Radeon HD 7970 Inbound

[Kuky]

I'm not fond of having to run DCS back in 32bit mode since 64bit gets better performance (there were done tests about this while back), but just out of curiosity, how do you get to run DCS now in 32bit mode? When you install it on 64bit OS there is no option to check to also install 32bit files.

[Nate--IRL--]

I'm not fond of having to run DCS back in 32bit mode since 64bit gets better performance (there were done tests about this while back), but just out of curiosity, how do you get to run DCS now in 32bit mode? When you install it on 64bit OS there is no option to check to also install 32bit files.

 

That option was removed a good while ago - you'll need a 32bit OS to install to I'm afraid.

 

Nate

[TAIPAN_]

Ahh I couldn't remember if the last install asked if I wanted the 32bit exes. You would have to install the Original A-10C release, that would ask you if you want 32bit. But then it's not good from a user point of view in that no one wants to play an old version. It would only help for troubleshooting for ATI and ED and for us.

 

What if you asked a 32bit XP user to send you their EXE?

The original installer used to provide one, so it may still work if you copy it into your 64bit install.

 

Anyway, I can't wait any longer I am going to AusPCMarket this afternoon to pickup a Sapphire 7970. They seemed to give you good service testing the card for you etc, much more than I can say for other etailers I was trying to find the card.

 

I had placed an order at centrecom for an XFX Black edition, the site said stock, they had no stock and didn't tell me just left me waiting for days until I asked - and they provide no phone number. Only a webform.

 

These AusPCMarket guys seem more reliable. The reference ones I'm hearing reports that they overclock just as well as the black edition, and I may replace the cooler myself one day anyway. $150 cheaper for reference over the black edition too.

 

I just hope my displayport cable is arriving by post today as well..

[Kuky]

Thanks Nate... I'm not gonna bother installing 32bit OS... if next AMD driver doesn't fix this I don't know what I'm going to do

 

TAIPAN, I've been buying PC part from AusPCmarket for afew years now and I wuite like them as they are Sydney based and you can pick up your stuff if you want and also their stock inventory is most accurate I've seen... and they include shipping for all their prices.

 

Another store I like, but this is online only and they are Melbourne based, is PC Case Gear... those guys are among cheapest, they ship very quick... and they sell good stuff and quite a good variety of products (for example AusPC Market are not soo good on water cooling hardware)

 

I got my HD7970 from AusPC Market for $744 (I get few $ discount as I'm long customer)

Edited January 18, 2012 by Kuky

[TAIPAN_]

Yeah PCCaseGear I use as well, but they are in Melbourne. AusPcmarket is a good find. Their warehouse is only 10 minutes from a train station so easy for me to leave work early and train it straight there from the city.

 

I just can't wait to use my 3rd monitor anymore, hence I'm picking it up :)

 

NVidia have really been left behind only allowing 2 monitors per card and having so many restrictions on NVidia surround.

 

I just hope ATI drivers catchup. Maybe with all the cash they are going to make from the 7 series they can beef up their driver team.

 

In the meantime at least we have FC2 and Blackshark1 to keep us occupied, and Rise of Flight and Arma2 will benefit from this card tremendously.

I'm thinking of even trying IL-2 again too. Plus my Dragonborn simulator in multi screen with high res textures is going to be nice ;)

[cichlidfan]

I really want to try 32bit to see if my Radoenpro Crossfire will work with it. If it's not installed by default on a 64bit system, how can I obtain the 32bit version? Anyone have just a 32bit package mod?

 

You need to be running a 32bit OS, period.

 

or find someone with a version from before the option was removed. I think v1.1.0.7 was the last one with that option.

[TAIPAN_]

You need to be running a 32bit OS, period.

 

or find someone with a version from before the option was removed. I think v1.1.0.7 was the last one with that option.

 

Not a good idea to get previous, version mismatch could cause issues.

 

Best to find someone who has the current build installed on 32 bit OS.

 

If someone has this and can give me the contents of the binary folder I will test it.

 

I'll install the card tonight, Im just about to catch the train back from the warehouse.

