Problems I'm having with a Radeon HD 7970

[TeaganP]

Hi there,

I've been busy recently building a new machine for a friend of mine. Have a little problem and I'm not sure what to do about it.

I've bought an XFX Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, have installed the very latest driver from AMD. Driver has seemed to go on well, the problem I'm having is that when I go into the Catalyst Control Center and I go to the overdrive settings there's no option to auto tune the card.

I have my own older machine which is running 4 series Radeon cards and there's an option for the auto tune. I'm not sure what to do really about this new 7 series card that I've got.

I'm not sure what settings I should have for the GPU clock and Memory clock. Also there's some kind of power setting for it which goes from -20 to 20. I haven't a clue what that's for. I have the fan set to about 55% which seems to be keeping the card cool.

Can anybody tell me why there's no auto tune button on this particular driver?

Any advice what to do with this card also like how to set it up for running it with a game.

I also have a problem at the moment on this new install I've done, I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit but when I go to the System Rating option to get a Windows rating for my machine it starts to run and then the whole screen just goes clear white.

I don't know what else to do really when that happens. The hard drive light seems to flicker a bit but I left it before for a good 40 minutes or so and nothing happened the screen just remained white so I had to hard reset the machine.

Never really seen this happen before. I was thinking about maybe taking the driver I got from the AMD site off and installing the one from the Disc that came with the card to see what happens then.

Alex

 

[skyjawa]

There is no auto tune. You need to set it yourself. My 7950 is the same.

if you check the overdrive it will show the stock clocks and you can change from there.

Power up to 20% will allow you to overclock over the standard settings a little before needing to increase actual voltages.

I'd suggest you need the latest 12.11 beta drivers.

 

[TeaganP]

Hi thanks for your reply.

I'm glad that you've said there's no auto tune button now. I will have to look into it more, I obviously don't know much about this card yet.

I might have to use this thread though to gain a little more understanding so I will be back later probably to talk about this more.

I'm not sure though why I'm getting a white screen when I try and run system rating. Do you think it's cos of the card not being set up right?

Also I was wondering, I wasn't 100% sure when I was installing the card, it has to have an 8 pin plug and a 6 pin plug connected to it. On the PSU there's 3 possible cables you can plug in for graphics card power. I could have just plugged one cable in cos there's a triple split on each end of the cables. An 8 pin, a 6 pin and a 2 pin. I decided that I should plug in the 8 pin on one cable and the 6 pin on another cable. That way there's just one cable that's left that's unused. I take it this is the right way to plug it from the PSU?

I mean I could have plugged just one cable in and plugged the 8 pin and 6 pin in together from the same cable. Would this have mattered do you think?

 

[Confused Stu]

The best power connector configuration depends on how your power supply is set up when designed. What make and model PSU are you running?

I would definitely try to get it running stably at stock before you think about overclocking the card, so let's see if we can sort this white screen issue first. Is this a new Windows installation, or just a GPU upgrade? If using an existing Windows install, what was the old card and how did you remove the drivers for it? What are the full specs of the PC?

The more info you can give us, the more chance of one of the bright people here spotting the issue.

 

[TeaganP]

The best power connector configuration depends on how your power supply is set up when designed. What make and model PSU are you running?

I would definitely try to get it running stably at stock before you think about overclocking the card, so let's see if we can sort this white screen issue first. Is this a new Windows installation, or just a GPU upgrade? If using an existing Windows install, what was the old card and how did you remove the drivers for it? What are the full specs of the PC?

The more info you can give us, the more chance of one of the bright people here spotting the issue.

Hi there,

Yeah it's a new install. Most of the things I've bought from Overclockers to build this machine and it's all brand new.

It's a Coolermaster Cosmos II case with a Asus P9X79 Deluxe motherboard. An Intel Core i7-3820 3.60Ghz Sandybridge-E Socket 2011 processor with Corsair Dominator PLATINUM 16GB (4X4GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C9 1866MHz Quad Channel Kit (CMD16GX3M4A1866C9). The graphics card is an XFX Radeon HD 7970 Double Dissipation Edition 3GB 1050M (FX-797G-TDFC). The CPU cooler is the Coolermaster Hyper 412S.

The PSU is a Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular 2 1000w '80 Plus Silver'.

The hard drive that it's installed on is a Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB with 64mb cache and is connected using SATA III interface.

I am also running an additional 4 hard drives which are Western Digital greens, 4 of them in RAID 10 which are 2TB each (64mb cache).

The Windows I've purchased and installed is Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

So what I've done so far with this machine, also to add I've purchased a few Coolermaster Sickleflow fans (X4) and I've added them to the Cosmos II (2 at the top and 2 for the side door overlooking GPU). I've not actually mounted the 2 Sickleflows on the door yet will be doing very soon.

I've built the thing, very carefully and I've managed to plug everything in correctly, was a little uncertain about the cables for the graphics card coming from the PSU so I plugged in seperate cables for the 8 pin and 6 pin connectors (there was a choice of 3 cables for graphics power from the Coolermaster Silent Pro Modular 2. Everything as far as I know is plugged in correctly. The temps seem quite good, I've installed Windows 7 correctly and I've added all the necessary drivers including the latest drivers for the graphics card from the AMD website.

The machine seems to be running okay so far, I've set everything in the bios up as it should be, most of the settings are set for Auto. The memory I've set to 1866Mhz for the RAM.

