3870x2 - performance bottleneck or powerplay?

Ive just installed a brand new HIS 3870x2 1024mb card to my current setup and i'm not noticing any real gains in games compared to my nearly 3 year old 7800gt.

the system i am using is:

Win xp pro sp3
AMD 5600+ x2 @2.8ghz
Crucial Ballistic 6400 (2gig) (4-4-4-12)
Gigabyte Nforce 570 board
Tagan 580w PSU (35A combined) -both 2x3 pcie connectors connected to the card
all within an antec 900 case...

3d mark tests @ 1280x1024

7800gt got about 7500 marks
3870x2 has 9650 marks on all drivers

I've hear alot of people saying powerplay isnt allowing the 2nd gpu to kick in and other reports stating that some of them have a duff bios

I've tried different catalyst drivers 8.1 through to 8.5 - net framework updates, disabling AI in ccc and none of it has made any difference.

Any ideas?

 

only thing that I can think of is that there may still be some old nvidia drivers on your system and they are causing enough of a conflict somewhere.
considering how my 1950 pro gets me around 5000 marks you should be getting a lot more performance than that. Even with one card.

Glad to hear that they fit in the 900 though, now I know that I can get one.

 

Corsair 620HX power supply would be helpful.
580seems small.

 

ah cool, i'll try a driver cleaner when I get home to see how it goes

It does fit in the 900 but theres not much play lol, you have to remove one of the black extra fan holders on one of the hdd racks, good thing is though it just clips off.

Ive heard alot about the cpu limiting performace also so i'm gonna try some mild oc's on the cpu see if it helps as ive heard 3dmark on a 6400 will get you about 11,000 marks because of cpu limitation.

Any more suggestions are welcomed.

 

ah cool steve - was thinking of going with one of these silverstone PSU's (750w) i believe it has 8 pin (+12v) support for the card too but im not sure with these new units =/

heres the PSU ive been looking at:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=499627 any good?