One issue with cards like the HD 5970 is that even a single card can be severely CPU limited. Two cards will almost be totally limited by a CPU even a quad- core Core i7 920. To show performance differences a faster CPU can bring I decided to test the card with the Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.4GHz as well as the standard 2.66GHz setting. The tests are the same as the XFX HD 5970 review but due to Dirt2 not working properly in CrossfireX mode I updated the drivers to 9.12 to represent the latest drivers and performance was increased dramatically with the new drivers which support Dirt 2. Batman Arkham Asylum has issues running in AA with ATI cards and I disabled FSAA for the test. Resident Evil 5 is frame rate limited throughout and will likely be removed from our test suite.
Test System
- Core i7 920 CPU running 2.66GHz standard
- 2nd test Core i7 920 running 3.4GHz overclocked
- Intel DX58SO motherboard running latest drivers and BIOS
- XFX RADEON HD 5970 card and GIGABYTE RADEON HD 5970 running Hemlock beta drivers at 725MHz core, 1000MHz memory in CrossfireX mode
- 2 74GB WD Raptor SATA HDDs running in RAID 0 mode
- 3GB Kingston KHK1600 DDR3-1600MHz memory running at 1333MHz (Maximum memory supported by Core i7 920 CPU)
- LG 16X DVD-RW drive
- Windows 7
- Cooler Master Hyper N620 CPU Cooler
Tests
- BattleForge DirectX 10.0/11 (only on ATI 58xx cards)
- HAWX DX 10.0/10.1 (on ATI cards)
- Batman Arkham Asylum DX 10
- Resident Evil 5 DX10
- 3DMark06
- 3DMark Vantage
- Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Custom FRAPS benchmark
- Dirt2 benchmark
- Crysis Warhead FRAPs benchmark
