I'm having a bit of a hard time with my 5970, but didn't realise until this weekend just gone. My colleague and I both built our systems around the same time and have almost identical components except for motherboard, RAM and PSU. He's getting a WEI (yes.. I know it's only a reference and not a true reflection of overall performance) of 7.7 for both elements of graphics performance, whereas I only get 7.4 with the same card and Catalyst driver version. It shows in framerates on games too. Admittedly, there's not much in it, but I can't help feeling I've got a 'duffer' if you know what I mean? Both cards in question are XFX Black Editions and both are at stock speeds. Our CPUs are clocked. His to 4.00GHz with 12GB RAM, mine at 4.4GHz with 6GB RAM. We've both got 1kW PSUs albeit different brands, though both reputable and both running the same version of Win7 x64. Could somebody please help me fault find or give me a list of checks to run through? I don't get any glitches or artefacts with my card, and neither does my colleague, so one can assume both cards are 'healthy'. I'm completely baffled!
My bad. I meant to add that. Apologies and good spot. They're both identical, BIOS included. Factory BIOSs though. Not flashed as per the epic guide on here. I'm quite happy building machines and overclocking, updating mobo BIOSs, but something about GPU flashing worries me, so I've not gone down that route yet. The fact still remains though that both cards performance differs and I shouldn't have to flash mine to an OC BIOS to get the same performance as another standard card.
You said it yourself - different motherboards? Diff motherboards will play a role in FPS especially 1366 over 1156. Those few FPS alter scores differently.
Did you run any other benchmarks on it? maybe like the crysis one? It. It could come down to the motherboard but i didn't think it would make that big of a difference. Some motherboard fair better with different tasks. Some might be great at gaming and some and mulitasking. That's a really good board you have there though. EDIT: Half Ninja'ed
Could be any multitude of things on the system causing the the difference, something running during WEI can have a huge impact. Try swapping cards and see if the results are the same for each of your systems, I would assume they would be. I think your colleague would want to supervise the swap though, just in case his is better
Try running the free for 30 day 'Passmark Performance Test' which separates all the different test scores and you might see exactly where the difference lies.
I wouldn't bother even trying to compare results ran on different computers. There's just so much variables it doesn't make any sense. If you do, however, feel like you want to investigate further, how about something really GPU-limited like the Unigine Heaven benchmark at very high settings?
Your mate has got twice as much RAM, no wonder his WEI score is higher. This WEI is the same benchmark that gives you more point if your hard drive is bigger, right?
No? A mechanical HD seems to always get a WEI of 5.9 for a 7,200rpm drive, no matter the size. Beyond that you need an SSD. I would agree that WEI is a terrible judge of system performance.
Thanks for all your replies. I've been very busy with work and unable to check until now. He's got a Gigabyte board although I forget which model. Top end though. I remember it came with a passive PCI slot cooler for the Northbridge if that helps anyone identify? I do appreciate that WEI is a POOR assessment of system performance, but as I said earlier, it's clear in the framerates of 3DMark Vantage too. It's not a lot, but enough to bug me having shelled out on good quality hardware. I know the 5970 is far from perfect, and this is exacerbated by absolutely crap driver support for it; however, I'm loathed to sell this card for half of what I paid for it not 6 months ago.
OK, so after a lot of testing and borrowing my mates identical card.. and still getting the same results, I've found and fixed the problem thank god. Turns out it was down to ATi's crappy driver software. Particularly, a file called: atikmdag.sys After debugging, it appears that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code according to the software debugger. Driver Sweeper did it's magic, 11.1 catalyst installed and WEI went from 7.4 to 7.7 and my FPS went up to what I expected it to be. I really wish they'd do some decent drivers for this card. It could be so much better but it's held back by awful support.
