4870 Severe Underperformance

jlfrank83

Hey guys, I recently purchased a Sapphire 4870 512MB to upgrade from my 8800GT. I was very surprised by the results. I got no performance increase in Crysis. Farcry 2 would slow to a crawl (5-15fps) if I changed any of the graphics settings in-game. The nail in the coffin: this card scored 3,000 marks less in 3DMark06 than the 8800GT. Rivatuner confirmed that the core clock is definately running at 750MHz while gaming. I also tried running this card in a friend's machine to make sure my Mobo and processor weren't bottlenecking it, but no luck. Has anyone else seen this issue? Should I RMA the card?

krayzieNRG · 11-08-2008, 17:46 | posts: 928 | Location: Jamaica

use driver sweeper and clean up the nvidia driver thats left on your system,i have a 4870 1gb but a faster cpu than yours and i got way better performance than my 8800gtx,score 17264 on 3dmark 06.

jlfrank83 · 11-08-2008, 18:08 | posts: 8 | Location: Middletown, NY

Thanks for the advice. I should have mentioned that I already ran the driver cleaner in safe mode, and I have tested this card in a friend's computer with the same results. The only thing I have not tried is a fresh OS install, which is the last stop on the train to RMA town. BTW, just to give you an idea of just how poorly this card is performing, my last 3DMark score was 7894.

krayzieNRG · 11-08-2008, 18:21 | posts: 928 | Location: Jamaica

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlfrank83

Thanks for the advice. I should have mentioned that I already ran the driver cleaner in safe mode, and I have tested this card in a friend's computer with the same results. The only thing I have not tried is a fresh OS install, which is the last stop on the train to RMA town. BTW, just to give you an idea of just how poorly this card is performing, my last 3DMark score was 7894.

sh!t thats really bad then,try a refresh OS as u said if same result just do a RMA,sometimes the bad ones get out but its a great card.
my friend have one in my amd rig that i loan him(amd FX 62,asus crosshair 590 mobo)and its performing great as well.

nexuno · 11-08-2008, 18:24 | posts: 227 | Location: Italy

PCI-e at 16X ?

jlfrank83 · 11-08-2008, 18:29 | posts: 8 | Location: Middletown, NY

yes, 16x. motherboard specs can be found here. Not exactly top of the line, but the 8800GT performed admirably on this board, and I don't think it should bottleneck this card to the degree that I am experiencing.

NullHead · 11-09-2008, 02:37 | posts: 49

Is it a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot? I got my 4850 back when I had a 1.0 and it was no better than my GeForce 7600.

I advise an RMA and if still poor performance, get a new motherboard with a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot on it.

nexuno · 11-09-2008, 10:37 | posts: 227 | Location: Italy

Quote:

Originally Posted by NullHead

Is it a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot? I got my 4850 back when I had a 1.0 and it was no better than my GeForce 7600.

I advise an RMA and if still poor performance, get a new motherboard with a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot on it.

nah this is not true....i'm running my VGA on a pci-e 1.0 and getting maximum performance....and go around the web and you'll see all the articles about it says that nowadays pci-e 2.0 doesn't make ANY difference...so that's not the case

kitch9 · 11-09-2008, 10:54 | posts: 1,854 | Location: Doncaster, England

Quote:

Originally Posted by NullHead

Is it a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot? I got my 4850 back when I had a 1.0 and it was no better than my GeForce 7600.

I advise an RMA and if still poor performance, get a new motherboard with a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot on it.

I would advise knowing what you are talking about before giving advice....

jlfrank83 · 11-09-2008, 12:57 | posts: 8 | Location: Middletown, NY

Like I said, the 8800GT performed to full spec on this board. Even if the motherboard were bottlenecking the 4870, there is absolutely no reason why my 3DMark scores should have dropped compared to the 8800.

Thanks for your advice everybody. I'm going to RMA this card. I'll let you know how it turns out when I get the replacement. Damn, I wish FedEx were open on Sundays...

Sylph · 11-10-2008, 23:52 | posts: 134

Quote:

Originally Posted by NullHead

Is it a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot? I got my 4850 back when I had a 1.0 and it was no better than my GeForce 7600.

I advise an RMA and if still poor performance, get a new motherboard with a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot on it.

You just need PCIE x16. 2.0 just means the lane bandwidth is doubled, however, there doesnt seem to be any graphic card which got the need for it. At current time its a pretty pointless technology. Sure, a new board could help, but rather because of the chipset. On my "old" 975X chipset the newest 4800 series still seems to be running great. However, the "ECS RS485M-M" is a worse chipset/board for being able to provide the newest GPUs.

