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RX 470 stock clock woes :(

implosiveturnip

implosiveturnip

implosiveturnip

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Hi all

I have had this card in my second PC for a while, which I purchased from OCUK on 1st Sept. It's the Sapphire RX 470 "reference" style card:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-470-4096mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-with-backplate-gx-37g-sp.html

Now, the advertised clock speeds on this card are base: 932MHz, boost: Boost Clock: 1216MHz, which the card cannot sustain. The boost clock is never hit, and often the card will drop below even the base clock. This is in a Silverstone TJ08-e with the drive cage removed, the stock 180mm intake fan and a 120mm exhaust. Airflow is unrestricted and there is plenty of space around the card.

Am I right in saying that if the card can't hit it's advertised clocks, at stock/out of the box settings then it's faulty?

I can get the clocks to maintain if i do some mild overclocking in Afterburner, which is why I never really noticed it up until recently, as I had a small overclock on the card from day one, (+30 power, 1250 core, 1825 mem), but I want to put in into a smaller case for some living-room friendly gaming but it being a SFF case, it gets toasty, hence why I want to go back to stock.

There's two main problems for me with the way the clocks on this card go; it makes for poor frame times, and a "juddery" experience as the clocks constantly change, and it doesn't perform nearly as well as it does when it's maintaining its clocks. I have tried the card in another system, and get the exact same results. :(

Do I have a case for an RMA? Even If I do get a return and they let me swap the card for another, am I likely to experience the same issues?

In fact, being nearly 6 months ago, would I have to raise this with Sapphire themselves rather than OCUK?

Thanks for your time :)
 
No your warranty is with OCUK not Sapphire.

What sort of temps are you hitting? The card my downclock for a short time if it's not rendering anything demanding.
 
It sits between 68 and 75 at stock. Thing is, even with an aggressive custom fan profile it does the same, so I don't think it's thermal throttling. It appears to be power target, but surely stock clocks wouldn't be power limited?
 
I had some astonishingly gimped play with my 480 for about a month while then found it was from the Power Efficiency settings.

Find it and turn it off.
 
implosiveturnip said:
Hi all

I have had this card in my second PC for a while, which I purchased from OCUK on 1st Sept. It's the Sapphire RX 470 "reference" style card:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-470-4096mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-with-backplate-gx-37g-sp.html

Now, the advertised clock speeds on this card are base: 932MHz, boost: Boost Clock: 1216MHz, which the card cannot sustain. The boost clock is never hit, and often the card will drop below even the base clock. This is in a Silverstone TJ08-e with the drive cage removed, the stock 180mm intake fan and a 120mm exhaust. Airflow is unrestricted and there is plenty of space around the card.

Am I right in saying that if the card can't hit it's advertised clocks, at stock/out of the box settings then it's faulty?

I can get the clocks to maintain if i do some mild overclocking in Afterburner, which is why I never really noticed it up until recently, as I had a small overclock on the card from day one, (+30 power, 1250 core, 1825 mem), but I want to put in into a smaller case for some living-room friendly gaming but it being a SFF case, it gets toasty, hence why I want to go back to stock.

There's two main problems for me with the way the clocks on this card go; it makes for poor frame times, and a "juddery" experience as the clocks constantly change, and it doesn't perform nearly as well as it does when it's maintaining its clocks. I have tried the card in another system, and get the exact same results. :(

Do I have a case for an RMA? Even If I do get a return and they let me swap the card for another, am I likely to experience the same issues?

In fact, being nearly 6 months ago, would I have to raise this with Sapphire themselves rather than OCUK?

Thanks for your time :)
Click to expand...

Set the Power Limit to +50% via Wattman/MSI Afterburner, and the clocks will not fluctuate unless you exceed the maximum temperature listed in Wattman. If you exceed the maximum temperature, increase the fan speed a little.
 
Hotwired said:
I had some astonishingly gimped play with my 480 for about a month while then found it was from the Power Efficiency settings.

Find it and turn it off.
Click to expand...

Is that in WattMan?

AMDMatt said:
Set the Power Limit to +50% via Wattman/MSI Afterburner, and the clocks will not fluctuate unless you exceed the maximum temperature listed in Wattman. If you exceed the maximum temperature, increase the fan speed a little.
Click to expand...