The card is looking sooo sexy

[Cali]

Yeah PCCaseGear I use as well, but they are in Melbourne. AusPcmarket is a good find. Their warehouse is only 10 minutes from a train station so easy for me to leave work early and train it straight there from the city.

 

I just can't wait to use my 3rd monitor anymore, hence I'm picking it up :)

 

NVidia have really been left behind only allowing 2 monitors per card and having so many restrictions on NVidia surround.

 

 

That is one of the big things making me lean towards an ATI card when I buy my next one. I run three monitors now, with one running from a USB adapter. I have another montior just sitting in my storage room...waiting to be used.

[JG14_Smil]

I tested EyeInfinity out for the first time. No thanks. After seeing how beautiful things are in ROF with every single setting set to the maximum on my 37" HDTV, I will never dumb down my graphics again. The three monitors did not produce nearly as sharp of a picture and the tearing screen of not being able to use Vsync just ruined it for me. I can't believe what a change the 7970 made in my sytem. No way I am taking the card out to fly BS2. :)

I sure hope they fix it soon.

 

BTW, don't ever disable a monitor when it is in an EyeInfinity profile. It renders the card inert. I had to do a complete device manager uninstall, then reinstall to get it back working again.

Edited January 18, 2012 by JG14_Smil

[TAIPAN_]

Yeah with all the eye candy turned up, ROF looks amazing.

 

I think with trackir it makes up alot for not having a wide view. But I've got lots of other games like Skyrim, Fallout, Mount & Blade that don't support trackir so it would be good to get more view.

 

Same for Battlefield but sadly it's directx 11 so SoftTH will not work with it. Anyway it will need all the power it can get for center screen eye candy.

 

But older games like DCS will handle multimonitor, and lower frames don't matter as much when not gunfighting.

 

But why couldn't you get VSync working?

 

I'm planning to use SoftTH for ROF and SoftTH does allow VSync, so surely Eyefinity would do at least what SoftTH can do...

[Cali]

I only use 1 monitor for my game, 1 extracting MFD's, RWR, DED and ts or vent and the 3rd one does nothing but duplicates the 1st one. I thought about doing the surround-gaming, but I have a TrackIR and that does a good job for me.

[PeterP]

I really want to try 32bit to see if my Radoenpro Crossfire will work with it. If it's not installed by default on a 64bit system, how can I obtain the 32bit version? Anyone have just a 32bit package mod?

 

This is how I installed a 32bit version of BS2 and A10c to make some intense testing:

 

I installed Them on my 32OS laptop (don't activate these installation)

and than I copied the installations on my 64bit

system.

 

You will have to rename and edit the short-cuts matching the path to the 32 bit installs .

After you have done this they will run without activation again - and use the configuration path of your 64bit installations.

 

- so it's very easy if you have a 32bit OS somewhere near you.

[TAIPAN_]

Card is in, tried DCS A-10C 64bit with the drivers on the Sapphire website from 14th January.

 

I thought it was working, actually got to 14 minutes and 57 seconds into the first instant action mission. Just about to drop an LGB and it froze, sound still on but black screen.

 

I'll ask around my squad for a 32 bit version this weekend but not sure when I'll have time to test due to a ROF tournament coming up.

 

The good news is though, this card is a beast (as we know!). I setup SoftTH for ROF, added some pixels for Bezels and it's running ROF 5160x1600 at 60 frames per second above 500m, 40-50 close to the ground. Very nice!

 

I'll be having a SoftTH week next week setting it up for all my other games (except DCS until a fix).

 

ps MSI Afterburner overclocked to 1125 core, 1575 mem with no voltage changes, but custom fan curve up to 100% at 85. Burn test 15min furmark and it didn't get above 70, no issues.

These Sapphires are great cards, I've heard people getting 1200+ on them. I wonder what we will see when people start getting water or better coolers.

Edited January 18, 2012 by TAIPAN_

[JG14_Smil]

I found a 12.2 beta on Guru3D. It fixes one thing I did not like about EyeInfinity, the taskbar all the way across three screens. I guess I get tearing as I am using different displays.

 

no, no luck with BS2 yet, but I think my driver install did not go correctly. Will have to retry when I get time.

