Peculiar Performance w/Radeon 4870

[Kohan]

Hello, folks. Normally, I visit these forums to try and help other people out, but now I'm scratching my own head, and am hoping for some advice.

I finally had the opportunity to upgrade my graphics card recently. Per the general recommendations here (as the primary 3D application I run is FFXI), I picked this up:

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100259L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

This was an upgrade from my aging 8800 GTS.

It's working well for me in other applications, but strangely enough, FFXI is running slower overall. I've had several lock-ups and crashes in Whitegate today, and the framerates are less than appealing. Other 3D applications I've run include "Call of Duty: World at War," and "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars." Those problems don't exist there.

Prior to popping in my new card, I used DriverCleaner for a thorough cleansing, and since I couldn't find any modified drivers based on recent releases, I downloaded the Catalyst set from ATI's own website.

Are there any particular advanced configurations or drivers that are working well for everyone else on an ATI config? The fact that I'm getting worse performance with my new 4870 than I was with my 8800 GTS is baffling.

Computer specs:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 1.9GHz
RAM: 4GB
OS: XP x64 (where the problem's been noticed), XP x86, Windows 7

FFXI is also installed on a SATA drive. Motherboard chipset drivers, BIOS and everything is up to date.

Don't really know what's going on here.

Is the processor causing a bottleneck?

[Tythera]

The way FFXI was ported, the processor will always be a bottleneck. That's the nature of how you would write games for a PS2 and they never did any sort of optimization to run on a PC that has a good graphics card. That having been said, I'm willing to bet it's the drivers causing the crashing (well, more like FFXI is causing it by being crappily written) and there probably are specific versions that work. One thing to try would be running older stock/modified drivers and see if that fixes it.

[Kryssan]

I agree with the above on processor bottleneck. However, XP 64 is not renowned for its driver support, and since that's where you annotated the issue, I'd say it's probably a driver issue. Try various versions and also might want to branch off into the non-vanilla variety.


I use ATI Tools with Ready Driver Plus on a Vista 64 build without issues (other than z-fighting, but nothing can be done about that). I don't use Catalyst at all, so I doubt I could give you too many pointers on setup that wouldn't be advanced ~ and more importantly not using Catalyst. It's so... clunky.

[Bikpik]

I had the same problem when I upgraded my VC to Nvidia 260, I found using an older driver, fixed my issues.

[Olo401]

The problem is XP 64-bit.. That piece of shit absolutely HATES drivers.

[Kohan]

Honestly, XP x64 isn't too bad. The concept of its being incompatible with many things was truthfully outdated by the time Vista rolled around, and pretty much any 64-bit drivers created work just fine in XP x64. So, at this point, I'd argue that it's more compatible with things than Vista x64 (by virtue of working well with more XP x86 apps than its younger brethren). Windows 7 has significantly more problems, but it's obvious why. Too bad, because I freakin' love that OS. Vista without the crap.

Even though I threw out the processor as an obvious bottleneck (and know why it would be), what's still peculiar to me is that I had better performance previously, and with the same CPU. Well, I don't want to build a whole machine just for FFXI, as that would be a bit silly (but if I did, I'd probably use an old single core CPU, like a P4 3.0GHz+).

No one has any specific driver set recommendations, or advanced settings for the card (e.g., certain AA setting that works well, since FFXI doesn't really benefit from it being full blast)? That's mainly what I'm looking for.

I'm going to try running FFXI for a while in x86 and see if I have the same issues.

[Epical]

Out of curiosity, what driver version are you using? 8.12 is running my 4870 like butter in XI (I am on XP 32bit though).

[Kohan]

I'm using 9.4, the newest set.

After the aforementioned x86 happy fun time, I'll try 8.12 (if that edition exists for x64, but I'll get something around there if not).

[Kryssan]

You can go back all the way to 8.1 drivers with a 4870. Still saying its a driver issue. I disagree with your statement, I know of several companies that outright refused to support WinXP x64 and still do to my knowledge. Anything you got to work was at your own peril. And yes, I did use the OS at one point in time.

Spoiler: show

http://www.aethernavale.net/Media/images/videosetup.jpg

Here you go though~ for what it's worth to you. Spoilered for size. These settings work the best for everything I do, including FFXI. But I don't use Catalyst so... still, maybe it'll be of help to you.

[Kohan]

I'd rather not use Catalyst anyway, because it's plain Jane and doesn't allow for in-depth customization. Thanks, as that is useful, and I'll probably follow it.

[Kryssan]

If you're going to make the leap of not using CCC at all, remember to disable CCC in your startup profiles otherwise it'll play with your ATT when system loads, and ATT will go into integrated mode (which doesn't let you adjust some of the parameters).


Also, read up on what those things actually mean here, so that if your system crashes you have an idea of where to start troubleshooting. You'll notice I do some things differently than the 'default' setup they recommend on ATT, but the default setup works just fine for the most part too.

[Purrrfect]

I just ordered that exact same card earlier this week. Unfortunately I don't play FFXI anymore so I can't help. You could always try the reformat method of driver resetting.