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Owned a 5870 for 1 week and..

So you guys with dual display can have t.v or a MKV or FLV playing in media center or MPC on the secondary display and not have the clocks locked at 400/900 even if you start playing a game on the primary? I've down clocking to reference speeds and it makes no difference, i've tried 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 and it they make no difference. Definatly a driver thing because some media don't lock the clocks (avi, mp4, wmv, vob, some mkv) while some do (flv, some mkv, watching t.v)
 
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Changed rendering method in Windows Media PLayer classic and that fixed the clocks being locked at 400/900, now just gotta fix Media Center i think the problem stems from Haali Media Splitter.
 
I looked at the bios in RBE to see which Powerplay Profile 400MHz/900MHz relates too, and the only profile those clocks are used is something called UVD which after googling is see is ATI's name for their hardware video decoding so i'm guessing the card or the drivers don't allow the card to use any other Powerplay profile while it's decoding video.
 
DIABLO said:
Changed rendering method in Windows Media PLayer classic and that fixed the clocks being locked at 400/900, now just gotta fix Media Center i think the problem stems from Haali Media Splitter.
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I wasnt able to find an option in Media Center to fix this, but would be interested if you do, as in this warm weather the card isnt silent unless its on minimum clocks.

I had trouble at first with the 10.5 drivers, until I started switching between stock for desktop and overclocked for gaming. As a two monitor user myself, I've been really annoyed how bad my 5850 has been for 6 months until 10.5. Going back to 10.4 isnt an option. Have you tried running MSI afterburner and let it do the overclocking for you? I quickly switch profiles before I fire a game up.

So you guys with dual display can have t.v or a MKV or FLV playing in media center or MPC on the secondary display and not have the clocks locked at 400/900 even if you start playing a game on the primary?
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Not sure what you are asking here. I dont think its possible to force the card to run slower than 400/900 with two monitors now, until you switch w7 display back to non extended.
 
Well on my setup if i'm watching t.v on the secondary monitor with windows media center the clocks will stay locked at 400/900 even if i start a game on the primary monitor i want the GPU to run at full speed in this situation (which it does when it's media thats not hardware decoded by the GPU like AVI files), so i asking if someone with t similar setup gets the same results.
 
Nope it fires up to full speed fine here, but I've always used afterburner (for the fan profile adjustment mainly). Afterburner has always overruled CCC settings for 3D ok.
 
Hang on. Now I see what you are asking. I normally only use the second monitor with the TV card or iplayer.

Just tried a file I know bumps up the 157/300 to 400/900 in Media Player on the 2nd screen and then fired up 3D on the main monitor.... and I've been able to recreate what you are talking about.

But it doesnt do this with the same H264 file in media player classic. With classic, you have a lot of options (that I dont fiddle with :D) to turn off GPU rendering support if you want. Windows Media player doesnt allow you to 'play around' so much.

I dont see what that would be such a deal breaker I'd send the card back for. I'd just not use Media Player on the 2nd screen.
 
I like to have the t.v going while i play wow and since my GTX 280 did this fine it kinda buggs me, 400/900 is enough to play wow pretty well it's not the stablest while doing the 2 things at once. Glad you managed to recreate what i said and it's not a problem with my card, Naybe getting a cheap 2nd hand card of the bay dedicated to the second monitor would be the way to go? Thanks for taking the time to recreate what i've said JTrickle.
 
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Rroff said:
ATI have a long history of issues with multi display setups, there are work arounds to smooth out most of the issues now but it continues to rear its ugly head at frequent intervals, if you want to run a multi display setup with the least amount of issues and better support then nVidia is still where the money is.
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Since DAY ONE you could disabled powerplay EASILY, which fixes ALL the issues, grey screens, any odd crashing, flickering, fixes it ALL.

Guess what Nvidia haven't "fixed" anything they have the same issue and the only fix is to run full 3d clocks with a dual display setup. The ONLY difference is they had 6 months to get it right from the start, nothing more or less.

