Asus HD 6970 Direct CUII Benchmarking log.

[PCTwin]

When I tried to run the standard test at GPU 1087 Mem 1472 1.5v (Max) it crashed

Run the tests individually and it survives.

So I ran the tests in proper order first then shut the machine down to let it cool off

Then I ran nature first then DL-LH-LL-DH-CH-CL

My score improved from 95788 to 96225

Got to organise my photo's, post some later

 

[Stromatolites]

I think the CPU is holding you back there.

 

[PCTwin]

I might have a choice this coming payday.

I was going to buy test bench, but as I've got some overtime coming I may just go for a 2600k

I hope it is the CPU and not the board.

 

[Stromatolites]

I might have a choice this coming payday.

I was going to buy test bench, but as I've got some overtime coming I may just go for a 2600k

I hope it is the CPU and not the board.

What did the board get you in Istanbul? Or was that the spare board? I would very much doubt its the board, but it could be. More than likely it's the CPU not liking to be clocked.

 

[PCTwin]

What did the board get you in Istanbul? Or was that the spare board? I would very much doubt its the board, but it could be. More than likely it's the CPU not liking to be clocked.

It was the spare board but we used it on the second day

We got 5.2GHZ out of a 2600k using it, but we only had a limited time to play with it

I can only try a different chip in it and I ain't got the money to get one at the mo.

End of the month maybe

 

[PCTwin]

Before I get back in to the Win XP benchmarks, here’s some Win7 DX11 results I ran to test the water cooling.

3DMark11 Entry

9541 points 6th of 12

3DMark11 Performance

6421 points 15th of 46

Worth 4.0 global and 1.6 hardware points

3DMark11 Extreme

2116 Points 4th of 15

Heaven Xtreme DX11

1431.161 Points 21st of 53

Worth 2.3 global and 1.1 hardware points

Not DX11 but Win 7 only benches

3Dmark Vantage

25135 Points 44th of 84

Heaven Basic DX9

3122.309 Points 3rd of 12

Worth 1.0 hardware points

That's all for now. I'm still working on the XP benches

My brother's not in too much of a hurry to ask for his card back.

As he says "I'm happy to play with the GTX580 till you're finished"

It was the grin on his face that puts me off.

 

[PCTwin]

Windows XP

I revisited the motherboard BIOS but couldn't get the CPU that much higher and stable.

Back to the graphics card.

When I tried to run the standard test at GPU 1087 Mem 1472 1.5v (Max) it crashed

But run the tests individually and it survives.

So I ran the tests in proper order first then shut the machine down to let it cool of

I couldn’t quite replicate my earlier score of 95k plus

In fact my score was consistently worse than the stock score of 95256

Then I ran the tests in a specific order. My thanks to Mr Moose, I ran nature first then DL-LH-LL-DH-CH-CL

My score improved to 96225

Not content with that I ran the tests a few times, but that was the best I could get.

Running the tests one at a time gives me the advantage of being able to run a single test more than once if I don’t like the score.

On one run I decided to rerun the car high test because I knew it was the lowest I’d ever scored on that test

The result changed from 416.3 to 433.5, I was happy with that so ran the final test which was the car low bench.

The score of 1365.1 for this test was also pretty low compared to recent tests, giving me a final score of only 95990.

Not content again, I reran this final bench and blow me over if it didn’t come back with a better score again.

1398.1 fps. An improvement of only 33 fps gives me a final score of 96320, which makes 33 fps worth 330 points.

This score ranks 22nd on hwbot and gains me 0.3 hardware points.

I could experiment with this for days, but I’m not going to.

Aquamark in windows XP gets a score of 318900

This is an improvement of 104806 points over the Win 7 214094 score

That’s a massive difference.

 

[Stromatolites]

2001 is one hell of a fiddle bench. You could spend hours trying to find the best run order. You could even experiment with gpu/mem clocks between benches so you find the max stable for each part of the bench. That's why people love to use that bench.

Forgot I still need to flick through my note book for the other gpu benches . (Yes I keep a little book where I note tweaks down

)

 

[PCTwin]

The HD6970 is one of AMD’s Cayman chips, cast in a slightly larger die size than the previous Barts and Cypress chips

2GB of GDDR5 1375MHZ memory (5500MHz effective)

System requirements state a 600 Watt or greater power supply with two 150W 8-pin PCI Express power connectors

Asus have applied their own Direct CUII cooler to this card which has turned it into a three bay monster

On the Marshall motherboard this consumes the first three PCI-E slots

The cooler is huge, but nowhere near as noisy as I thought it would be

Even overclocking the beast didn’t raise the noise level to excess in auto fan mode

Saying that, I only had to bump the voltage up one notch for the overclocks on air

Put the fans on manual control and ramp them up to 100% and they’re loud

With overclocks varying for each benchmark from 980 to 1015 with this cooler I’m feeling so-so about its capabilities

Time to move on to the watercooling

When overclocking this card I had to use a combination of the Cataylst centre and Asus Smart doctor

Catalyst only allows me to add voltage in a percentage mode, maxing out at 20%

Smart doctor on the other hand lets me take the voltage much higher, but it’s a pita to use

For some reason smart doctor doesn’t recognise keyboard movements and using the mouse to move that slider is absolutely useless when using a screen res of 1920x1200, it just won’t settle on the right point

