F1 2010 F1 2010 i5 gaming rig info and benchmarks

[Paul Lock]

A while ago I mentioned I was building a pure gaming rig for Wibblemonster, he wanted best bang for buck, and primarily something that would play F1 @ 2550x1440 around 60FPS on his 27" mac monitor.

So anyway, no need for hyperthreading i7's for gaming, so I built a rig around the SandyBridge i5 2500K with 2x 6950 GFX cards. I chose these components as due to the new architecture, the stock 3.3ghz i5 can go anywhere up to 5ghz on air, and the 6950's can be flashed to 6970 spec saving around £70 per card. Lots of free performance!

I built the rig yesterday, and conducted some early benchmarking using a combination of different resolutions, DX09 and DX11, and single and crossfire cards with F1 2010 and figured it may be useful to share the information.

All tests conducted with maximum graphic detail and 8x AA on a 27" Iiyama monitor.
I havent used V-sync as this locks the framerate to the monitor refresh rate so will be capped at 59/60fps and im aiming a lot higher than that.
Sapphire 6950 cards are running at stock 6950 spec.

1680x1050 - i5 @ 3.7ghz (XMS Overclock)

DX09 Single Card - av_fps="92.511124" min_fps="74.258224" samples="11395"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="60.293808" min_fps="54.774097" samples="7431"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="105.830482" min_fps="86.995621" samples="13080"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="94.168121" min_fps="77.545753" samples="11648"

1920x1080 - i5 @ 3.7ghz (XMS Overclock)

DX09 Single Card - av_fps="88.973816" min_fps="72.606293" samples="11064"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="56.759933" min_fps="52.037720" samples="7046"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="106.148705" min_fps="84.426926" samples="14064"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="92.746231" min_fps="76.040787" samples="11301"

1920x1080 - i5 @ 4.3ghz (Manual Overclock)

DX09 Single Card - av_fps="90.781525" min_fps="74.351570" samples="11208"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="57.546658" min_fps="52.548695" samples="7010"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="113.362656" min_fps="96.166153" samples="13715"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="99.679260" min_fps="83.400795" samples="12198"

To any prospective buyers, as it stands, the tests show you can grab a relatively cheap i5 with a single 6950 and enjoy F1 with all the eye candy turned on 1080p at 57fps, which is only 3 frames away from the maximum most monitors can display, or your eye distinguish.

Tomorrow I plan to flash the 6950 graphic cards to 6970 spec and see how that impacts the scores.
This will increase the GPU clock and memory speeds by about 100mhz each, and increase the shaders from 1408 to 1536 - for free!

 

[Michal Sochan]

[...] I doubt you will 'need' it for F1 2011, surely CM have enough on their plate making a game that isnt riddled with game breaking bugs and all the features missing from 2010. Not heard many complaints about the graphics not being up to scratch, so hopefully they will spend their time more wisely on this release!

I hope that it will be exactly as you said

Thanks for your benchmark!

 

[ChoxAway]

Basically, overclocking your precious CPU achieves very little - adding an extra graphics card achieves a lot!

This clearly seems to hold true for F1 and the other RPG games you've listed, but it certainly isn't the case for all games, in particular Microsoft titles. Flight Simulator X has been extensively tested and shown to benefit zilch from twin cards. In fact, some of the serious flight sim tweekers, have found twin ATI cards actually have a negative impact on fps. NVidia has always been the card of choice for FSX.

The reason for this - Microsofts terrible coding of FSX. The only thing that's proven to give reasonable performance is pure grunt; and that starts with an i5 to at least 4ghz. Assuming you want a decent level of detail of course. Even those with the highest spec still find the game runs smoother using an external frames limiter.

90+ FPS and DX11!

We would sell our Grannies to fly through the skies with framerates like that AND DX11

--Dean

 

[Paul Lock]

Yup I know what you're saying. I'm guessing flight sims will be full of complex processing which falls outside the remit of shaders and simple graphical horse power. These sorts of applications/games are certainly not a console port like F1 or anything else around in mainstream 'gaming'. PC games/sims still have a far way to go catching up with the technology they have available to them, even without sloppy development.
If anything, F1 certainly doesn't look to be optimised for crossfire or sli compared to the % gains I've seen in things like Crysis and other synthetic benchmarks. But then again game optimisation usually happens as a result of beta testing, gathering information from players an subsequently developing the software accordingly. Unfortunately for F1 devotees the codemasters decided to drop F1 quicker than a red headed step-child, and as such no game evolution or maintenance has happened.

