Optimal Video and display settings for i5 2500K and ATI HD 7970

Hmm, I'm worried now....maybe someone else having similar specs as mine can check out as well....

Cheers

 

No, it's not. AMD 7870 and 7850 are what must be called "mid range". 7950 and 7970 are quoted as enthusiast cards by AMD themselves. And they're selling for well above 400US$ right now.

Rodrigo

 

I would agree that the 7950 is a fair bit better than a mid range card racer, I currently own a 6970 which when was new at release was considered to be their best single gpu card and I struggle everything maxed out, so I have had to learn to have shadows off for now, and enviro reflections, shame as my own painted skin car looks crap with out enviro reflecs off, but oh well it is beta and I hope things improve with time.

 

next gen should allow you to have all that at decent frames my nv gtx 680 does. max everything min 35fps avg 55-60 but very smooth.

 

Exactly. was just going to say the same thing myself 7800 mid range/gamer cards, 7900 enthusiast/hardcore. Althought I wouldnt really consider them hardcore as I wouldnt get anything lower than a 6900/7900 series, but in general yes they are the top of the line range, def not mid range.

 

By the way have you oveclocked your 7970? I hope so because they almost come underclocked from amd.....


Also im curious to what difference you would get if all those things on full you set to high instead.... I notice not just in rfactor but almost all games that going from high to full always gives me the smallest diffence by quite a bit in image quality (while still eating frames), compared to going from low to medum or medium to high etc.

Try maybe all those things you have on full on high instead, and then try them all on high except circuit/track detail to medium (but the rest still on high), if you get a nice boost in frames without loosing much IQ then try adding shadows on low or medium and report back....

 

Hi Spinelli,

The card comes slightly overclocked since I got the ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II. I did in fact try guru3D's overclocking tip as shown here but the video card crashed when I followed their tips. Then I tried lower settings. It held for a while, but then after a while, while playing a game it crashed again. So I set it back to default.

Once home in the afternoon, I'll try the setting you have suggested and will report back.

PS: Something strange is that when I ran 3DsMark, the result came back negative, telling me that the system under performed compared to other tests with similar specs. But the latest ATI video driver is not supported yet, so it could be that.

Cheers

 

Try out some different drivers; maybe some slightly older version if you can find them. It's possible whatever driver versions you are running just dont work right with the card/RF2.

 

Not a bad idea mate, I'll give it a go when I'll have some time.

Cheers

 

So, I did the test you suggested. With everything maxed out except Anti Aliasing which I can only set to 4 until it affects FPS badly I got an average of, let say 45, 30 min, and at times 60 fps. Video below.

If I set everything to full instead of max, I gain around 10 FPS on average.

View attachment 1902

View attachment 1903

Anti Aliasing 5 gives a weird problem, screen below, with lines all over the place. 5 and above, fps drops drastically, like below 20 and less as you go up.

View attachment 1901

 

I also noticed keeping windows upto date helped!

 

............ it MAY cause input lag, you MAY get tearing.

I get neither.

 

B1K3ER try the settings you wrote in your second post where you said "Here are the final settings I am using. With these, FPS does not go below 50 (as far as I know)". Try those but with everything thats on max set them all 1 click lower, see how that feels. Use that as a base...

Then turn on shadows to low or medium, test. Then add one at a time and test in between with adding hdr, sun occlusion, road reflection, a notch up on shadows etc etc one at a time to see what difference from your base settings above they each make.

I wouldnt go level 5 anti aliasing, that doesnt mean 5x, it means level 5 whatever that is according to rfactor. I know in rfactor 1 one i think it was usually doubled, so level 1 aa was 2x aa, level 2 aa was 4x, and so on. So if its the same then level 3 should be like 6x aa. AA is one of if not the very biggest thing that affects fps, on almost any game.

Make sure vsync is off too.

 

By the way what did you overclock too? These cards should be able to overclock, even for novice users who dont know what they are doing (not saying thats you). What programs did you use and did you touch the voltage?

I would bring that thing up to 1100 on the core/shader on stock voltage, start with 1050 and go from there and shoot for 1100 or even 1085. Leave the memory. (believe its 5600 stock).

Use msi afterburner (might have to download the beta version, i know i had to, to use it properly on my 6990), and up the voltage to 1.25 with that aim for 1200 on the cor/shadere and you should atleast be able to get 1150, i see from research that most people can get around 1200ish at 1.25 volts.

Then you can try 1.3 volts and aim for 1250 core and 6000 memory, but i havent researched if 1.3 volts for this card is safe for long term use.

Cooling wise your card should def be able to handle even 1.3 volts, ive researched your model with regards to overclocking, reviews, forums, cooling, etc

If you dont want to try and eek out every last drop i would def atleast aim for 1175 core at 1.25 volts and , maybe a bump in the memory too.

 

OK Spinelli, thanks! I'll give it a shot when I get back home this afternoon.

Cheers

 

I will add be care full overclocking your gpu as they are not always as straight forward as cpu s and especially if your card is a factory overclock, I tried raising mine and I got artifacts and then screen freeze it was a pain as it wouldnt restart after either, I overclock my cpu without any hitches but have never been so lucky with the gpus so I always leave mine on stock.

 

That's exactly what happened to me. The GPU is in fact factory overclocked. The CPU gave me no problems at all. According to one guru3D article, they managed to overclock to the full the exact same card....maybe they did not test it well as it crashed on mine. I'll maybe put it by steps of 50 and check, but not very keen to burn a 550 euro card down the drain!

As it is, I play all games with most things full and happy enough I will though try to find the optimal settings.

Yesterday, I was playing Rfactor 2 online, the GTRs, I had everything full except anti aliasing and I must say it was an awesome experience, loved every second of it. Physics were really great, graphics good enough, I had an average FPS of 50.

Cheers

 

Actually, I'm gonna try the ASUS GPU Tweak since my card is ASUS

http://event.asus.com/vga/2012/gpu_tweak/

Will post results.

Cheers

 

Using asus or msi won't make a difference if your card is asus, it doesn't work like that, but sure if you wanna use asus that should be fine too

And you can't burn out a card jus by putting the mghz up too high it'll just freeze or get artifacts, the only way to burn it out is if you pump the volts like crazy, and foolishly don't watch the temps while testing

I've had an xfx 6970 a gigabytye 6990 and I think it was an msi 3870x2, used msi afterburner for all of em but the asus one seems in general to be good too.

The fact that its factory overclocked means nothing technically, it just means they overclocked it abit for you rather than you starting from stock speeds, it doesn't inhibt the cards potential in any way shape or form, its jus another person or people doing it for you.

One of the main reasons ppl buy the factory overclocked cards is most if not all of them come with better or/and quiter cooling solutions, rather than the overclock itself which anyone can do just with plugging in some numbers, and being patient with some testing.

If you have any specific questions or help just ask away feel free to pm me if you would like too

 

Since when?

DirectX is backward compatible and I’ve never had any issues running any DirectX 9 application (game) on a DirectX 10/11 capable GPU.

The issues that AMD/ATI video cards have with older DirectX 9 game engines (rendering engines) are primarily driver related.