Hi Guys,
Heads up - this post is very long! I've tried to detail as much info as i can to get to the bottom of this problem.
My Dad won this card from ebay - got it pretty cheap, the guy put in his ad that he'd bought 2 of the same card in the hopes of running them Crossfire but realised he needed to upgrade his PSU, he decided not to as he found the one card sufficient - stated that the card is as New and that it was only installed and tested.
The card has arrived and as promised shows no signs of wear etc and at first glance seems like a real bargain.
Installing a GFX card is a simple job for me - i've done it myself, for friends and family many times - but this had me suspicious from the get go... i need to know if it's a duff or not. It's behaving so strange i just can't put my finger on it.
Specs of his machine are :-
Core i5 Ivy Bridge
Asus P8P67 revision 3
8GB Corsair Hyper X DDR3 RAM
Corsair TX650 PSU (Maybe underpowered?)
Windows 7
Previously had an Nvidia GTX 560ti which this was to replace.
We decided to do some housekeeping on the machine too while we were at it so it's been completely flattened with a Brand new install of Windows 7 so the AMD drivers were completely Fresh.
Crysis 2 - Run OK for a minute or so then the machine hard crashed with Pink Garbled Junk on the screen - Game would not play at all afterwards and Crashes repeatedly after starting the game and loading.
I decided to boost the Power setting in the AMD Overdrive tool to +50 but then noticed the defaults in the Overdrive utility seem a bit off :-
Target GPU temperature is all the way to 95
Maximum Fan speed is set to 47%
Now things get weird when you pull the Target Temp slider all the way down to 45 the Fan speed Ramps all the way to 100% (Despite the max being set at 46%) and will not reduce... it got the temp all the way to 40c but still @100% speed (Sounding like a Jet engine!) No matter what i change the Max fan speed to - doesn't make any difference at all....
Since Boosting the Power - Crysis 2 Run fine for 15-20 minutes - then Black screen Crash
Sleeping Dogs - Run perfect as expected nice and smooth - Crashed Black screen after a few minutes play - required Reboot.
Tomb Raider Benchmark - Seems to run Perfect - achieving some really good FPS @ ultra settings Min 74, Max 129, average 107. Run a few times - consistent results then hard crash after 4-5 times..
At this stage (Despite the odd Overdrive settings) im thinking it may be a issue so i've taken the card home and put into my machine (I run a 7970) Similar Spec machine - though i have a Corsair GS800 PSU and ASROCK z68Pro M3 motherboard and run Windows 8.1
And things get even weirder......
I initially noticed that scrolling around Windows 8 is sluggish, no smooth animations - seems to be struggling - almost like when you have no graphics driver installed. Moving Windows around is Jerky and the mouse feels unresponsive.
The Default settings in Overdrive are the same....
Tomb Raider - Benches perfectly - Achieving even higher FPS Min 96, Max 144, Average 119
Sleeping Dogs - around 120 fps outside (reached 180+ inside!) Did crash after 5 minutes or so.
Dark Souls 2 - Running at 60FPS - i think the game is capped at this
So after some success I was definately thinking a PSU issue in my dads machine, but then i decided to further test with some other some other games.... and gets Weirder still (Cue Suspense music!)....
Bioshock 2, Skyrim, Borderlands 2 & Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 - are all capped at 24 fps...
Is this a Duff card or am i doing something wrong??? My 7970 eats all these games alive in my machine.
Apologies this was very long but really would appreciate some thoughts on this.
Thanks
Paul
Heads up - this post is very long! I've tried to detail as much info as i can to get to the bottom of this problem.
My Dad won this card from ebay - got it pretty cheap, the guy put in his ad that he'd bought 2 of the same card in the hopes of running them Crossfire but realised he needed to upgrade his PSU, he decided not to as he found the one card sufficient - stated that the card is as New and that it was only installed and tested.
The card has arrived and as promised shows no signs of wear etc and at first glance seems like a real bargain.
Installing a GFX card is a simple job for me - i've done it myself, for friends and family many times - but this had me suspicious from the get go... i need to know if it's a duff or not. It's behaving so strange i just can't put my finger on it.
Specs of his machine are :-
Core i5 Ivy Bridge
Asus P8P67 revision 3
8GB Corsair Hyper X DDR3 RAM
Corsair TX650 PSU (Maybe underpowered?)
Windows 7
Previously had an Nvidia GTX 560ti which this was to replace.
We decided to do some housekeeping on the machine too while we were at it so it's been completely flattened with a Brand new install of Windows 7 so the AMD drivers were completely Fresh.
Crysis 2 - Run OK for a minute or so then the machine hard crashed with Pink Garbled Junk on the screen - Game would not play at all afterwards and Crashes repeatedly after starting the game and loading.
I decided to boost the Power setting in the AMD Overdrive tool to +50 but then noticed the defaults in the Overdrive utility seem a bit off :-
Target GPU temperature is all the way to 95
Maximum Fan speed is set to 47%
Now things get weird when you pull the Target Temp slider all the way down to 45 the Fan speed Ramps all the way to 100% (Despite the max being set at 46%) and will not reduce... it got the temp all the way to 40c but still @100% speed (Sounding like a Jet engine!) No matter what i change the Max fan speed to - doesn't make any difference at all....
Since Boosting the Power - Crysis 2 Run fine for 15-20 minutes - then Black screen Crash
Sleeping Dogs - Run perfect as expected nice and smooth - Crashed Black screen after a few minutes play - required Reboot.
Tomb Raider Benchmark - Seems to run Perfect - achieving some really good FPS @ ultra settings Min 74, Max 129, average 107. Run a few times - consistent results then hard crash after 4-5 times..
At this stage (Despite the odd Overdrive settings) im thinking it may be a issue so i've taken the card home and put into my machine (I run a 7970) Similar Spec machine - though i have a Corsair GS800 PSU and ASROCK z68Pro M3 motherboard and run Windows 8.1
And things get even weirder......
I initially noticed that scrolling around Windows 8 is sluggish, no smooth animations - seems to be struggling - almost like when you have no graphics driver installed. Moving Windows around is Jerky and the mouse feels unresponsive.
The Default settings in Overdrive are the same....
Tomb Raider - Benches perfectly - Achieving even higher FPS Min 96, Max 144, Average 119
Sleeping Dogs - around 120 fps outside (reached 180+ inside!) Did crash after 5 minutes or so.
Dark Souls 2 - Running at 60FPS - i think the game is capped at this
So after some success I was definately thinking a PSU issue in my dads machine, but then i decided to further test with some other some other games.... and gets Weirder still (Cue Suspense music!)....
Bioshock 2, Skyrim, Borderlands 2 & Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 - are all capped at 24 fps...
Is this a Duff card or am i doing something wrong??? My 7970 eats all these games alive in my machine.
Apologies this was very long but really would appreciate some thoughts on this.
Thanks
Paul
D
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