Gigabyte Radeon 7970 running only at 50% performance

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LordOfDragons

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Aug 24, 2013
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Running up here into a very strange problem I could not find any solution for so far. I replaced my old Radeon HD 4870 with a Giga-Byte Radeon HD 7970. According to the benchmarks all around this should give roughly double the speed (and the specs of the two cards line up with this). Now what happened here is the opposite. The new 7970 is slightly slower than the old 4870 and stutters every now and then which is not only quite puzzling but also very much a show-stopper. I have no idea how a 50% (or more) constant drop in performance can happen. The following is what I have:

GPU: GV-R797OC-3GD
Mainboard: Foxconn DigitalLife A79A-S
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 750W

Tested this on:
Linux 64-bit
Windows XP SP2 32-bit

Everywhere it's 50% of the full speed and stuttering. Clock speed is 1000Hz under full load so the card clocks up properly. Drivers are in both cases 13.4 freshly installed.

What could be the problem? Defunct GPU? Defunct mainboard? A special BIOS option in this mainboard messing everything up? The mainboard somehow disliking the GPU?
 
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Why should this bottleneck the GPU if I ran pure GPU benchmarks on the card? For a game scenario this would be possible if tons of other stuff is running but in a pure GPU situation? Or does the 13.4 kill the CPU even for simple GPU rendering pushing the pipeline? In the checks I ran with 3dMark6 and PhoronixTestSuite the GPU only tests show 50% slowdown. Can this really come just from the CPU?
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Kari

Kari

Splendid
Jun 16, 2004
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have you checked for a bios update for the mobo? There might be some incompatibility problems running a pcie 3.0 card in a pcie 2.0 mobo that an updated bios version might be able to fix. In theory pcie is backwards compatible but some mobos needed a bios update to make it work properly.

edit I just checked foxconns site, none of the bios updates mention anything about pcie/graphics, only cpu support stuff... latest is from may 2010...
 
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spp85

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Aug 11, 2011
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Thats it a Clean CPU Bottleneck. You have no other option other than CPU upgrade. If your board supports AMD Phenom 2 X4 CPUs upgrade to that
 
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LordOfDragons

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Aug 24, 2013
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Why should this bottleneck the GPU if I ran pure GPU benchmarks on the card? For a game scenario this would be possible if tons of other stuff is running but in a pure GPU situation? Or does the 13.4 kill the CPU even for simple GPU rendering pushing the pipeline? In the checks I ran with 3dMark6 and PhoronixTestSuite the GPU only tests show 50% slowdown. Can this really come just from the CPU?
 
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Solution
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LordOfDragons

Honorable
Aug 24, 2013
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Actually I don't give a damn about Direct-Crap. OpenGL is what it's about. I can develop DX11 type games on XP with OpenGL without a problem. That said my main system is Linux. I used Windows XP only to narrow down the potential source of the problem. W8 and W7 is anyways never going to hit my machine. Way too much trouble to be worth it. Anyways...

What goes for the CPU I can look for a new one. That's not much bucks there to get one.

Now concerning the RAM I've got 4 Kingston HyperX T1, 2GB, DDR2-1066 in it for a total of 8G. I hoped to get this solved without having to totally skrew over the enitire mobo-cpu-ram brigade (seeing as how I replaced all 4-5 years ago already)...

EDIT: @guggi4. If looked up the specs and if I'm not wrong my CPU has 2G HT and the one mentioned earlier 4G. At least that's what the specs for the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Windsor 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor are stating.
 
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ThermalV

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Jul 11, 2013
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Your CPU is incredibly weak compared to your GPU, as stated before that is the issue, remember that when doing GPU only things the CPU is still feeding the GPU the numbers it has to crunch.

 
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guggi4

guggi4

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Jun 24, 2013
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it got 2GT/s but hypertransport clocks at 1000mhz.
best cpu you could put into your board would be a phenom II x4 965 be, but its still a bit weak for your vga.
 
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LordOfDragons

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Aug 24, 2013
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So what would be best required (best not in the sense of best possible best but reasonable so the GPU is not chained)? The board supports AM2 and AM2+. If I could get this working without a new mobo this would be nice. Otherwise though not a problem either.
 
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LordOfDragons

Honorable
Aug 24, 2013
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Hardware upgrade eventually done (longest delivery I've ever withnessed in my life so far!). The hardware is now:

- Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z, AMD 990FX
- Kingston HyperX black, 2x8GB, DDR3-1600
- AMD FX-8350, Vishera, 4.0GHz

with the same GPU:
- Gigabyte HD 7970 OC 3GB

But it didn't help much. Performance went up a bit but it's still 40% slower than it should be and is still beaten by a 4870 which just can't be.

What the hell can still be the problem? This HW-Combo should eliminate all possible bottle-necks yet the performance barely gets over 50% of the full performance there should be.
 
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LordOfDragons

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Aug 24, 2013
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I don't know the exact model of it. It's from 2008 somewhere. Concerning RAM i've got 16G.The temps are fine as far as I can tell.


I had to reinstall it anyways since windumb totally died with the new mainboard (not even failsafe booting).
 
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