HIS Radeon 6950 iceq x 2gb throttling at 74 degrees

[andiuk007]

Hi their people, this is my first ever post on this forum so i`m a newb and don`t really know how this forum works. I have a HIS Radeon 6950 iceq x 2gb with very mild overclock 880/1400, when i stress test it or play games if the GPU temp reaches 74-76 degrees the card throttles and boots me out of the stress test or game, which ever I am doing. I have seen people report temps of over 85 degrees and running clocks of 950/1550 and no problems. Has anyone got any advice for me as I would like to turn the clocks up a bit more and have stability, I am led to believe this card can easily run high clocks, any help or advice would be nice.

The system in question is-

mobo- p55m pro
cpu- i5 670 (stock clocks) stock cooler
case- cit vantage gamers case, 4 x 120mm fans 1 front intake, 2 side intake, 1 rear exhaust
HHD`s- OCZ petrol SSD 64gb, seagate mechanical drive 500gb
psu OCZ TS 650w
ram- 2x4gb DDR3 1333

I think I have covered the main components in my system, PLEASE help

Thanks Andi.

 

[coozie7]

If possible, turn the fan up to keep the temperatures lower, or, simply lower the overclock.
My 6950 won't run stable at those frequencies either BTW, even though its shaders unlocked nicely, just luck of the draw I guess.

 

[andiuk007]

Thanks for the advice, can I ask what performance difference you saw when opening up the shaders pal? would you recommend it or no real difference?

 

[xaed]

Thanks for the advice, can I ask what performance difference you saw when opening up the shaders pal? would you recommend it or no real difference?

You won't "see" any real difference since the human eye can only process around 60 fps on average. Anything above that is simply for benchmarking.

I had the same issues with 2 crossfired 6870's from HIS. Then they broke, that's a brand I try and steer clear from.

 

[andiuk007]

The card is a decent performer in BF3 and all games I have played really for what I paid for it, I just want the best performance that the card can offer, any suggestions on what clock speeds I should try? Given that it`s been establised I have been unlucky and mine is a bad ovrclocker, aslo what max temp is an acceptable in a furmark stress test? Testing at 1920x1080 resolution.

 

[coozie7]

The shader unlock gets 5-10% depending on game. Total FPS increase can be modest, (6-7 in Metro 2033) but hey, it's free so I'm not going to complain .
Temperature wise, try to stay the right side of 90c, but with that cooler, I doubt you'll see those numbers anyway.
As with any overclocking, just take it slowly and increment a few MHz at a time until things start to go pear-shaped.
BTW, the AMD drivers do n't always allow the card to run at maximum, using GPU-Z I see mine cutting back a fair bit under Furmark so I prefer to use the Unigine Heaven test-Anyone out there have any comments on this?

 

[andiuk007]

What do you mean cutting back with furmark pal? and if I unlock the shaders can i still do a mild overclock? i`m steping it up slowly and upto yet i can get 840/1270 stable at 84 degree`s in furmark stability test, well when i say stabe thats after 15 minutes under stress..I will run a 2 hour stress test when I feel I have found the cards limit and see where I stand

 

[coozie7]

Run GPU-Z alongside Furmark, it depends on driver version amongst other things, but I see my card frequently slowing its core frequency under this test.

 

[andiuk007]

coozie7 what driver version do you reccomend i grip myself pal? I have the latest driver from Radeon`s site but if you can recommend a better or more stable drier i would love to try it out mate

 

[coozie7]

I'm sure I saw 12.3 mentoned but be advised: Furmark REALLY maxes out the card, the frequency drops are automatically applied to protect the card from overload.
Someting from the Favourites:

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1028256

 

[andiuk007]

I`ve had a read of that link pal, thanks for sending that so basically furmarks stress test is a savage test thats on a mission to abuse the gpu and potencially kill it from what iv read I did a 3 hour stress test with furmark last night aswell and it proved stable at 840/1270 and 84 degrees max (although the room became unbarablly warm and unbarably) i have un-installed furmark after reading that link, i am interested in flashing the bios to 6070 for the shaders. Is this pretty easy to do?

 

[andiuk007]

*6970^^

 

[coozie7]

Sorry to sound so heavy-handed but I really cannot, in good faith, provide links to show you how to do this for these reasons:
The card wo n't run stable at 6970 speeds.
Not all 6950s have a dual BIOS, if yours lacks this feature there's a chance the card will be bricked. Recovery can be tricky, and expensive, if it will recover at all.
Not all will flash anyway, AFAIK AMD made production changes to stop this after the first generation, so it's unlikely yours will as I suspect it's from a later production run.

 

[andiuk007]

mine was new November 2011 so it probly is later production, think i will leave it the way it is then if their is a chance of me messing it all up, thanks for the honesty mate

 

[coozie7]

No probs, glad you accepted it the way it was intended.