Its a gddr4 issue and both companies have EXACTLY the same problem and almost the same fix.

Its really only the memory on AMD cards you need to whack up to 1000Mhz the core you can actually get away with at stock but 400Mhz is "safe" the power usage with "idle" clocks of 400/1000Mhz still has ridiculously lower "idle" power usage than Nvidia.

Grey screen, the majority of crashing is usually powerplay, and Nvidia has the same issues most of the time, being late simply let them hide the problem, however I think its not hard to agree Nvidia didn't WANT to run at full clocks and full power usage when running dual monitors, neither did AMD.


To the OP, go into more detail on what exactly you did to hacked CCC profiles, afterburner, what overclocks you've tried, what drivers you are using and what you did in gpu clock tool.

In general GPU clock tool, used when you boot will disable powerplay(that might be different on newer cards with newer bioses, original cards with the first bioses would all have powerplay completely disabled when setting clocks with gpu clock. Set your normal 3d clocks in gpu clock and that fixes 98% of all issues 98% of the time.

AFterburner, is odd, really no matter what you set in Afterburner CCC/bios idle clocks kick in when idle.

IE if I go into afterburner and set 775Mhz overclock on my 5850, at idle it still drops down to where CCC has idle speeds set, on an original card this is unfortunately 137/300, which is awesome for power usage and awesome on single display setups. Dual display you want 400/1000 as minimum clocks. Unfortunately bios set numbers are designed to override in idle/3d/other modes.

In general since 10.1/10.2 it would largely set the correct idle numbers for dual display setups but the second you overclock you override the "fix" also.

The other thing that you can do, in afterburner if you overclock past your CCC limits, so on a stock 5850 your limit on a normal card is 775Mhz, if you set 776Mhz and up, CCC will no longer drop the card back into 3d idle modes.

AFterburner 2d/3d mode is largely for when you've gone past CCC overclock limits and so you can have your own idle speeds, but setting a 2d speed in afterburner won't stop the CCC dropping it further.

This is why I also go into profiles and edit the saved profiles to set 400/1000 as the lowest speed it will drop to.


Yes it should be better, but its designed a certain way and neither AMD/Nvidia counted on gddr4 causing flickering. Most people, as in the massive massive majority still run a single screen and so the drivers are set up for that first and foremost, which again is understandable, but as there has been a way to fix any issues, from day one, if you ask for help, I won't complain. THough there should be a "dual display driver" a la Nvidia that simply disables powerplay with two screens in use, I'd still use this and have more control over speeds in any situation.
 
Put my GTX280 in to power the secondary monitor along side my 5870 powering my primary monitor for testing purposes, the 280 doe's all the video decoding when Windows Medis Center is on the secondary monitor so i can now play WoW on the primary without the GPU and RAM getting locked to 400/900.. sweet, now i gotta buy a cheap NV to do this as well as use as a Physx card.
 
I hacked the CCC profile so all 3 possible GPU/RAM/Volts were all at max (875/1250/1.165), i used ATI GPU tool to 'break' powerplay, i set the 2d and 3d afterburner profiles to both run at full 3D speeds, modded a bios so the card is running at full speed all the time. All these resulted in a flashing screen from desktop to a flat coloured screen a diferent colour everytime as soon as the hardware video decoder kicked in on the card. It just seemed that the UVD doe'snt like decoding video at anything other then it's default speed of 400/900.

Edit: i dunno how people go crossfire with the Vapor X cards mine is idling at 68c because the fan is virtually blocked and what air it is pulling in is hot die from the back of the Nvidia die.
 
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DIABLO said:
Gave them a go it's no better all it dows in fact is make the secondary screen flicker i guess because the memory is running at 300MHz.
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That's the issue, i've heard of it on the ati forums

Overclock the card a bit the idle clocks should go up instead of 300MHz on the clock (some bug but still temp fix) but seems like your all sorted with your GTX280
 
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