• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

6870 Memory Clock too low

Associate
Joined
23 May 2008
Posts
393
Location
Essex
I recently bought a Sapphire 6870 and have been slightly disappointed with the performance to tell the truth. I've not noticed a massive difference coming from an 8800GTX and some games even seem to run worse. I've reinstalled the drivers countless times now. The funny thing is, the games FPS are fine, it's just the fact that the games (especially GTA4) have a sort of 'micro stutter' effect which gives me a bit of a headache; whilst the FPS is around 50-60, the game doesn't look smooth. Yesterday I thought maybe I should download GPU-Z and check the clocks, and for some odd reason, the memory clock maxes out at 283.5mhz (sits at about 100mhz idle) whilst the core goes up from 100 to 900 (as expected) when playing a game or running a benchmark.

Is it supposed to be this low or is my card faulty?

Thanks
 
To save energy when your not doing anything that too graphically straining on your PC newer cards will lower their clocks. They should shoot back up again when your playing a game etc.

As for the micro stutter it's a fault with almost all ATI cards and GTA IV mainly down to it being a bad port. As for anything else though there shouldn't be any problems.
 
To save energy when your not doing anything that too graphically straining on your PC newer cards will lower their clocks. They should shoot back up again when your playing a game etc.

As for the micro stutter it's a fault with almost all ATI cards and GTA IV mainly down to it being a bad port. As for anything else though there shouldn't be any problems.

Thanks for the reply, I realise that it lowers the clocks when there's nothing demanding going on, but isn't 283.5mhz far too low for the 6870? Is it not supposed to be 1050mhz?

EDIT: The 283.5mhz is what the memory clock is under load, it's around 100mhz without load
 
Indeed. I'm tempted to 'overclock' it to 1050mhz and see if there's any difference but I don't want to invalidate my warranty on a possibly faulty card :( Really don't know what to do here. Is there any way to turn the power saving crap off?
 
Its possible something like an incorrect bios could have the wrong settings in it, have you tried one of the overclocking programs or CCC to set the default clocks and see if they stick in games?

Did you have a previous AMD card installed before getting the 6870, do you have something like afterburner, or an AMD profile that are maybe trying to set previous settings which are due to not being compatible putting in some weird clock on your card.

GDDR5 can auto clock down when its unstable to a lower Mhz, however it does it internally the clock speed is supposed to appear the same externally, unless newer cards can detect it. YOu'd still expect it to try the high clocks before clocking down though.

The other seemingly to obvious answer is, do you have the latest gpu-z that can detect the new clocks properly, check their forums just incase, its possible the newest version has a bug and detects clocks incorrectly, its not unheard of for new cards to have issues.

Not sure if Trixx is out yet, a Sapphire's own overclocking tool for the 68xx cards(others aswell probably), I'm sure I read there was a beta out of it, worth a try.

Basically you're trying to work out if you can force the normal clocks and if it works properly when you manage to do that.

Also not sure if GPU clock tool is compatible with the 68xx yet, but thats usually THE tool to use to force clocks because its made by AMD themselves.
 
Indeed. I'm tempted to 'overclock' it to 1050mhz and see if there's any difference but I don't want to invalidate my warranty on a possibly faulty card :( Really don't know what to do here. Is there any way to turn the power saving crap off?

I guarentee you that you won't invalidate the warranty overclocking by setting "stock" speeds. AMD allow you to overclock under warranty anyway, just only as far as the CCC limits allow, which is usually 7-10% depending on the card.
 
Try running MSI Afterburner to monitor the clocks, it will record the highest the memory clock reaches, also you could try running FurMark to see how high the clocks are actually going.

Did you fully clean the nVidia drivers off before installing the 6870?
 
Blegh, that doesn't sound good, had my eye on the Sapphire 6870 and play GTA IV myself.

The odd thing is, the frame rates are about 2 times as much than what I got with the GTX on the same settings, it just seems like a less smooth experience. I'm kind of hoping upping the memory clock sorts it somewhat. I'll give a few programs a go when I get home.

Try running MSI Afterburner to monitor the clocks, it will record the highest the memory clock reaches, also you could try running FurMark to see how high the clocks are actually going.

Did you fully clean the nVidia drivers off before installing the 6870?

I'm using GPU-Z to monitor them at the moment but I'll give Afterburner a go. I ran a windowed furmark beside the GPU-Z and whilst the core shot up to 900, the memory wouldn't go above 283.5. Odd. The nvidia drivers were all uninstalled, I've also used Driver Sweeper to get rid of any remnants. The last uninstall I did I completely wiped all the ATI drivers too and at the moment I'm just running the ATI driver from windows update. GTA4 seemed slightly better, but still much much worse than I'd expect.
 
Last edited:
I had a similar problem with a graphics card once, my 4870 would switch from 2D (Desktop) to 3D (Ingame) clocks back and forth whilst gaming, thus screwing up most games and forcing a reset. In the end I had to contact Sapphire, and they gave my a new BIOS to flash it with and its been fine ever since. :)
 
The odd thing is, the frame rates are about 2 times as much than what I got with the GTX on the same settings, it just seems like a less smooth experience. I'm kind of hoping upping the memory clock sorts it somewhat. I'll give a few programs a go when I get home.



I'm using GPU-Z to monitor them at the moment but I'll give Afterburner a go. I ran a windowed furmark beside the GPU-Z and whilst the core shot up to 900, the memory wouldn't go above 283.5. Odd. The nvidia drivers were all uninstalled, I've also used Driver Sweeper to get rid of any remnants. The last uninstall I did I completely wiped all the ATI drivers too and at the moment I'm just running the ATI driver from windows update. GTA4 seemed slightly better, but still much much worse than I'd expect.

Oh Driver sweeper :(

Could be your problem, fubar's most installs :(
 
Oh Driver sweeper :(

Could be your problem, fubar's most installs :(

I had the problem before using Driver Sweeper :p I used it to remove every trace of the ATI drivers so I could reinstall. Seemed to have done that well.

Downloaded afterburner and that thinks that memory goes from 300 to 1050, so that all seems ok, still having problems with the card on GTA4 though. Despite using higher settings, the game looks worse than it did on lower settings on my 8800GTX. What would cause this? My greatest fear is that the cards ram is bad as I've noticed some very small white artifacts in DR2 but only when talking to people..
 
I read somewhere that GPU-Z is broken where 6000 series cards are concerned. Also as said before it may be quad pumped, but it confuses me too.
 
Back
Top Bottom