HD5830 underperforming

greenclaws · 13 May 2011 at 16:43

Ordered an XFX 1GB HD5830 XXX yesterday and it arrived today.

I've installed it and got everything running but it's been running at 15 frames per second on Rift on High which isn't a very demanding game. So I used PerformanceTest 7 to benchmark it and it scored 1600 whereas the benchmark speed for the stock card is 2200 and this one is meant to be overclocked.

Is there anything I'm doing wrong? :confused:

It seems that it's being underpowered. I have a Seasonic S12 II SS-500GB 500W PSU from 2007 and it has both power cables plugged in. One is a dedicated 6 pin, the other one is a 6 pin that has a further 2 attached on an offshoot cable.

Also, the fan squeaks

Kouba · 13 May 2011 at 16:47

Do you have the latest CCC drivers 11.5?

Tealc · 13 May 2011 at 16:48

As a total guess I'd say it's not clocking up to proper 3D clocks and staying at an idle setting. Do you run dual monitors?

Check with GPU-z that it's going to proper speeds.

greenclaws · 13 May 2011 at 16:52

I have the latest drivers. As a side note, the fan was really going berzerk and loud before I put the latest drivers on and it was a 'default card'. Is that meant to happen?

I'm not running dual monitors. I'll check the GPU-z program you recommend.

Tealc · 13 May 2011 at 18:24

Depends how bezerk really. The fan control graph is in the cards BIOS so should work regardless of driver. The only time I get full fan speed is when I have a crash or something that causes the system to reboot.

Dual monitors clock up the idle speed and it could in some way account for the 2/3 speed youu are experiencing but it's probably not that if you aren't using two monitors.

greenclaws · 13 May 2011 at 19:15

The benchmark has now gone down to 1276 so that's half what it should be. I have no idea what this means but in GPU-Z the Sensor readings are:

GPU Core Clock 400 mhz
GPU Memory Clock 900 mhz
GPU Temperature 31 C
Fan speed 21%

This doesn't change when benchmarking, except the GPU Temp goes up to 42 degrees C

mattjd · 13 May 2011 at 19:21

Its not going into 3D clock mode.

Its either a software issue (What overclocking software have you got installed? 11.5a drivers?).

It could be a bugged up bios or the actual card could be faulty.

Maybe you could try installing a fresh install of windows on a seperate partition or HDD? That will remove any possibility of a software issue.

Try it in another PC to see if its not a hardware conflict.

greenclaws · 13 May 2011 at 19:38

I know I'm posting on Overclockers but sadly I'm not much of an overclocker. I'm not using any overclocking software, it's the XXX edition of the card which has overclocking at the bios or hardware level, whatever it is they do xD. I have the latest drivers on.

Have we ruled out that it's not getting enough power from the PSU? I don't see why not as I've got the required wattage and two native 6 pin power plugs. Or was I supposed to use the enclosed adapters?

I don't have another PC to test it in but I was going to reinstall Windows 7 soon anyway, so I'll do it now.

Tealc · 13 May 2011 at 20:10

If it wasn't getting sufficient power then it wouldn't let you boot, more than likely. My 6950 has a buzzer that wails at me if I forget to plug the connectors in. gave me a bit of a start the first time I booted I must say.

400/900, as far as a 2 minute Google check can tell, is the UVD clock for a 5830. UVD is the clock the card will Powerplay to when it senses the computer is trying to play back a hardware supported video.

Not quite sure why your card doesn't kick into 3D clocks but these sorts of things are usually done at the BIOS level where each Powerplay state is predetermined at that level.

Check with Catalyst AMD Overdrive and see if the option is checked to allow unlocking of the clock speeds. Maybe that'll help. This also displays your clock speeds and GPU usage.

If it doesn't release the clocks then you may be looking at a driver re-install and possibly even an RMA for the fault.

greenclaws · 13 May 2011 at 20:33

Thank you Teal'c for all your useful advice

I'll give it a go.

greenclaws · 13 May 2011 at 21:07

Overdrive is greyed out. I've done some digging and found out that it will only unlock if the SATA settings are set to IDE (!!!). I have mine set to ACHI because I have a flash based boot drive and setting it to IDE will actually slow it down and/or damage it.

