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MSI 7970 OC Issues

RoEy

RoEy

RoEy

Associate
Joined
10 Jan 2008
Posts
1,677
Location
Nottinghamshire
Hi all,

I've had the above card now for just over two weeks. Overall it's been a pretty good card. I've run 3dmark and Unigine Heaven / Valley and all seems to be OK apart from the odd stutter sometimes. I did experience some artifacting in Black Ops so I updated my drivers and tried a few other games and all was fine.

I've been using MSI afterburner to cap fps to 60 and in L4D2, Counter Strike GO and Dirt 3 it has been silky smooth 60fps or 59.9. However, I installed Half Life 2 E2 on Saturday to relive some of the old gaming days and I was having issues keeping fps to 60. One minute it was 60 and then it can reduce to 55-50 in places. Surely for a game that is so old now I shouldn't be experiencing that. Yes it's still graphically good but my card should eat it for breakfast.

Anyway, the plot thickens, since putting HL2 E2 on I now get the same issues in CS:GO and L4D2. I can be running round a corner, favela on CS:GO and the fps is 60 then it will drop as low as 48fps causing a bad stutter. I was running 13.2 Beta 7 drivers so I changed to 13.4 and 13.5 Beta 2 and still it happens. I tried turning settings down and even disabling msi afterburner and still it stutters. I tried so many things that I decided to do a fresh install of OS and I still get the issue in CS:GO. Dirt 3 seems to be pretty much constant 60fps but when I change view of car to look behind me it drops to 55fps.

Another weird thing is now when I run Windows Experience Index my CPU and Ram Score have gone from 7.8 to 7.5. Could that be a sign of something being wrong with either of them? Another odd thing is when my machine idles my gpu spikes up to 87% every 10-15 seconds at least 4-5 times and then won't do it for a while and then does?

Any suggestions / help would be great as I was planning on watercooling my PC next weekend but won't now until I know my system is fine.

Many thanks,

RoEy
 
It's factory OC - Core is 1010 and Mem is 1375. Power slider is at default as it has been from day one. I've read it can help to bump it up but I shouldn't need too as it was fine like that initially. Just tried L4D2 after fresh install of OS. Dark Carnival, intro seen, steady 60fps and then a stutter and it goes to 54fps. Then on the level I get frame dropping. Just can't work it out. Core i7 920 at stock at the min too.
 
RoEy said:
It's factory OC - Core is 1010 and Mem is 1375. Power slider is at default as it has been from day one. I've read it can help to bump it up but I shouldn't need too as it was fine like that initially. Just tried L4D2 after fresh install of OS. Dark Carnival, intro seen, steady 60fps and then a stutter and it goes to 54fps. Then on the level I get frame dropping. Just can't work it out. Core i7 920 at stock at the min too.
Click to expand...

I have L4D2 and i get ridiculous fps in that game. Have you enabled triple buffering in game seeing as you're using vsync?
 
Yes I have enabled triple buffering. Do you get a permanent 60 fps with vsync and triple buffering? I've tried clearing CMOS and with sync off I still get a large drop. I have some spare ram I can try to rule ram out also. I just can't work it out. Ran kombustor a moment ago and that seemed fine. Unigine heaven and valley do stutter in certain scenes though.
 
RoEy said:
Yes I have enabled triple buffering. Do you get a permanent 60 fps with vsync and triple buffering? I've tried clearing CMOS and with sync off I still get a large drop. I have some spare ram I can try to rule ram out also. I just can't work it out. Ran kombustor a moment ago and that seemed fine. Unigine heaven and valley do stutter in certain scenes though.
Click to expand...

I don't have the game installed but i used to get about 200 fps on L4D2. I'll download it tonight for you and have a butchers tomorrow and see if anything untoward is happening. :)
 
LtMatt said:
I don't have the game installed but i used to get about 200 fps on L4D2. I'll download it tonight for you and have a butchers tomorrow and see if anything untoward is happening. :)
Click to expand...

Ok mate ta. Try Dark carnival vsync on and see if you get constant 60fps. ta
 
LtMatt said:
Will do mate. Can't remember if i got 200+ fps at 1080p or 1440p but will confirm tomorrow. Stock clocks 1010/1375?
Click to expand...

Yes mate. What drivers you running? I'm pretty much out of ideas now. What do you think to the windows experience index score dropping on my CPU and ram? Coincidence I'm now having issues or not?
 
RoEy said:
Yes mate. What drivers you running? I'm pretty much out of ideas now. What do you think to the windows experience index score dropping on my CPU and ram? Coincidence I'm now having issues or not?
Click to expand...

When i last played, christ no idea 13.2 maybe? Its been a while.

Windows index probably relates to them just updating the scoring parameters.
 
LtMatt said:
When i last played, christ no idea 13.2 maybe? Its been a while.

Windows index probably relates to them just updating the scoring parameters.
Click to expand...
Yeah I did think that might be the case. I might try a few more driver versions. Thanks for your help anyway.
 
Just ran Unigine Valley and with the 13.2 Beta 7 drivers I used to get min fps of 20fps. Now I get min 8fps and 2-3 1 second long pauses when its running where the fps just drops loads. I'm running 13.2 beta 7 drivers again. Does it sound like my card is faulty?
 
Somethings not right as i get silly high fps in this game. Ran two runs one for latency and one for fps on dark carnival at 1010/1375. Apart from the scene loading at the start it was very smooth with zero stutter.

an3HVPZ.png


MIN:109
AVG:173
MAX:272
 
kissenger said:
I would try a full uninstall of drivers with DS and then reinstalling the latest. Sounds like a driver issue.
Click to expand...

I formatted OS and did a complete re-install with fresh drivers.

LtMatt said:
Somethings not right as i get silly high fps in this game. Ran two runs one for latency and one for fps on dark carnival at 1010/1375. Apart from the scene loading at the start it was very smooth with zero stutter.

an3HVPZ.png


MIN:109
AVG:173
MAX:272
Click to expand...

I disabled vsync last night and ran Dark Carnival, I get the stutter when it pans from the sky down to the car with the characters. I get high fps upto 270ish but then they drop a lot in certain places causing the stuttering.

Ive just spoken to a collegue who has the same CPU / Ram as me and he ran the windows experience index and he gets 7.8. Something odd is going on.
 
WEI doesn't mean squat. Run 3dmark11 physics test and let us know the score it should be 8500-10000 depending on memory.
 
SCORE
P8464 with AMD Radeon HD 7970(1x) and Intel Core i7-920 Processor
Graphics Score 9841
Physics Score 6145
Combined Score 5708

That's using basic free edition. Performance option - Benchmark Test only and stretched display scaling mode. Still didn't fill my screen though. Half way through the tests I had some blue vertical lines and they were there on the desktop after it had finished. I had to turn my monitor on and off to get rid of them. Think that's my monitor though as the dvi port is faulty I now use the hdmi port. Maybe that's going too.

Had a few stutters throughout the test.
 
That physics score is far far too low for a 4ghz 920. You should be around the 9000 mark on physics with some generic C9 1600mhz ram. Graphics score looks fine however, usually sits in or around the 10000 area at stock.

SO it looks like your CPU is doing something it shouldn't....can you fire up some monitoring applications while running CPU intensive tasks (Prime with CPUz etc... open) and show us.
 
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