Smart doctor increases the GPU speed in steps of 6 and 7 and increases the memory in steps of 8 and 9

Catalyst increases both of these in steps of 5

Afterburner and Tryxx allows you to use the arrow keys on the keyboard for this and it’s so much easier to use them, unfortunately they don’t seem to recognise the voltage controller that’s on this card

With Win 7 I used Catalyst for the GPU and Memory control and Smart doctor for the voltage control

In Win XP I disabled overclocking in Catalyst and concentrated on Smart doctor only

Comparing Win XP to Win 7 in the GPU benchmarks

3DMark01

Win XP and Smart doctor managed to reach GPU 1087 x Mem 1472

This setting scored 96320 points and took me to 25th out of 50. Still not worth a point though

Running the tests in a specific order definitely increases the score here

Win 7 and Catalyst hit 1070x1470 and only managed to score 76807

That’s a deficit of 19513

The tests I ran at stock speeds had a similar result

Win 7 scored 74393 while XP scored 95256

3DMark03

I was getting increasingly fed up with the twitchy interface in Smart doctor and kept reverting to setting the clocks in catalyst at times

Again XP scored higher on this bench overclocking to 1080x1468

108417 points puts me 24th out of 58 and picks up 1 HW point

Win 7 overclocked to 1080 x 1470 and managed 107905 points

This wasn’t the way of it at stock speeds though

XP scored 96756 at stock while Win 7 managed 97246, I was almost believing that win 7 was finally catching XP until I overclocked

3DMark05

Win 7 came out on top in this test, overclocking to 1090x1470

39979 points is only marginally better than the overclock on air

No movement in the rankings and no points

Xp only managed 39670 points, overclocking to 1087x1468

3DMark06

XP leads again in this bench, overclocking to 1080x1468

The score of 31060 points isn’t much of an improvement on the air overclock

Moving up 1 to 45th out of 74 still doesn’t get any points

Win 7 overclocked to 1085x1460 and scored 30496

This isn’t too far behind XP but it’s still behind

I can’t keep hold of this card any longer, I’ve had it long enough

If I don’t give him it back soon, he’ll get too attached to my 580

Time for a summary soon

 

[SieB]

Some nice benching there, good job

 

[PCTwin]

Having escaped New Vegas for a while I better get this finished before I get dragged back in.

I’ll put the results in the order hwbot uses

3Dmark2001 SE

96320 marks Global 1x GPU rank 610th out of thousands

Hardware rank 27th out of 52 good for 0.1 points

Top of my personal table

3DMark03

108417 marks Global 1x GPU rank 501st out of thousands

Hardware rank 25th out of 59 good for 0.9 points

2nd on my personal table to the GTX 460 SLI score

3DMark05

39979 marks Global 1x GPU rank 662nd out of thousands

Hardware rank 39th out 53 good for 0.1 points

Top of my table again

Aquamark

318900 marks Global 1x GPU rank 740th out of thousands

Hardware rank 43rd out of 51 good for 0.1 points

Top of my table

3DMark06

31060 marks Global 1x GPU rank 676th out of thousands

Hardware rank 44th out of 74 good for 0.1 points

Tops my table again

3dMark Vantage

25135 marks global 1 x GPU rank 668th out of thousands

Hardware rank 46th out of 86 good for 0.1 points

2nd on my table to the 460 SLI again

Unigine Heaven – Xtreme Preset (DX11)

1431.16 marks Global 1x GPU rank 393rd out of 928 good for 1.6 Global points

Hardware rank 22nd out of 57 good for 1.2 points

2nd again on my table to the 460 SLI but worth an extra point

Unigine Heaven – Basic Preset (DX9)

3122.31 DX9 marks Global 1x GPU rank 81st out of 535

Hardware rank 3rd out of 12 good for 1.0 points

2nd to the 460 SLI on my table again this time worth 0.5 points less

3DMark11 Performance

6421 marks Global 1x GPU rank 322nd out of 735 good for 2.9 Global points

Hardware rank 17th out of 49 good for 1.4 points

2nd again to the 460 SLI but worth 1.7 points more

3DMark11 Entry

9541 marks Global 1x GPU rank 46th out of 154 this is a non scoring benchmark

Hardware rank 6th out of 12

I didn’t run this on the 460 or any other card yet so I’ll have to wait for the 580 result

3DMark11 Extreme

2116 marks Global 1x GPU rank 67th out of 162 this is a non scoring benchmark

Hardware rank 4th out of 15

Again I didn’t run this on the 460 or any other card yet so I’ll have to wait for the 580 result

The final tally is 5.0 hardware points and 4.5 global points

I can’t really say I’m disappointed with this card, I’m not

With a more overclockable CPU there are some global points to be had

Unigine and 3DMark 11 show the cards potential, but my current system might be letting it down

If anything else was holding it back, it may have been the cooling over the power area

Maxing out the voltage with my watercooling solution may have been pushing it some times

It wasn’t fun overclocking with Asus Smart doctor, I much prefer the interface of Afterburner or Tryxx. Asus should really work on that

A good card that was fun to bench

 

[Stromatolites]

Have you still got the card??? Did you try the tweak I sent you in a PM?