Tealc · 13 May 2011 at 21:48

greenclaws said:
Overdrive is greyed out. I've done some digging and found out that it will only unlock if the SATA settings are set to IDE (!!!). I have mine set to ACHI because I have a flash based boot drive and setting it to IDE will actually slow it down and/or damage it.

I'd be surprised if that's a solution considering that the SATA setting has got very little (ie nothing) to do with graphics cards.

greenclaws · 13 May 2011 at 21:52

I managed to get Overdrive working and now it confirms that it switches over to 840/4500 when doing the benchmark....

However...

Two of those have the same quad core CPU that I have so it's not like that should affect it. The other cards are close to the 2200 yardstick set by the 'generic'.

Also game performance is still bad, it struggles with Minecraft (!) and Rift runs at 20 frames per second but it seems more like 5.

Hagar · 13 May 2011 at 22:51

I have a sapphire version of the 5830, I cannot run performance test 7 as it is out of it's 30 day evaluation.
Try Heaven Unigine DX11 benchmark, using 1680 X 1050 resolution with 4xAA I got a 675 score, mine is overclocked manually to 875 / 1150 (4600). Much less than a score of 650 in heaven, there may be something wrong with the card.
Your PSU should be fine with this card but look at volts with cpuid hwmonitor or similar.

Marine-RX179 · 13 May 2011 at 23:38

Graphic benchmarks etc tends to stress the graphic card but not so much on the CPU. In real world gaming, the Q6600 at stock speed WILL bottleneck the 5830, particularly games that are not optimised for using more than 2 cores.

You need to overclock the Q6600 to at least around 3.0GHz if you want to have half decent frame rate in games.

greenclaws · 14 May 2011 at 00:01

Ummm! Very weird then... This is also the only time I've actually seen graphics run smoothly using the card.

greenclaws · 14 May 2011 at 14:58

Marine-RX179 said:
You need to overclock the Q6600 to at least around 3.0GHz if you want to have half decent frame rate in games.

Ha, what a waste of money the Q6600 turned out to be huh. I bought it back when it was meant to be the future of computer power and 4 years later most programs still don't even use 64bit let alone 4 cores. I'd upgrade but I'm waiting for those bios-less motherboards to surface.

Now this is interesting. For fun I thought I'd try to overclock to 3.0GHz using some instructions I found on google. It involved setting a lot of things from Auto and Turbo to Manual and Normal (unlocked after setting to manual). It didn't work at all and the computer reset itself and dropped the CPU ratio and FSB frequency in bios, but kept all the Manual and Normal settings for RAM, memory and PCI-E frequency. This made the first benchmark go up over 400 points.

Everything still runs terribly but I at least know it's a motherboard setting somewhere... maybe?

greenclaws · 14 May 2011 at 16:25

Overclocked to 3Ghz using

9x333
Voltage 1.275
System Memory SPD 2.40
PCI-E frequency 100MHz

off a video on youtube xD Don't worry, I have a big CPU cooler as I don't like fan noise.

Overall PerformanceTest score went from 1094 to 1825
3D graphics score went from 1653 to 2340(!)

Windows 7 Experience index went from
Processor 6.1 Memory 6.1 Graphics 5.9 Gaming Graphics 5.9 HDD 7.7
to
Processor 7.2 Memory 7.2 Graphics 7.6 Gaming Graphics 7.6 HDD 7.7

It must have something to do with the automatic settings for PCI-E the motherboard has plus the speed of the CPU as was said.

Thank you everybody, this shows there's nothing wrong with the card. I think improvement to actual games might take place when I do a format?

Marine-RX179 · 14 May 2011 at 17:24

greenclaws said:
I think improvement to actual games might take place when I do a format?

You should see actual improvements in games straight away...no need to do a format.

By the way what motherboard you got? If you got a P35/P45 chipset board and a decent CPU cooler, should should hit 3.4GHz to up to 3.6GHz no problem. But of course, as you go higher, you'd need higher vcore to keep the overclock stable, like my Q6600 at 3.6GHz need 1.48 vcore to keep it prime stable.

greenclaws · 14 May 2011 at 19:59

Gigabyte P35C-DS3R. Setting it to 3.2 made it just reset itself, which is why I looked for a 3 Ghz solution. I don't really want to increase the fan as fan noise really annoys me for some reason