7970 Overclocking Problems

[Robes]

So bought the Sapphire 7970 Dual x last week and finding the card pretty nice but having some weird issues.

Been testing some over clocks, clocked it to 1150/1600 with no voltage increase. Every seemed to be looking nice and rosy ran through an hour of Far cry 2 benchmark loops, ran though an hour of 3d mark 11 loops, ran heaven for an hour or so, ran through an hour of Furmark with highest temp being 76c on the gpu with the fan on default auto.

Sat the missus down in front of the thing not having played an actual game (benchmarking/testing is easy to do while your working, gaming isn't) stuck on Sonic generations (I know, I know a little sad, but we only had 30 minutes and didn't want to get into anything too much). Within 20 minutes or so the PC paused for a couple of seconds then artifacts started to appear. So I thought "dam! Clocks running too high better throttle it back".

So with no time left to play I moved the clocks down to 1100/1375 and switched it off for the night. Day before yesterday, ran loads of tests all came out clean, great! Sat down last night (had a whole hour to myself) to play Dead Island played for around 10 minutes and again black screen and it started artifacting again!

I know the obvious solution is go to stock speeds (which last time I used did seem fine) but obviously having bought this card instead of the 670/680, I would like more from it.

Anyone got any ideas? Drivers I guess would be one which I will try tonight, I'm on 12.6 I'll try 12.7. Anything else?

 

[fizzy]

I've had similar strange issues - OC'd my card, everything seemed stable, played a few games with no problems... then run heaven 3 and I get loads of white flashing blocks all over the screen...

Reduce the OC (even below stock) and they stay there, so start thinking the card is failing... yet the few games I try still seem to be ok. After a reboot everything is fine in heaven 3 again.

One thing I did spot was that when I installed 12.7 beta drivers the AMD settings tool and GPU-Z were reporting the version as 12.4. Did an "uninstall everything" option on the amd installer, and windows was still installing a driver dating april 2012. Had to tell it to delete the driver files etc a few times through device manager as it kept on finding earlier versions.

Finally got it to stay on "vga compatible", and then reinstalled 12.7 - and now not showing as 12.4, and seems to be a lot more stable. Looks like it may have had a mismatch of driver files that was causing the issues.

 

[PorkPieCat]

maybe you need to put voltage up a tiny bit. if it works fine at stock then it's not faulty, and you can't guarantee a stock voltage overclock all the time i suppose? try upping it a tiny bit until you're stable

 

[Robes]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've had similar strange issues - OC'd my card, everything seemed stable, played a few games with no problems... then run heaven 3 and I get loads of white flashing blocks all over the screen...

Reduce the OC (even below stock) and they stay there, so start thinking the card is failing... yet the few games I try still seem to be ok. After a reboot everything is fine in heaven 3 again.

One thing I did spot was that when I installed 12.7 beta drivers the AMD settings tool and GPU-Z were reporting the version as 12.4. Did an "uninstall everything" option on the amd installer, and windows was still installing a driver dating april 2012. Had to tell it to delete the driver files etc a few times through device manager as it kept on finding earlier versions.

Finally got it to stay on "vga compatible", and then reinstalled 12.7 - and now not showing as 12.4, and seems to be a lot more stable. Looks like it may have had a mismatch of driver files that was causing the issues.

See your's the way round I'd expect. The intensive bechmarking screwed the OC over, but mine seems to be the other way round. I play a reasonably stress free game and it goes wrong.

Very strange

maybe you need to put voltage up a tiny bit. if it works fine at stock then it's not faulty, and you can't guarantee a stock voltage overclock all the time i suppose? try upping it a tiny bit until you're stable

Aye, tis another good suggestion just a little disappointed if I have to up the Voltage as it's already quite a high voltage card 1.174.

 

[flopper]

So bought the Sapphire 7970 Dual x last week and finding the card pretty nice but having some weird issues.

Been testing some over clocks, clocked it to 1150/1600 with no voltage increase. Every seemed to be looking nice and rosy ran through an hour of Far cry 2 benchmark loops, ran though an hour of 3d mark 11 loops, ran heaven for an hour or so, ran through an hour of Furmark with highest temp being 76c on the gpu with the fan on default auto.