There's no issues now in the device manager, I've corrected them all, all drivers from the Asus website all the latest ones are installed which are necessary for the board. There's also a Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI-E Sound Card that I've added to the board. I've made sure the 4 pin (old floppy drive style) connector is plugged into that sound card also to ensure it works correctly.

I've installed the very latest BIOS from the ASUS website. When I first got the machine running I checked the BIOS and it was running on version 2104 but now I've flashed to the latest which is 3203.

Something interesting which springs to mind, I know it says in the manual for the P9X79 Deluxe that you should install the graphics card on slot 1. I've actually installed it on slot 4 instead to allow for better room for the Asus soundcard I've got. The very first PCI-E 1x slot is holding the Asus Xonar D2X I've put in and then further down the board on slot 4 I've installed the graphics card. Also on the last slot which is PCI-E 1x I'm adding a Startech SATA III 2 port internal card so I can plug the bays on the front of the Cosmos II for adding additional hard drives because I've almost run out of SATA ports.

I was thinking before that maybe I've got the card plugged in wrong perhaps? I can't really put the graphics card in slot 1 because I also need the other two PCI-E x1 slots and if I position the graphics card in slot 1 it will prevent me from using one of the shorter ones. I was thinking I could put the graphics card in slot 3 instead? Would that be better? The graphics card takes up 2 slots in total, I could put the Startech card I've bought into the second slot, the graphics card into the third slot and the sound card into the last one. I'm not sure really if it matters and maybe this is why I'm having a problem when I run System Rating in Windows.

Maybe changing the cards around could help but I do need both of the PCI-E x1 slots to be free to use because I've got 2 cards for them.

The problems I'm having really:

1. The screen goes clear white when I run system rating.
2. I'm not sure how to set the graphics card up because there's no Auto Tune button like I'm used to using from my experience of using older Radeon HD cards.

 

[Kaapstad]

I would try and get your system stable using slot 1 for the graphics card first and then look to move it around to other slots.

 

[TeaganP]

I would try and get your system stable using slot 1 for the graphics card first and then look to move it around to other slots.

Yes, thanks for your help. I've realised now that I should have put the graphics card in the first slot all along. I didn't realise also that you can just simply plug PCI-E x1 slot cards into PCI-E x16 slots. I can see that now, didn't even know that before.

I've rearranged everything and it seems to be running much better now, I could tell before it wasn't happy the way it was.

I did the system rating test and it worked fine this time.

The only problem I have really is that there's no Auto tune button in the overdrive settings for the graphics card.

How can I set this card up properly? I've set the fans to 55%, also I've set the Power setting to 20% to maximum.

The GPU clock settings go up to 1500 Mhz and the Memory clock settings go up to 2000 Mhz. At what value should I set these at? Sorry for asking but I've never done that before and I'm quite new to this...

Also was I right to connect 2 separate cables for the graphics card, 1 for the 8 pin block and 1 for the 6 pin block? I have a choice of 3 cables in total from the PSU. Do I have to have it running on 2 cables or can I have it running on just 1 instead? And connect them both on a split cable instead? I really need to know this...

 

[Diagro]

Use the two seperate cables to power the card.

Also I wouldnt touch the cards clock speeds, you dont seem to understand what they do.

If you are adamant to play with them then set it to core 1050 and memory 1550 and see if it plays a game ok.

 

[OptimaLnrg]

Set the fans to auto or create a custom fan curve. Pinning the fans at a value will mean too much noise when it's not needed or potentially not enough airflow if the card would normally exceed that value.

GPU overclocking is pretty easy but takes a while as you have to test at each bump in mhz. I'll leave clock speed recommendations to the amd owners..

BTW if I were you I would not install fans on the side of the case unless you have GPU temperature issues.

The autotune button was a pile of disasterfail anyway.

I have no idea what you're asking about the pci-e power cables. You need a 6pin and an 8pin plugged in.

 

[MeMeMeMe]

The only problem I have really is that there's no Auto tune button in the overdrive settings for the graphics card.

How can I set this card up properly? I've set the fans to 55%, also I've set the Power setting to 20% to maximum.

The GPU clock settings go up to 1500 Mhz and the Memory clock settings go up to 2000 Mhz. At what value should I set these at? Sorry for asking but I've never done that before and I'm quite new to this...

First, uncheck the box that says Enable Manual Fan Control, and click apply.
You want the card to manage its own fans.

Second, click the defaults button at the bottom, to reset defaults. That will set the clock and memory clock settings back to their proper bases values.

Third, uncheck the box that says "Enable Graphics Overdrive"
This will ensure you cant accidentally change them to anything that will make your system unstable.

Then, if you do actually want to experiment with overclocking, download a program like MSI Afterburner, and start tweaking;. But read a guide about it first.

Also was I right to connect 2 separate cables for the graphics card, 1 for the 8 pin block and 1 for the 6 pin block? I have a choice of 3 cables in total from the PSU. Do I have to have it running on 2 cables or can I have it running on just 1 instead? And connect them both on a split cable instead? I really need to know this...

Yes, you need two cables attacked. If you card has two 8-pin sockets, you need to connect two 8-pin cables. If your card has an 8-pin and 6-pin socket, you need to attach and 8-pin cable and a 6-pin cable, and so on.

Usually the cables have 8 pins, but 2 of those pins are on a separate, attached connector, so you can attach the same cable into both a 6-pin socket and an 8-pin socket.