Playing on the "worst" ATI Graphics Card

[cykarushb]

Now when i say worst i dont mean absolute lowest end, i mean the most impractical, expensive, hot, power hungry, unstable piece of crap you could ever buy, in 2008 and now 10 years later.

 

This is a Radeon HD 4870x2, it is a dual GPU monster from 2008 that once cost a whopping US $550. It was once ATI/AMD's flagship GPU to compete with the Nvidia GTX 280. Though it really didnt, because the 280 was a good card, this thing... this was a very bad card.

So theres a lot of talk on these forums about how ATI cards dont play well with SL. Well, heres an ATI card, one known to be an absolute mess, it is the card that started the "AMD Housefires" meme because it is responsible for the deaths of 2 people due to actual housefires, there are no up to date Windows 8.1 drivers, im forced to use an ancient Windows 8/8.1 "compatible" driver from AMD, im forcing a crossfire profile (though speccy doesnt pick it up) so both GPU's are being used in crossfire mode. Now thats a rarity for SL, see, only these dual GPU cards are actually capable of doing that. SL doesnt support standard crossfireX, but single card crossfire isnt really the same thing, the internal bridge essentially spoofs itself to programs as being one single GPU. SL sees one GPU, the bridge is splitting the workload onto two. The problem is that this creates a lot of instability, some games will frequently crash, some features just wont work and sometimes utilization can get kinda weird and cause crashes from that. Several times during my brief testing i was unable to turn on Transparent Water because it would instantly crash SL to a white screen and then crash the display driver.

 

So what i tested here is on my Q6600 system, starting with the near max settings. Simply standing in social island 5, watching the horizon. Note that avatars definitely crush the framerate on this thing. These settings are netting me an unstable 2-5fps, but there is no "stutter", if you can pick out stutter at this low of FPS anyway, it doesnt freeze. It doesnt get as hot as i was expecting either.

 

 

 

[cykarushb]

Up next is a medium/low configuration designed for best framerate while still maintaining some nice visual quality. Some settings are left alone because they not change the framerate substantially. What ive discovered is that this is actually somehow optimal, i cant really imagine why, but you'll see in a second what 'bare minimum' is like.

 

And this is absolute minimum in 1080p. What i learned here is that something is clearly being offloaded to the CPU and is drastically reducing performance. Basic Shaders actually are a necessity to get any decent framerate, i have a feeling that without some of these graphical features, the system is relying on the CPU, and the CPU is already handling lighting and other effects so it gets bogged down.

 

So, conclusion? The worst ATI card ever made is perfectly capable of SL. The medium/low settings defined above were netting me a comfortable 20fps on average with no stutter, now thats not great, but its far from bad. Its stable, card wasnt getting too hot so its not being maxed out. This was ok-ish, very playable. I had no problems besides the odd crashing when messing with transparent water.

Would i recommend buying a 4000 series ATI card in 2018? Hell no.

Listen, this card, this 4870x2? This crap was 60$, thats the cheapest i could find and i had to last second snipe an auction on ebay to snag it for that much. These cards are super rare and highly sought after because of their kinda nicheness (sort of like the first picture of it sitting on a 701c, a very niche laptop). This card is expensive for its performance, runs hot as hell, its loud, and im not 100% sure if its going to last the night before catching fire. And all 4000 series cards are kinda like that, they are defined as AMD housefires, they are hot as hell and really dont perform that great.

But they WILL in fact work with SL. Theyre bad cards by all means, but its not like a bad card wont work, it just works badly. I play SL regularly on a Quadro FX 4600, essentially a workstation version of an 8800 GTX, its an ancient card from 2006 and it still handles this game fine. Integrated HD 620 graphics on my newer laptop perform well for SL, better than the Quadro for sure.

Im gonna be looking for just weird stuff to run SL on, im thinking super low end "display adapter" style cards like an HD 3450 or an 8400gs, suggest ideas if you want to see SL running on any specific hardware.

 

 

[cykarushb]

it is actually possible to keep this card cooler by simply upping the fan curve, so its loud, but its cool, relatively speaking

[Fionalein]

I would never dare using such ancient technology with windows but apparently it worked. 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, cykarushb said:

it is actually possible to keep this card cooler by simply upping the fan curve, so its loud, but its cool, relatively speaking

I get downvotes whenever I suggest overheating is the problem with older PC’s, so I salute you, sir!

[Fionalein]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I get downvotes whenever I suggest overheating is the problem with older PC’s, so I salute you, sir!

because we all know the true reason for your overheating is the lion hair clogging up the fans =^.^=

[cykarushb]

8 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I get downvotes whenever I suggest overheating is the problem with older PC’s, so I salute you, sir!

I'd say anything over 10 years old if it hasn't been done already, should be torn down, cleaned and then repasted. I did that with this card first and it definitely needed it, the original thermal paste was dry as a bone.

Heat is a common issue, a demanding game like SL will max out components, which will create a lot of heat, which will eventually cause hardware crashes and blue screens if they get hot enough to thermal shutdown.