DSK · 11-09-2008, 02:59 | posts: 17,984 | Location: Coldwells,UK

You board have pci-e 1.1 x16 iv had the 4870 running on the same slot works perfect so you don't need a new motherboard

sykozis · 11-11-2008, 02:25 | posts: 13,480 | Location: US East Coast

Eh, I had the same problem with my 4850 until I reinstalled Windows....and I have a PCIe x16 1.1 slot...and my 4850 has zero performance issues related to it.

NullHead · 11-11-2008, 03:04 | posts: 49

Okay then it seems that it was a whole system bottleneck I was experiencing then. I built a new system to facilitate the new graphics card. Perhaps the processor, mobo chipset and ram did the trick instead of the new PCIE interface.

sykozis · 11-11-2008, 03:11 | posts: 13,480 | Location: US East Coast

That would be more likely since no video card uses the full capable bandwidth for PCIe x16 v1.0

jlfrank83 · 11-20-2008, 04:46 | posts: 8 | Location: Middletown, NY

OK so the new card came in, and I got the same results. Abysmal 3D mark scores in XP. For kicks, I installed vista on a second hard drive and acheived fantastic performance. I thought maybe there were some residual Nvidia drivers on the XP partition, so I did a fresh install, but it did not improve performance at all. I'm at a loss to explain why this is happening. I'm not a big Vista fan, but I guess I'm going to have to make-do with it. Any feedback, as always, is appreciated.

homarck · 11-20-2008, 06:51 | posts: 17 | Location: Hong Kong

I also changed from 8800GT to HD4870 512MB, and I can tell u that there is really a performance boost. Although the 3dmark06 do not have a large differences (around 1500 for my spec.), the in game performance differences is really large. Please make sure you have installed all required drivers for you MB and display, and try not to oc your system if you have do it before. Also make sure u have correct AA and AF settings in the driver.

wud03 · 11-20-2008, 09:32 | posts: 264 | Location: Flushing, NY

Well jlfrank said his games has been performing badly too. It seems the difference is operating systems, but there's no reason I can tell why it does so badly in XP.

Sylph · 11-20-2008, 12:04 | posts: 134

There is no need for a PCIE 2.0, i have no 2.0, just a usual x16 and the 4850 is working great. The usual PCIE is still fast enough for not slowing down newer GPUs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by homarck

I also changed from 8800GT to HD4870 512MB, and I can tell u that there is really a performance boost. Although the 3dmark06 do not have a large differences (around 1500 for my spec.), the in game performance differences is really large. Please make sure you have installed all required drivers for you MB and display, and try not to oc your system if you have do it before. Also make sure u have correct AA and AF settings in the driver.

The 3D06 at initial test is a very bad tool for the newest GPUs. Its not anymore a reliable benchmark and mainly CPU based. When high demanding games are performing good it does mean much more.

Harold Ramp · 11-20-2008, 15:41 | posts: 25

Are you installing XP from a pre-installed recovery partition?

jlfrank83 · 11-21-2008, 03:48 | posts: 8 | Location: Middletown, NY

No, I did a fresh install on a newly formatted hard drive with an OEM copy with SP3.

Mr0zzmaN · 12-09-2008, 23:17 | posts: 12 | Location: Sweden

I bought a HIS hd4870 turbo and i don´t get any high scores at all i had a gainward 9600gt golden sample and it scored around 11000 in 3dmark06 and with this i score 12400 shouldn´t it be more with my specs? Oh it´s overclocked from the beginning @ 780/4ghz.
Cheers

fearsjohn · 12-09-2008, 23:57 | posts: 1,282 | Location: atlanta, ga

your cpu is holding you back in 3d06. very cpu dependent. put a q6600 at 3.6 with that card and you will probably get 16000

Mr0zzmaN · *Last edited by Mr0zzmaN; 12-10-2008 at 00:31.*

Quote:

Originally Posted by fearsjohn

your cpu is holding you back in 3d06. very cpu dependent. put a q6600 at 3.6 with that card and you will probably get 16000

Hmmm I don´t like intel....will this do? http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=348530

NullHead · 12-10-2008, 05:42 | posts: 49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr0zzmaN

Hmmm I don´t like intel....will this do? http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=348530

I'd say it will do nicely. My 9750 is great. I'm sure you'll like that one.