down $500 = for a graphics card isn't always that easy. I plan on using my current card for at least another 2 years, maybe 3 depending on this economy.
That sounds like me. I had a 128MB Geforce 6800OC I held onto till just over a year or so ago(along with an XP3000 CPU). I finally broke down and grabbed a Phenom and GTX260 when I started finding games I couldn't meet the minimum on. It will probable be another 3 or more years before planning to upgrade again. I mean why would I? I haven't found anything I can run at max for my res. yet so it would just seem to be a waste of money at this point.
I'll mention the mouse to him, but I think he is set on the Sidewinder.
And I don't want to cut corners with the PSU, as he may add a second video card later on. Better safe than sorry, since that video card can consume nearly 300W all by itself.
IslandDog, I want to warn you about something. I think DeskScapes 3 may have a problem with Radeon cards. I'm using a Radeon HD 5850, running the latest 10.2 drivers and the latest DS3 (v3.10). To reproduce the problem I had, set your desktop to the "Planktonic" dream in DS3, run a game (I used RE5) and benchmark it. Now, disable DS3 altogether and set a static wallpaper from Windows Explorer just to be sure. Then, run the same game and benchmark it. You'll see the scores are much higher with DS3 off.
I noticed this problem when I was playing Bioshock 2 when framerates someimtes went below 40. It never went below 60 FPS when I was using my GTX 260 so 5850 shouldn't be going below 40. So I Alt-Tabbed out of the game and fired up MSI Afterburner to check the clocks and sure enough, they were running at 400 MHz Core and 900 MHz Memory which are settings ATI drivers use for 2D rendering. The clocks should have been at 725 MHz Core and 1000 MHz Memory (825 & 1200 for 5870). And then I remembered that DS3 uses the graphics card to play dreams so I disabled DS3 and restarted the game. This time the game ran perfectly at 60 FPS with no slowdowns. Then I set the dream to "WS Caustic Cude" (which is a wmv dream which only uses CPU to play it) and ran Bioshock 2 again. There were no problems since DS3 was not using the graphics card to play the dream. I tested a dynamic dream and no problems with it either. So I'm assuming that it happens only with MPG dreams but not with WMV and dynamic dreams.
I think the problem here is, although DS3 pauses the dream when a fullscreen game is running, it's still using the graphics card somehow. Therefore, the Catalyst driver still runs the card at 400 MHz Core and 900 MHz Memory, even when we launch a 3D game when the driver should upclock the card to 725 & 1000. The driver probably thinks that we're running a 2D game or something. I don't know who to complain this to: ATI or Stardock but I kinda think it has to do with DS3.
P.S. Other Radeon users may also have this problem so could those of you with 4xxx cards please test this out?
Look what you've done Islanddog, now you can't work with Stardock software anymore!
You could just set a gaming profile to force max 3d speeds.
I've got two profiles in Afterburner but I'm using an MSI BIOS with an XFX card to get past clock limitations. The advantage with this is the driver downclocks when the card is idle. However it creates a problem with DS3 like I said.
If I use the original XFX BIOS and edit Afterburner's config file to overvolt and overclock, it works fine but the card always runs at full clocks whether 2D or 3D or idle so I have to switch profiles all the time. There is indeed the option to set 2D and 3D profiles seperately in Afterburner but it doesn't work as well as the driver doing it (the driver downclocks to 157 MHz Core and 300 MHz Memory when idle).
Today, I tried playing some MKV files through the gfx card using Media Player Classic while playing Bioshock 2 and had the same problem. Even if I started the game first, Alt-Tabbed and played the MKV file, the driver downclocks to 400, 900 as soon as the movie starts and even after it was paused. If I stop the movie, however, the clocks go back to normal.
The problem I think is the driver doesn't seem to know if a movie/dream is paused or not so I guess it's not entirely DS3's fault. One possible solution on DS3's part would be to stop the dream altogether when a game is loaded instead of pausing it.
Afterburner, is just a reskin of riva, and if i understand correctly doesn't really support the force clocks feature of riva, because it scares powerplay. Riva lets you force full clock speeds by just checking and option. Definately a bad idea for all the time but situationally effective.
Yeah, there is no direct way in Afterburner to force clocks. I can do it by setting "EnableUnofficialOverclocking" to 1 in the Afterburner config file but PowerPlay gets disabled. I want to use Rivatuner but it doesn't support 5xxx cards directly so I'm sticking with the next best thing for now.
Graphics cards is probably the only area where the common reaction to it being broken is "as long as I can circumvent it and it's faster than my neighbours', I'll use it".
This comes from the good folks at AMD/ATI that can't seem to put out drivers that work properly more than once a year despite their monthly driver updates.
Framerate is a sticky issue and I don't always understand it - so what you're saying is that the framerate can never truly be above what the refresh is for your LCD?
