Weird problem with AMD cards and use bouncing when stress testing

[Mr Goat]

I've got the PC in my signature and whenever I install an AMD card (I've tried a 5870, 7950 and a 7970) the gpu use just bounces between 99% use and 63% use every couple of seconds when running something like MSI Kombustor. I've reinstalled the latest drivers after running a driver sweep, checked I have the latest motherboard bios, all windows updates are installed.

All the video cards work fine in another PC for either gaming or mining, but in the one in my signature I have the bouncing use problem.

I also find that when mining scrypt coins cgminer doesn't work and just racks up hardware (hw) errors, however the exact same batch file on another PC works fine with all the cards.

Any one have any ideas, I'm running out of things to try or check

Cheers,
Dave

 

[Davedree]

Tdp protection, increase the tdp limit, (called power limit increase it to 20%, in afterburner or amd ccc) job done, don't use kombustor or burnmark or anything for load testing on a gpu.

 

[Mr Goat]

Tdp protection, increase the tdp limit, (called power limit increase it to 20%, in afterburner or amd ccc) job done, don't use kombustor or burnmark or anything for load testing on a gpu.

Thanks for replying, will give that a try when I get home tonight and report back.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[LtMatt]

Dave nailed it.

 

[Mr Goat]

Dave nailed it.

I hope so, has been driving me potty!!

 

[Mr Goat]

One follow up question, why doesn't my GTX 670 behave like that, is it an AMD/ATI thing?

 

[LtMatt]

I hope so, has been driving me potty!!

One follow up question, why doesn't my GTX 670 behave like that, is it an AMD/ATI thing?

The 670 draws less power and i believe Nvidia may (can't guarantee this is true) throttle power virus tools like Furmark and Kombuster to stop them pulling too much wattage. AMD don't do this unless the cards TDP limit is exceeded. If you set the power limit at +20% it should stop the card from exhibiting this behavior. Why you would want to run Furmark or Kombuster is beyond me though. Its like playing russian roulette with your gpus life. Any demanding current DX11 game is a much better way to test gpu stability.

 

[Mr Goat]

The 670 draws less power and i believe Nvidia may (can't guarantee this is true) throttle power virus tools like Furmark and Kombuster to stop them pulling too much wattage. AMD don't do this unless the cards TDP limit is exceeded. If you set the power limit at +20% it should stop the card from exhibiting this behavior. Why you would want to run Furmark or Kombuster is beyond me though. Its like playing russian roulette with your gpus life. Any demanding current DX11 game is a much better way to test gpu stability.

Agree about why not to use Kombustor etc. I am having problems getting the cards to mine so used Kombustor in this instance as a quick and dirty way of troubleshooting. To this end it did the job nicely and gave me the info that I posted on here. If the power limit setting resolves the issue then happy days!

 

[mmj_uk]

There's nothing inherantly damaging about MSI Kombuster etc it's just that as GPU's evolved and became more and more power hungry AMD/NVidia had to develop a way to increase performance whilst keeping TDP within the limits of their cooling, if they didn't GPU's would have hit a performance ceiling. They got around it by placing an artificial limit on how much the GPU can do at any given time which also allowed them to save money on parts (VRM's etc).

GTX670/GTX680 aren't massively power hungry so they can run Kombustor okay, as presumably will future cards once the TDP is brought back down to sensible levels.