ATI stole our overclocks, can we get them back?!

wolvers

wolvers

wolvers

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It has become apparent, from the number of people getting the GSOD or the SSOD, that the new ATI cards have made previously stable overclocked systems, stable no more. It was, without question, the overclock on my CPU/mobo that was causing these issues and a few others have also confirmed this to be the case.

There have been a number of theories about these lock ups in general, with ATI even releasing a supposed hotfix for it, but with my system being rock solid for 3 months since backing off the CPU I'm really keen to see if I can get that overclock back.

Please post if you have also had the same experience and list the details of your system. Also, what have you tried so far to get stable again and have you any theories?

Mine;
Q9550, previously stable at 3.8ghz (with a GTX260), now solid at 3.4ghz.
P5K-E
4gb PC2-8500
ATI 5850, testing at stock speeds
Enermax Infinity 620w

So far I've only tried a slightly higher vcore but I'm keen to investigate the PCI-E bus speed theory that has been mentioned in another thread, although I don't know how high it would be safe to in testing. Also, I was wondering if SB voltage could have any benefit?
 
I only get GSODs when overclocking my 5870 too far.

Try putting your CPU back to 3.8ghz and underclocking your card see if that helps, it could just be that 3.8ghz puts more stress on your 5850 causing it to fall over more.
 
New cards use different amounts of power, under different load with different peaks. You'll find going from 4gb to 8gb mem can do the same, if you were borderline before, or adding a couple hard drives, or changing the CPU.

Adding anything to your system can change its stability, its people not willing to check for stability after changing ANYTHING, that tend to run into the most problems.

You'll conversely find lots of people who go from a AMD to Nvidia card also experience problems and blame it entirely on Nvidia when its their overclock to blame, just this year, and specifically the last three months, the number of people going from AMD to Nvidia is incredibly low, so the number of threads showing Nvidia problems in those circumstances are very small, while a few years ago with a 8800gtx time you saw more of the opposite threads with "my new Nvidia card has made my system unstable" threads.

The GSOD is almost certainly down to a Windows hotfix, as they cropped up very quickly at a single point in time, likely to do with power states and conflicts between Windows new way of handling power states and AMD gpu powerplay settings. Thats very unlikely due to overclocks and other issues.

For me its the "driver has stopped responding" and the equivilent Nvidia crash that tend to be unstable overclock based issues. Though there are exceptions, when I went from 3870x2 to 4870x2 I was unstable, not massively but enough driver stopped responding to irk me. Upped cpu voltage and dropped the speed slightly and they completely vanished. No issues with the 4890(downgrade for heat reasons in my oven like room in summer) or my 5850, except now in one buggy pos game that is Star Trek Online, ground based combat constantly crashes the game, space based is fine, far more intensive games don't crash after hours and hours of gaming.
 
mmj_uk said:
Try putting your CPU back to 3.8ghz and underclocking your card see if that helps, it could just be that 3.8ghz puts more stress on your 5850 causing it to fall over more.
Click to expand...

I hadn't thought about underclocking the 5850. What would it prove if it was stable then, PSU problem?

drunkenmaster said:
New cards use different amounts of power, under different load with different peaks. You'll find going from 4gb to 8gb mem can do the same, if you were borderline before, or adding a couple hard drives, or changing the CPU.

Adding anything to your system can change its stability, its people not willing to check for stability after changing ANYTHING, that tend to run into the most problems.
Click to expand...

Is that another suggestion about the PSU, or a general 'that's the way it can be with some hardware combos'?

Where's Greebo, I know he's had a similar experience.
 
Good to hear there's peeps without this issue. Gives me confidence that I'll be able to find the source.

Can anyone advise what the safest max PCI-E frequency is?
 
wolvers69 said:
I hadn't thought about underclocking the 5850. What would it prove if it was stable then, PSU problem?
Click to expand...

Well it could be PSU but also GPUs scale with CPU power, so the faster your CPU is the less bottlenecked the GPU is which means it has to work harder - if your GPU is borderline faulty that extra CPU power could be tipping your GPU over the edge.
 
But with GPU at stock I tried raising the vcore of the 5850 and it made no difference to getting the 3.8ghz back. That's what got me thinking about a possible PSU problem.

Also, I can get 900core with 1.15v which is about right I think.
 
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wolvers69 said:
But with GPU at stock I tried raising the vcore of the 5850 and it made no difference to getting the 3.8ghz back. That's what got me thinking about a possible PSU problem.

Also, I can get 900core with 1.15v which is about right I think.
Click to expand...

Have you tried underclocking the memory also?
 
wolvers69 said:
Good to hear there's peeps without this issue. Gives me confidence that I'll be able to find the source.

Can anyone advise what the safest max PCI-E frequency is?
Click to expand...

you don't really need or want to go above 105 imo, i've got mine left on 103 at the minute and all is well
 
mmj_uk said:
Have you tried underclocking the memory also?
Click to expand...

Yep.

twist3d0n3 said:
you don't really need or want to go above 105 imo, i've got mine left on 103 at the minute and all is well
Click to expand...

OK ta. I was just reading that up to 112 should be OK as that will limit the PCI to 37.33mhz as increasing the PCI-E also increases the PCI bus speed.

I guess I should try the hotfix too........you never know!
 
wolvers69 said:
Yep.



OK ta. I was just reading that up to 112 should be OK as that will limit the PCI to 37.33mhz as increasing the PCI-E also increases the PCI bus speed.

I guess I should try the hotfix too........you never know!
Click to expand...

going too high can cause corruption on any sata disks apparently too
 
My mobo has "clock skew control" for various things in the BIOS settings, as I understand it they basically loosen up the time frame which the CPU/NB/PCI-E expects to receive data. They're supposedly used when your OC is on the brink, to stabilize that last 100MHz or so. If you have a Gigabyte BIOS it's probably called the same thing still, ASUS calls it something else though.

There's also a PCI-E voltage control. Hopefully I won't need either, though.
 
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