Just curious as I'm not an ATI guy. Why not just go with a 6970? What's the draw of an older model card like the 5870/5970?
Just curious as I'm not an ATI guy. Why not just go with a 6970? What's the draw of an older model card like the 5870/5970?
Nobody held a gun to our heads to buy the 5970 DP, I even warned against them myself if you remember. I thought the price was a steal too & being it was Newegg with free shipping I figured it was worth the chance. I see this morning the Card has been running the Wu's in about 20 Min's, dirt slow (33% Slower) compared to the other 5970 I have running, mulling my options now with the Card. I think the Card is Throttling down but not sure, I backed it off to 775 & Stock Voltage to see what happens, I have 30 days at least to return it to Newegg so I have time to play with it. I might try to sell it to & see what happens with the new buyer, they might be perfectly happy with it ...Originally Posted by DrPop
Well, finally decided to return mine after messing with it just a little longer; it's going back to the egg first thing in the morning. I'm really sorry if I steered anyone wrong on these - it just seemed like a good buy and was always my dream card.
For what it's worth, I have a Gigabyte 5870 @900 that does Moo! WUs in 26 and some change all the way up to 29mins, depending on what else I'm doing on the computer at the same time. Also (2) GTX 460s in there crunching DiRT, and all 6 CPU cores crunching DiRT - I am not holding any back while DiRT has CPU WUs, so that could be upping my times a little bit.
@SteVe - what is your mem clock speed on that 5870 that's doing them in 26mins?
The 5870 I have running the MOO Wu's is actually running the Wu's in 26-29 Minutes, so basically all over the place too, that's the trouble with the MOO & Previously DNET Wu's, there's no consistent time with them like PG Wu's. I lower the Memory as far it will go with MSI Afterburner on MOO, PG & Milkyway, for Collatz & GPU Grid I run the Memory @ the Stock settings ...
The 5970 is a Dual Core Card so for $300 like Newegg was selling them for it was worth a chance ...
Ah, i see, save $30 and get a dual core card that is comparable to a newer single core.
Save a lot more than $30 on a 5970 for $300, they normally sell for $500 & up ...
Last edited by STE\/E; 12-05-11 at 05:38 AM.
Performance wise there is no comparison. The 5970 blows away the 6970. It really is a great card. Two HD 5870's in one pci-e slot. I believe this card was the first attempt to put two gpus on one card. They learned a lot from these cards.
http://www.hwcompare.com/9425/radeon...adeon-hd-6970/
I've been running 2 5970s for almost 2 years. I set the Vcore voltage at 1.13V and they are perfectly stable and content at 850 MHz on either Moo or MW. You can clock higher on Collatz of course.
The last time I sent one of them in for a failed fan they returned a 6990 ... no comparison between the 2 cards. They learned a lot from from the 5970 and corrected the heat problems on the 6990! One of the GPUs in the 6990 running at 880 MHz outperforms a 5870 clocked at 950.
Just for the record....
(Link)
Yeah it's gotta be the User, what would any of us know about Video Cards ...
EDIT: For the Record the closer I get to 850 with the 1 Card the slower it run's, 800 seems to be about the max time reduction for it & anything over that just adds time to the Wu's. Not over heating that I can see & have tried up to 1.75 Volts with the card but only running 1.25 right now @ 850 & the card is 4-5 mins slower than the other Card running @ 850 & 1.0 Volts ... Both Box's have the same Motherboard, CPU & the same amount & Type of Memory, PSU's are the same too ...
Last edited by STE\/E; 12-05-11 at 03:47 PM.
Steve, I wasn't making a comment on your knowledge of GPUs, I was stating what my experience has been with 5970s. If the card won't get to 850 then there is a problem somewhere ... either the card is defective -or- possibly you need to run the benchmark on that machine and see if it shows "core 0' as the fastest since that is what the automatic selection is choosing for that machine. I had 2 identical machines (dual Xeon servers) that I started running my 5970s in. On 1 machine Moo was fastest on Core 0 and on the other machine it liked Core 3. They both produced the same credits but required a different "core" setting.Yeah it's gotta be the User, what would any of us know about Video Cards ...
My experience with 5970s involves 6 cards. The original 2 failed and were replaced, which eventually failed and were replaced, which eventually failed! The last time XFX replaced 1 with a 6990. I haven't sent in the other 5970 yet but it has also failed. All failures have either been the fan crapping out or GPU 0 throwing artifacts and slowing down where even clocking at 700 wasn't reliable.
On heating ... whatever engineer did the vapor chamber design on the refernce design cost AMD and the vendors BIG bucks. The VRMs for GPU0 are NOT under the vapor chamber and run extremely hot. Those are what limits the OC ability of the card. The temperatures that need to be monitored (GPU-Z) are not the "GPU" temp but the bottom 4 that are shown down at the bottom which are the VRM temps. On GPU 0, the card may be report the GPU temp as 75C but the VRM on GPU 0 may be pushing well over 100C. At 120C the card goes into a self protection mode and starts slowing down the clock.
If the GPU 0 graphics chip starts crapping out you will usually see it in the current being drawn (GPU-Z). Running Moo/MW at 850-900 MHz the chip should draw around 65A but if the chip is having trouble then you will see currents in the 90-95A range. A standard 5870 also draws around 65A when running at 900 MHz.
BTW, the 5970 is NOT two 5850 chips even though they state it is like a dual 5850. According to an AMD interview when the card 1st came out it was designed to be a dual 5870 and it uses the same chips. The problem according to AMD was that when clocked to 5870 levels it exceeded the power specs for a single PCIe slot. It exceeded BOTH the total power spec (300W) and the power required from the MB (75W). That is why the refernce design came out with something like 1.0V on the Vcore ... that limited the power draw to keep it within the PCIe specification. Prior to introduction AMD put out a program (that got pulled before introduction) that allowed the user to raise the Vcore and memory voltages above the stock level. Most vendor did suppy that utility with their cards ... XFX called their version of the program Overvolt.
The bottom line is with the experience I've had with my 5970s I had decided that I would NEVER purchase another dual card. With what I've seen with the 6990 it would be stupid to not purchase another. They have totally fixed the problems that I saw in my XFX 5970s.
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