Edited January 18, 2012 by JG14_Smil

[Icarus2]

I only use 1 monitor for my game, 1 extracting MFD's, RWR, DED and ts or vent and the 3rd one does nothing but duplicates the 1st one. I thought about doing the surround-gaming, but I have a TrackIR and that does a good job for me.

Agreed about TIR. Also the bezels bother me greatly in multi monitor setups. Never got used to that. Projector is better for big views IMHO.

[Mustang]

asder00 posted another variation of the 12.1 driver recently at guru3d, worth trying?

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=357434

[Kuky]

Mustang, I tried that driver last night and it still does not work with my card as driver will not install (doesn't see the video card)

[TAIPAN_]

I'm still on the Sapphire drivers, everything works except for DCS.

 

Multimonitor is working well, I'm using Portrait/Landscape/Portrait so the Bezels are not in my main view. They are off to the sides with the portraits just doing some peripheral. My center is a nice Dell 30"

 

Running IL-2 and Rise of Flight at about 5000x1600 is a dream.

 

Trackir I've adjusted the horizontal yaw so it moves much less now because I have more view, TIR is now more useful in the vertical.

 

FPS games though the side monitors are great since FPS don't support TIR. Battlefield 3 I dragged across all 3 monitors and it's running about 50-60fps, with Landscape and AA turned down. Still ultra textures, meshes etc, looks great.

 

Overclocked mine to 1175/1575 is the most stable for me, everything running really high frame rates.

 

Can't wait to try DCS properly though :(

[Kuky]

I've ordered last week full cover water block also from EK directly, came to about $133 shipped... so waiting to get that in... should get rid of need to loud fan noise and much better temperatures... only now if DCS would work properly :(

[TAIPAN_]

Are they hard to setup?

 

I've never done water so I have no idea.

 

I guess we need other hardware to go with

[Kuky]

I wouldn't say it's very hard to setup since I've done a custom water loop on my own first time I tried it... as time passes I've changed things around (mostly where radiator is located). The thing about it is it's quite expensive especially if you want something that looks very good also (this is where people start using all the nice chrome plated fittings, adapters etc).

 

I've starte cooling the CPU only and for this (if you go custom loop) you need to first try figure out where you can put what and generaly this is where most problems arise, sometimes you'd need to either start modifying the case to fit it in, or get a new one that is easier to put water loop in.

 

You only have to watch and be very careful about that you don't have a leek anywhere as this will fry your components where water comes in contact with working hardware... if you are carefull and fit everything properly you're fine.

 

Other anoyance with water cooling is when you do upgrades... if you have video card water cooled and want to change it, you'll need to empty the water out of the loop, then you can take it out, and this is bit hard also depending where you've put radiator/pump/reservoir

 

Best is to have a drainage point/valve in lowest part of the water loop (remember water is pulled down by gravity ;) ) so you can easy(ier) drain that water.

 

You always have to use distiled water and best to use water cooling chemicals also to avoid forming algee and never ever use normal tap water!

 

The great benefit of water cooling is much quieter PC and colder CPU/VGA which will help in overclocking also if you wish to do so.

 

There are plenty of guides on the nest, you just need to start looking and googling :) you can get plenty of ides from people's videos on youtube also, some are really mad about it and do all kinds of things with their PC, lot have more than 1 loop also.

[TAIPAN_]

Leaks! Sounds a bit too scary..

 

A guy has done it I just read 1335Mhz, but he had some trouble setting up

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1038284400#post1038284400

[JG14_Smil]

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/RC11Driver.aspx

 

Found this. Will try them out soon. Not holding me breath for a fix :)

[Mustang]

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/RC11Driver.aspx

 

Found this. Will try them out soon. Not holding me breath for a fix :)

 

Beat me to it, just saw this over at Rage3d and was about to post it up, good luck to you 7970 guys :)

[JG14_Smil]

hehe. I was going to have someone wake you up Mustang :)

 

 

%^$^#!!

 

BS2 worked great first time running it after install, but problem has not been fixed. I am betting this will end up like the unresolved white box issue.

Edited January 20, 2012 by JG14_Smil
BS2 failed again