Bear in mind this is a bespoke F1 2010 forum and as such my information is geared to getting the most out of that experience rather than flight sims and what not.

It's all good information though. I can sort of understand why people will hand over maybe 25 to 50% more cash than they need to buy some sort of 'off the peg' one size fits all PC. There are so many factors involved depending on what you actually want to achieve that it's enough to make the average persons head spin! But if I can even help one guy (or girl) get the rig they want for a top notch gaming experience without getting his/her trousers/skirt pulled down by alienware or PC world then I'm a happy man.

 

[ChoxAway]

I remember trying to get the most out of my 486 running GP2. Too much detail with more than three cars on the track, and you had yourself a slideshow.

Then came the Pentium and the exponential explosion in processing power. We've never looked back.

About this time, the mid 90's i'd guess, I got into flight simming. My interest in GP sadly waned. Then, a couple of years ago I read somewhere that there had been a GP4. I searched everywhere but couldn't find a copy for sale. There were torrents but I wasn't going that route.

An advert on telly for a formula one PS3 game sparked my interest again so I browsed and found F1 2010. I finally got around to buying it and installed about three weeks ago.

On installation I was pretty annoyed that it was necessary to remain online to be able to save any games progress. Although I suspect this is pretty much the norm for most games now. I also find it hard to believe you can't share setups or hotlaps with others. Only briefly looked at online play. Are you restricted to connecting just to their own game servers or can you connect to an ip?

The graphics and sound are superb though!

--Dean

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

im having some issues with my crossfire setup, i got my second powercolor 1g 6950 and i have it installed and crossfired but when i ran my benchmark test in f1 2010 i actually lost frames. i was getting 37 avg 35 min on 1 monitor 1920 i ran 2 monitors in an eyefinity group(picking up an active mini display adaptor for the third today) and i was getting avg 35 minimum 30.

after installing and crossfiring my cards i ran the same benchmark on 1 monitor and came up avg 30 fps with a min of 27.
the game handles fine i cant really distinguish between 30 and 60 frames honestly but just that fact that im getting less performance out of an extra 250 dollar investment irks me lol somethings gotta be off because that just cant be right. based on your benchmarks and others ive seen around the net a single card should be giving me a good 60 and crossfire can get up to like 120. im a sad panda right now =(

 

[Paul Lock]

Sounds like something else is bottlenecking before your graphics cards can do their thing. What's your rig spec?

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

Mobo: Asus 870GA-54
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1075T
HD: seagate 500gb 7200 rpm 66b/s sata
GPU: 2x powercolor 6950s
RAM: 16gb 1600 Gskill
power: xfx 750w

i havent OCd anything yet been reading over guides and getting the nerve and free time to try it out

 

[Paul Lock]

You are connected to the primary graphics card? (usually the one on the top)
You have 2 power connectors to each card?
You have the crossfire strap in place properly?
Mobo definitely supports crossfire?

It's just your spec doesn't look like it would be an issue here.

Have you tested each card individually in the primary slot? Maybe your new card has a fault.
Got the latest Ati drivers for the cards and Amd optimisation drivers?

 

[Ramon Alonso]

Hi Paul. What is a good case for the 9650?

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

You are connected to the primary graphics card? (usually the one on the top)
You have 2 power connectors to each card?
You have the crossfire strap in place properly?
Mobo definitely supports crossfire?

It's just your spec doesn't look like it would be an issue here.

Have you tested each card individually in the primary slot? Maybe your new card has a fault.
Got the latest Ati drivers for the cards and Amd optimisation drivers?

yup everything is connevted tight and both cards show in the device manager and the crossfire cord is snug. im gonna try to try them individually tomorrow just to try but im still scratching my head =\

 

[Miguel Gonzalez]

tried both cards in the primary and secondary slots and both crosfire bridges in both slots both individually and both on i still get loss of performance while running crossfire. both cards perform equally well and my mobo definately supports crossfire i have no idea what to try.