COD on an AMD A10 APU with HD6670 support

[Fortkentdad]

I built me a computer last fall. (pictured below) First time builder, I've had my son build me many a PC (he's an IT tech) but sadly he and his family live thousands of miles away and the time came to build a new rig. This time I was on my own (with telephone support if I needed it from my son). I surprised myself I assembled this new "rig" and it worked.

It is based on the new AMD A10-5800K APU with integrated graphics. I've used the ASUS F2 A85M Pro mBoard with the new Trinity chipset. This was released with much fanfare in October. To this system I added initally one HD6670 which I had noted will pair up with the iGPU on the APU in what AMD calls "Dual Graphics", basically Xfire your APU with an dGPU. The A10 will only match up this way with two of the Radeon GPU and the 6670 was the more powerful of the two. When selecting the GPU I read that since the APU uses your computer's RAM for video ram, if you are using DDR3 then the dGPU memory will be run as DDR3 whether it is DDR3 or DDR5. I had a choice between 2GB of DDR3 or 1GB of DDR5 when i bought the first HD6670. So knowing the DDR5 memory would be humbled to DDR3 standards I went with the 2GB DDR3 version. BTW I loaded up the RAM, this puppy has 32 GB of "HyperX Red RAM" a Kingston Special Edition (it's not that special runs at 1600). I also bought a Kingston HyperX SSD for my OS. It is a dual boot system with Win8 on one SSD and Win7 on a different SSD. They share one 2T SATA3 hard drive, backed up by two 750GB drives (one internal and one an eSata external). I'll need to add another 2T internal drive to mirror the one I have someday and let the two 750's mirror each other. Threw in a Blue Ray Optical drive with Lightscribe (love those engraved disks). The display is two 20" LG LED screens on either side of an LG LCD 24" screen. Try as a may I cannot get true colour matching across the LCD's & LED, a 24" LED is on my wish list.

I was the decision to go with the three screens that threw a monkey wrench into my GPU planning. I needed the dGPU to have a display-port and the 2GB version I bought did not have one and I'd had it too long to return it. So I bought the other one, the DDR5 HD6670 which did come with a display-port. Had to learn about "active display port adaptors as none of my monitors have a display port input, got one of those and I put it in, fired it up, and it ran all three displays very nicely. LCD display $99, display-port GPU $75, display-port adaptor $40, three screen display, priceless.

But now I had 2 HD6670's. So I xfired them and all was well. Did some benchmarking and the system out performed the A10 iGPU and did a little better than the iGPU in dual graphic mode with one of the HD6670's. If I knew then what I know now I'd only have one HD6670 with a display port. The performance improvement xfireing the two GPU's is not worth it over the performance of the dual graphic mode with one GPU. But since I have it sitting around collecting dust might as well put it into the system right? And it did perform just a little better.

All was well.

Until I tried to play COD. It kept failing, stuttering, etc. When I disabled the Xfire it worked, but the FPS dropped from 25 ish to 15ish. Not good. At 25 the game play "ok" but 15 has lots of lag. Then I tried that Dual-Graphic mode that I had used with just one of my HD6670's. And what do you know. It worked. And even when I enabled the Lucid MVP software optimizer for the Dual-Graphic mode it worked even better. I was back up in the 25 range.

TO get there I had downgraded several of the setting to medium and a few to low. It looked OK, but could look better. But remember I was pushing three screens - 55" of display running at 4800x900. I noticed I could downgrade the resolution, and I did, and with each step down, the FPS went up. The sweet spot i think is the 2512-600 with FPS in the 40's. Although I might go up one tp 3840x720 with FPS in the 30's. I'll have to experiment. Not sure my old eye's notice that much of a difference in the image quality between the various displays.


It is rather dark but I think you'll be able to read it.

This is my 'virtual cockpit". You'll notice I use the Thrustmaster T-Filight HOTAS-X controls. I as amazed that COD recognized my gamepad and my controller and I can use the buttons on the gampad too. I'm going to use them for bombs (orange to arm the ordinance, Green to open the door, red to drop the bomb and blue to close the bomb bay doors, have not yet learned how to manage a bomber but when I do, I've got the buttons ready to go).




I do need to learn more about this game, about the commander's commands, how to navigate besides keeping the map open and following the paths, how to find the air strips (i fly over and over the place where the map says there is an air strip, I can't see no frigging air port???). So much to learn. I think I'll need to quick my job and take up a career as a virtual WWII pilot. I think they call that retirement (which in my case will be in seven years when I'm 65 or less).