I turned on VSync for Fallout 3 when I upgraded to my monster machine and I outright noticed that while I had no stuttering or slowdowns my character actually moved slower. It took me longer to get from place to place. No joke. I turned Vsync off and I was moving at the correct speed again, even though the screen would shear from time to time. Any idea why when it's synced to my refresh rate the game itself would be slower?
Yeap. I go along those same lines, realistically for me though it's around every 3 or 3 1/2 years that I go between rigs. Of course usually when I build a new rig I always re-use some parts. I know I'll be re-using my Blu-Ray burner until either it breaks or they change the popular format (again...*sigh*). I also re-use parts in my wife's system. For instance, she's using my old GeForce 9 series in her system. It still runs most all the new games, just not as sleek or fast as my Rig running the GTX280. When I upgrade to the next NVidia card I'll need in about 3 years, she'll get the GTX. My wife isn't as big of a PC gamer as I am so she rarely wants the top of the line graphics cards anyway. Works better for me and it's a lot cheaper.
The only time I was ever burned spending too much for a system was my very first computer when I was 17. I paid about $2,500 for a system I could of built for a little over a grand. It was a old Pentium 1 system with a VooDoo graphics card, CD burners were still $800 brand new, and I had a old CRT monitor. The reason it burned me wasn't because it wasn't a good system, but because the next generation of systems (architecture change) happened about 6 months after I bought it and got into the market.
Sounds like me....[except the 17 bit - PC computers didn't exist then].
P100 1gig drive 16meg of ram, Trident card, CDRom, 15" Monitor and $2500 AUD.
Now....
i7 920, 2.5 TB drives, 12gig DDR3 ram, XFX GTX285 card, 2x DVD Rewriters,...$3000 AUD.
That config isn't actually too far off from my current. I can't help but ask....how come that cost you so much? It's gotta be all that extra Ram and the hard drives. I have two 1 TB drives, a Blu-Ray burner, DvD/CD Burner, GTX280, and 6 Gigs of DDR3 Ram, all for a little over $1850. The most expensive piece was my Grphx card at a little over $400.
AUD vs USD for starters.
Also there were other bits in the 3 grand...the full spec is as follows...
What I got....
Lian Li PC-A6010 case [black]
Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w PSU
ASUS P6T-se X58 i7 MoBo
Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz LGA1366 CPU
12G OCZ Triple [6x2G] PC12800 DDR3 Gold Ram
CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler [that bloody big thing]
Vantec EZ2 Sata hot-swap racks [x2][black]
1TB Seagate Sata2 7200 HD [x2] [redundancy backup/data]
500G WD Sata2 7200 HD [game backups]
250G Seagate Sata2 7200 HD [x2] [secondary/alternate OS installs in racks]
60G OCZ Summit SSD [for OS]
ACR-105 Multi card reader
LG Sata DVD-RW [x2][black]
XFX 1G GTX285 Black Edition GPU
Ahh, that explains it then. We are running quite a few same parts though. I have the same proc, same MoBo, you have more memory of course. Very nice though I must say. I've been thinking of looking into those CoolMaster units. How well do they work?
As they should....well...
the coolermaster v8 is the cooler i was using before i got the corsair h50. i think the v8 is among the top air-cooling units out there. it's definitely one of the best looking ones.
I have been running ATI cards for years, and never had a problem with DeskScpes, or any other Stardock software for that matter. If you are having issues I would recommend sending a support e-mail with details of your issues.
What's the word here? I thought this was a three piece series. Arrival, Installation, Reveiw.
I'm using a GTS 250, a mid-range nVidia card which is about the same size as the card in the OP. Why is it that nVidia cards are so much bigger than ATI cards? Anyway, it seems to do the job nicely at 1680x1050. I can see how a high power card like the 5870 might be more applicable when you get into the 2 and 3 monitor displays.
A couple of reasons: hefty import duties... then a 10% GST so the gov't gets a second chop.
Then there's the importers/suppliers/dealers who charge retailers like wounded bulls... hence the customer pays more.
Fortunately, not all suppliers are like this, and if one shops around it's possible to get some really good deals. Take off the gov't chop and we'd be paying roughly the same as US customers (taking the exchange rate into consideration).
"What else do you recomend?? Should I cut my keyboard and monitor cable to 100 mm so it will have better response time? that will give another 1/100 second advantage againts those pros. And maybe i should sit closer to monitor so i will see the action faster again."
There are faster gaming keyboards available. They generally are USB.
I find it odd though, USB is great for large packets but USB's scheduler can add 5ms delay per packet.
USB spec does cover some timed modes which I don't use at work.
We have one custom item that a resouce hog, so we like it to be the only one on that USB tower (controller).
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