MSI Lightning 7970 BE - Freeze problem

[fletarn]

Hello everyone!

I just recently picked up a MSI Lightning 7970R Boost Edition. Everything has been working fine until a couple of days ago when I picked up Crysis 3 and felt a need for overclocking the card (which it is built for).

As the overclocking amateur I am I took it very easy, followed some beginners guide and with small steps I ended up with:

1.3mV
1200core
1700memory
fan 100%

Here it ran furmark very well, no artifacts and good temperatures. Concidering what others has clocked this card up to with standard cooling I thought this would be a good start.

After testing it for a while I decided so start crysis 3, It went good for a minute or so and the screen froze. The screen showed a weird striped pattern consisting of colours showed on screen before crash.

I had to restart the computer with the power button and decided to start all over again with the tewaking and eventually got it to crash simillary in FurMark to.

The thing that annoys me it that I never get a single artifact on screen, either it crashes or it runs smooth. What am I doing wrong? Considering the card I bought, shouldn't it work better on these speeds or am I simply pushing it too hard?

Setup:
MSI Lightning 7970 Boost edition with CCC 13.1
i7 860 (not overclocked)
DP55WG Intel mobo
800W Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold

 

[Rustyy117]

Hi,

I've had a similar experience with overclocking a HD7950, it's fine in benchmarks @ 1200/1500 1.175V but fails Far Cry 3 very quickly (PC restarts or the game stops responding/driver crash).
I had to basically start the overclocking procedure again, but instead of stability testing with benchmarks I used Far Cry 3 and reached a stable overclock of 1150/1500 with 1.2V

Start with the core in small incremental steps and then do the same with the memory.

 

[fletarn]

Alright, thanks for the reply.

Yeah maybe i'm pushing it too hard but what really bothers me is that concidering other peoples overclock results with the MSI lightning 7970 BE, my overclock shouldn't really be a problem, right?

And shouldn't I be seeing some artifacts before I reach the point of freezes/black screens? Nothing seems wrong up until crashes.

 

[Rustyy117]

Alright, thanks for the reply.

Yeah maybe i'm pushing it too hard but what really bothers me is that concidering other peoples overclock results with the MSI lightning 7970 BE, my overclock shouldn't really be a problem, right?

And shouldn't I be seeing some artifacts before I reach the point of freezes/black screens? Nothing seems wrong up until crashes.

Perhaps Crysis is more stressful than what other people are testing their overclocks with, or perhaps you've been unlucky and got a GPU that doesn't overclock well... It's hard to say for sure but if you reduce your overclock and crysis is stable then it would tell you that your previous (higher) overclock was causing the issue (providing temps aren't an issue, which I imagine they're not).

Like I said before, overclock again but test with crysis and see how far you get.

 

[Guest]

Firstly, the striped pattern occurs when there isn't sufficient voltage going through the vram, so you don't have a stable clock speed for it.

Secondly, the thing with crysis 3 is that it has a tendency to, actually, make use of nearly 70-80% (or even higher) vram, while in the past, most games don't reach this level (unless you are playing a heavily modded skyrim for example).

Thirdly, ocing vram results in poor performance benefits as compared to actually ocing your gcore, so try to firstly get a stable gpu using crysis 3 and then you can press on with ocing your memory. It will all be tedious and I don't know if you will see any more than a few fps in the end.

lastly, it's all silicon lottery in the end, some over clock great others don't. Companies sell these card with emphasis on ocing but in reality they don't guarantee any of it, in fact most vendors see it as voiding warranty (such as intel and amd with regards to cpus even the k versions).

 

[Guest]

Alright, thanks for the reply.

Yeah maybe i'm pushing it too hard but what really bothers me is that concidering other peoples overclock results with the MSI lightning 7970 BE, my overclock shouldn't really be a problem, right?

And shouldn't I be seeing some artifacts before I reach the point of freezes/black screens? Nothing seems wrong up until crashes.

You generally won't see artifacting with regards to an oc of vram, it will tend to fail with striped pattern on the 7xxx cards. Also I believe you might be able to hit 1250/1500 at 1.3 v, try it.

 

[fletarn]

You generally won't see artifacting with regards to an oc of vram, it will tend to fail with striped pattern on the 7xxx cards. Also I believe you might be able to hit 1250/1500 at 1.3 v, try it.

Thanks both of you for the very informative replies! Have been playing on stock speeds now but will definately go for another tweaking-try tonight Will let you know how it worked out! Thanks

 

[Guest]

Thanks both of you for the very informative replies! Have been playing on stock speeds now but will definately go for another tweaking-try tonight Will let you know how it worked out! Thanks

No problem, look forward to hearing about the outcome.