Why do I have to go to these lengths to get a card to work as it's advertised though? It's pretty poor form tbh, and I'm pretty sure it constitutes false advertising. I imagine the less tech-enthusiastic would be well put off by having to do this.

I'll do as you suggest when I get home this evening, but is there a Sapphire rep you could pass this on to? It's really not on, misleading consumers like that. (*EDIT: That's assuming all these cards experience the same issues, which from the post by Karik666, and your own reply, they do).
 
Last edited:
I have the same card it was in my htpc, the these cards do not work well in small enclosures or out the box settings.
They were gimped to increase the gap between it and an rx480, But if you know how to tweak them they are very capable cards.
Out the box they run way too high voltage, crap fan profile and target temp is set to throttle too early.

Undervolt varies but at 1.00-1.08v at 1216mhz should be ok, and use about 25% power limit,
Adjust the fan curve to an rpm range you are comfortable with.
Increase the temp target to max, then observe temps and clocks whilst testing.
 
implosiveturnip said:
Is that in WattMan?
Click to expand...

Radeon Settings -> Gaming -> Global Settings -> Power Efficiency = Off

I don't know how but somehow that was gimping my 480 to 250MHz and I was justabout flipping the table with how badly Fallout 4 was running.

Wasn't like that to start with, think an update flipped some switches.
 
Thanks all, I'll have a tweak and a play when I get home. Been a while since I've had a proper tinker. I'll try an undervolt too.

I'd buy an aftermarket cooler (I know one of the arctic cooling ones fits this card), but then that will have pushed the price up so much i might have well just have bough an aftermarket 4gb 480 in the first place *sigh*

Just seems like a bit of a farce that it couldn't work as it was supposed to as supplied, and it's narked me off a bit.

Keeping positive though, I get to have a beer and OC/benchmark tonight. I'll see it as a warm up for Zen/volta/Vega :)
 
What version of the drivers are your running?

I had issues with my 390 for awhile where it would never hit the stock speeds and I had to get AB to make it run at the speeds, this was a driver issue though and was quite awhile ago now.

I would be playing csgo and the fps would drop during fire fights now with AB running and no tweaking done I saw the clock speed drop to as low as 400\500mhz when the base clock was 1040mhz!
 
The latest crimson I think. I'll have to check when I get home tonight. Sadly I didn't get chance to have a tweak over the weekend due to IRL commitments and, sadly, had a funeral to attend on Monday.

But I should have time tonight, so I'll update the thread this eve with results.
 
Right, well better late than never I suppose, finally got around to tweaking this tonight, have settled on the following thus far:

core: 1250 @ 0.95v
mems: stock @ 0.965
pwr target: +50
temp target: 81
fan stock/auto

Quite happy tbh, been running valley for a while now, temps have peaked and fan is living-room friendly thank god!

I know I can push the mem up a little, but saw a post on Reddit about a week ago that showed pushing the memory on the 470 (and 480 I think) actually gave worse performance, as the latency increases to allow the higher freqs. At the time I had my memory at 1825, so I fired up Valley and did a run with the oc, then a run with the memory at stock. Lo and behold, my stock clocked memory run was just under 60 points in front.

Now I only did this once, so not exactly totally undeniable results, still, interesting. And keeping the memory at stock I've been able to drop the volts a little. Still think I can get the memory lower, though if I take the core much further down I have to drop frequency to keep it stable. Pretty happy with the 1250 tbh, not exactly a groundbreaking OC, I managed to keep my original OC with a decent undervolt. Tempted to by an aftermarket cooler or a thermosphere just to see what I can get out of it now though ;)

Here's that post about the memory in case anyone wanted a read:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4z6rd2/meta_if_you_have_a_4gb_470_dont_increase_memory/
 
I guess it depends on the gpu workload and ambient temps too.
In gpu-z fan speed showed 40% but I can't remember what rpm it was.
I needed to use it in a tiny coolermaster elite 110 so i used a cheap coolermaster aio seidon 120 and modded a ghetto fan over the vrm plate.
 
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