Sat the missus down in front of the thing not having played an actual game (benchmarking/testing is easy to do while your working, gaming isn't) stuck on Sonic generations (I know, I know a little sad, but we only had 30 minutes and didn't want to get into anything too much). Within 20 minutes or so the PC paused for a couple of seconds then artifacts started to appear. So I thought "dam! Clocks running too high better throttle it back".

So with no time left to play I moved the clocks down to 1100/1375 and switched it off for the night. Day before yesterday, ran loads of tests all came out clean, great! Sat down last night (had a whole hour to myself) to play Dead Island played for around 10 minutes and again black screen and it started artifacting again!

I know the obvious solution is go to stock speeds (which last time I used did seem fine) but obviously having bought this card instead of the 670/680, I would like more from it.

Anyone got any ideas? Drivers I guess would be one which I will try tonight, I'm on 12.6 I'll try 12.7. Anything else?

I seldom if ever run hard benchmarks.
For me a round of 3dmark11 and gaming is stresstesting enough, if the card crash, driver re-set, or game freeze, adjustments are needed but once I find a good level I go with it, Games seldom put the card under a lot of stress.
My asus reference had 11.74 standard voltage, running 1200mhz at 12.25v atm when gaming, using other clocks/volt when idle surfing etc...
No issues unless heat is to high, 50% fan keeps it at 60c gaming.

I had issues with heaven also, flashing blocks, and was like wtf, but those are gone with a reboot, and last time I run heaven it worked just fine.
Never been able to replicate that again.

12.6 driver atm.

 

[Ciff1]

l have had the odd flashing block in heaven also, only happens when i push beyond 1125 with my windforce eg 1130+ currently still on stock volts 1.174v and stock memory. Is this the start of artifacts or something else driver or heaven related i am using 12.3 and afb 2.2.2. i always thought white flashing pixels were the sign of artifacts. Is 1.2 volts or 1.25 volts safe voltage for long term use or just benching. Temps always seem to be around 60-63 at 50% fan whilst benching. Not sure whether to push core further. Start on memory next.

 

[fizzy]

See your's the way round I'd expect. The intensive bechmarking screwed the OC over, but mine seems to be the other way round. I play a reasonably stress free game and it goes wrong.

Very strange

Well, that's the odd thing - playing games was/is fine, but as soon as I started a Heaven 3 run it had white blocks/stripes everywhere from the start (not even after a while) - almost as if there was somehow some garbage in memory left from games?

Rebooted and reran seemed to clear it, and after sorting out my driver issues I've run it several times now with no problems. GPUz shows temps and voltages ok too.

Put it down to driver or heaven issues rather than a card problem.

edit: It get stranger. Just ran it again in windowed mode (1920x1200, tess, 8xaa etc) and got white blocks everywhere again. (It's like the 2d top layer rather that 3d corruption). Went into options and switched to full screen mode were it reloaded again and everything was fine. Definitely seems to be an odd quirkyness going on with heaven. 3dmark runs have been fine.

I get the usual issues if I push things too far ("gfx card has recovered" messages, lockups, occasional bsod etc) and I'm nowhere near those limits but heaven still acts up now and again.

As for the op having benching fine but crashing in games - that sounds more like drivers issues to me. I had some problems with a simple puzzle game earlier - suddenly ran really slow and jerky, and wouldn't work properly until I restarted it. I think it was the driver dropping the gfx card clocks as it wasn't working hard enough.... possibly. Recreating the issue with GPUz running would prove that. Hmm.. actually I was running it in windowed mode rather than full screen. I wonder if that's the underlying issue for me?

 

[Robes]

Hmmm - So I've upped the voltage to 1.2v and everything seems to be fine what's strange though is if I keep at default voltage and have the fan running flat out the problem seems to appear faster!

Anyone think could be a faulty fan? Or would this just be the nature of things i.e. the fan drawing more power and leaving the GFX card a little short thus the artifacting?

 

[psychodil]

The power the fan needs is a drop in the ocean compared to the GPU, CPU and the rest of the rig. I seriously doubt that is it.