My tale of Two HD6670s

Fortkentdad

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Location
Alberta Canada
I`ve just put together a new rig built around the new AMD A10-5800K APU. (Specs uploaded)

Initially I thought that I`d go with just the A10`s built in APU - but was persuaded that a graphics card would be a good idea and I read up on the AMD Dual-Graphics mode for these A-Series APU-CPU`s The graphics card recommended was either a HD6570 or 6670. I went for an ASUS HD6670 with 2 GB of DDR3 vRam. So far so good. Dual Graphic mode seemed to work fine with my photo apps (Elements 10) and with MS Office 10 - even MS Outlook 2007 was backwards compatible. (Don`t know why MS stopped including Outlook in their basic Office suite).

But why stop at two monitors when my AMD A10 supports EyeFinity and three monitors. So now I have three LG monitors two 20`LED`s on the side and a 24`LCD in the middle. But I hit a big BUT. BUT my third monitor under AMD`s Eyefinity needed to be connected to a `displayport` My HD6670 didn`t have one. My motherboard did but that one is controlled by the APU & when there is a graphics card installed the system automatically uses the ports on the card and my HD6670 didn`t have a displayport. SO now I have ordered another HD6670 but this one will have a displayport, but because they are the same GPU they should CrossFireX and work together (or so I read at AMD`s website). I am a bit worried because one has 2GB of DDR3 memory the other 1GB of DDR5 memory - I`ve read on another forum that mixing memory type when crossfiring is not a problem. I will have to see if that is true.

Now I wait for that second card. Oh life in rural Canada, three hours away from a decent computer shop.

I will be able to test the system with just the A10, just the HD6670, the A10 & 6670 in Dual Graphics mode and two HD6670`s in CrossFireX mode. Anyone have any freeware benchmark tools to recommend. I`ve downloaded 3DMark but as I read it it is good for one test. Am I wrong about that.

Any other benchmark tool that is really free and gives me comparable results?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro 64 bit
    System Manufacturer/Model
    I assembled this one myself
    CPU
    A10-5800K
    Motherboard
    ASUS A85-M Pro
    Memory
    32 GB 1600 Ghz Kingston HyperX Red RAM
    Graphics Card(s)
    ASUS HD 6670 - in AMD Dual-Graphic Mode
    Sound Card
    Integrated on the motherboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Three LG's 20-24-20
    Screen Resolution
    high
    Hard Drives
    Kingston HYperX 128 GB SSD (OS & Photoshop)
    Seagate Barracuda SATA III - 2 T
    Seagate SATA II 750 internal
    Seagate eSATA 750 FreeAgent portable
    Seagate USB 250 Passport portable
    PSU
    Antec 620 Watt High Current Gamer - Modular
    Case
    Generic ATX
    Cooling
    Cooler Master 212 Hyper Plus + extra fan
    Keyboard
    Old Logitech - need a new gamer one
    Mouse
    Razer DeathAdder
    Internet Speed
    .5 to 1 Mbps (yes one half of one Mbps
    Other Info
    Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X Flight Stick
    Thrustmaster Ferrari Challenge Wheel & Pedals

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 CP x64
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