Maximizing my HD 6870

[Microhard777]

My first post on this forum, I will try to be as thorough as I can.

My rig is as follows:

ASUS M5A97
8GB Corsair DDR3
AMD 8 core FX black edition Core clock 3.1 (slightly OC 3.7)
OCZ Modxstream-pro 700w
Radeon HD 6870 1GB

My questions are kind of all over the place. But if the forums are nice to me, I am confident my questions can be answered.

1) With this set up I was assured my rig was "very nice", And I could play anything on max settings.
Witcher 2 has teriible framerate on ultra, Tribes: Ascend has bad pop up, and the game I built this computer for, Diablo 3, Must be toned down to play.
2) My GPU drivers are all up to date, I have extensively tweaked and played with all the sliders in the catalyst. And I can play everything I want to play. Yet I feel like I am missing something in the settings that I am possibly missing to get the best out of this set up. This computer should run Diablo 3 on max no propblem.
3) I guess my question is should I have bought a beefier card for my gaming tastes, or is there some small thing I am missing in settings that could make the difference I desire?

Coming up with money for the very enticing HD7870 is a little ways off. I just spent 1500 Bucks on this set up. (including a Samsung 24" LED monitor, and HP laser printer)

Any help would be very nice. I will check back tomorrow. And if you have questions from me, ask away.

Thanks in advance,


humble computerNo0b

 

[slh28]

Well I'm not surprised you get terrible framerates in Witcher 2, it's a very demanding game.

However you should easily be able to max D3, are you getting slow frame rates all the time or is it just occasionally dipping? Have you checked your GPU and CPU usage while playing?

 

[Scavengers]

The 6870 is one of the best price\performance cards in years. But at 19x10 Witcher 2 is very demanding.
Your motherboard supports Crossfire so just pick up another 6870. Witcher 2 shows 35% - 40% increases
running duals.

Dave

 

[Microhard777]

Thank you for your response slh28 and Scavengers.

On Diablo 3 it is sometimes jerking in intense moments, even freezing. Checking CPU performance and GPU usage tonite, I will let you know about how it goes. Mind you I am trying to run everything at 1080P. I dropped down to 720P and everything runs much smoother,even at max settings. But just to keep that crispy 60 fps I drop textures down to low. Diablo 3 still looks great at the settings I play in. I was just more like looking into maybe tweaking the sliders on the GPU catalyst. I believe my CPU should handle anything this card throws at it, but if I max out all the sliders to the right, it stutters.

The card is clocked @900 out of the box, I can go up to 950 stable. Will moving the memory clock up do anything?

And I guess I was under the impression that this card was better. I have been a lifelong console gamer, and used to the stability of the way the games perform. Now I understand that PC gaming is totally different, and you must tinker to find your best set up.
I am willing to do the work to get this right.

So the crossfire dual cards is gonna up my performance that much eh? I heard that it was overrated from some folks. But that might be a short term fix. That card is only 170$. I feel like the guy that built my computer should have seen my tastes and shown me the higher cards.

I will look at my performance of GPU and CPU tonite and repost.

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[Scavengers]

I myself am running 2 XFX 6870's in Crossfire with a Z68 board and a 2600k @ 4.6 ghz. I can tell you first hand that Crossfire performance is excellent. Here is a link you can read to check out its performance running duals:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_6870_CrossFire/3.html

Your gain will be about 10% less because the second full size PCIe slot on your motherboard is 4x, but even at that I can
tell you that your performance gains will be much more than short term.

Dave

 

[Microhard777]

Thanks alot Scavengers, I will strongly consider the crossfire setup.

As for my GPU and CPU usage as I play, they bounced between 35-40% on most cases.

In catalyst what should I keep the sliders at Scavengers, Just use the auto setup? What should AA be at? Tessellation, etc? Seems you know alot about the HD6870. And the CPU I have should I OC more? It was stable up to about 4.1.

Thanks a ton for the help so far,

 

[slh28]

If you're only at 35-40% usage and getting fps dips then it would indicate a software problem, so overclocking your GPU and CPU won't solve your problems. You can try setting everything back to stock.

Or perhaps it could be network lag because D3 requires an always on connection (even for single player!). Go to pingtest.net and test your ping and jitter.

 

[Scavengers]

For cpu usage that is fine, if its doing its job with that kind of load then overclocking will not help, but just as slh28 said if the gpu is only at 40% max and you are getting low frame rates then there is something else wrong.

I would suggest you download FRAP's and run it when you play and keep a close watch on your framerate.

Dave

 

[Buckshot420]

Diablo 3 can run choppy if you don't have your firewall setup with the proper ports open since the game is always connected to the Blizzard servers. Might also be the other people you are playing with that don't have the proper setup. Im using a gtx 460 and playing D3 on max @1080 and Witcher 2 on medium/high @1080 no problem. I just did a build with a 570 and I can't tell a difference between that and my 460 on Diablo 3 (Witcher 2 definitely performs better on the 570). Witcher 2 recommends a whopping 580/680 for ultra and SLI 580/680 for the other graphics option (forgot what its called), so it is VERY demanding.

 

[graff3]

Try getting your hands on Driver Genius Pro. I use that to keep my drivers up to date. Might be outdated video card drivers as well. I'm running a Gigabyte GA-MA785-US mobo with a AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2Ghz quad core), HD6870, and 8GB of ram on win7 64 at 1080 and having no issues at all with lag.