HD 7970 Ghz Edition low fps/bench score,and incorrect clock speed

[khobbs_uk]

Hi,

Wondering if someone can help me,

I have a new system as below:

Intel DZ77RE75K Extreme motherboard
16GB DDR3 2133mhz Corsair ram
2 Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD raided 0
XFX HD 7970 Ghz Edition 3GB Graphics (single)


My problems are:

I scored 8300 on 3dmark (basic edition)
Various programs including 3dmark report my graphics clock speed at a all very low 300mhz :S
And memory clock 150

Also my ram using is only showing the correct mhz(1067*2=2133 ...dual channel) on the forth line along where others are strange numbers....see picture below......

I just feel that my system inst tuned, or may have faulty parts, I am getting a low 8k 3dmark score to ..If any can help me with anything, I would be in your debt, I have even my CPU in Windows showing at 3.5 even though it is set in bios to 4.0ghz

thanks in advance

 

[Deemo13]

I think 3DMark just does that. Your score seems fine. Windows will show your CPU as whatever the stock clock was.

8300 is pretty darn high. With my 6950 and 2500K I got about 5900, and with my GTX460 I get about 3200.

 

[Pinhedd]

300 Mhz core and 150 Mhz memory command are the standard idle frequencies for that card. Under load it will jump up to 925/1375 or whatever your card shipped at. 8300 is about right for a single 7970 I think, I get about twice that with two. Make sure that you're using the Catalyst 12.8 driver suite as well.

Your memory is not set to run in overclocked mode. You can see from the "Max Bandwidth" that it's running at PC3-10666 AKA DDR3-1333 which is the highest standard JEDEC profile on the memory modules (JEDEC #3). In order to run it at PC3-17067 AKA DDR3-2133 (XMP-2134) you will have to enable the XMP profile in your system setup. Consult your motherboard manual on how to do this

Please note that XMP profiles will almost always overclock your memory controller, apply non-standard voltages and non-standard timings. Thus, operation is not guaranteed and the entire system should be thoroughly tested for stability

 

[Totalslaughter]

I'm having the same problem with 2 HD 7970's on crossfire. Althought I tried monitoring the gpu core and memory clocks in games with afterburner OSD and I can run around in Diablo 3 and watch the cores drop from fullspeed to as low as 300mhz and the memory drops to 150mhz.

That is with an overclock, with no overclock the core drops to 501mhz. I've tried turning the power setting in CCC to 20 and forcing constant voltage in afterburner. Tried setting profiles for 2d clocks at full speed and 3d clocks the same in afterburner. Still does it, I can't figure it out, am on the latest drivers, 1200w power supply, watching temps, they are low when it's doing it. I can't figure it out.

 

[Totalslaughter]

Err, mine are also Ghz.

 

[Pinhedd]

I'm having the same problem with 2 HD 7970's on crossfire. Althought I tried monitoring the gpu core and memory clocks in games with afterburner OSD and I can run around in Diablo 3 and watch the cores drop from fullspeed to as low as 300mhz and the memory drops to 150mhz.

That is with an overclock, with no overclock the core drops to 501mhz. I've tried turning the power setting in CCC to 20 and forcing constant voltage in afterburner. Tried setting profiles for 2d clocks at full speed and 3d clocks the same in afterburner. Still does it, I can't figure it out, am on the latest drivers, 1200w power supply, watching temps, they are low when it's doing it. I can't figure it out.

Leave the power settings on default (0), or up to +10. The power settings are buggy and will actually cause the card to throttle back too far for some strange reason.

MSI Afterburner doesn't play very well with the 7970s for some reason, I'm not sure why.

 

[Dude496]

I had a lot of the same problems, and took me several months to finally get it all figured out. I have a ASRock Fatal1ty motherboard, 3770k two xfx 7970 DD in cf, and a 460ti for physx. Your 3dmark score is pretty good for a single card setup. I get about a P16k, graphics score of about 21K, physics sore of around 11k, and combined score around 9.5k. I had several issues gettng msi afterburner to play nicely, but finally got it all figured out. Here are some tips.

- ensure that overdrive is turned off in the catalyst control center
- ensure that manual fan is turned off in cataylst control center
- ensure that you have the 12.8 drivers installed
- ensure that you have the newest CAP profile installed
- ensure that you have deleted al old CAP profles (easy way to check is go to control panel, open progarms and features, scorll down and look for a application profile program from AMD, make sure there is only one of these programs in there, if there are more than one, you will need to uninstall the old ones)
- If you want to go past the 1125 MHZ limit in MSI after burner, you will need to do a few changes, including the dll file,but MSI has removed the ati clock files, they removed them back a few updates ago...you will need to get the atixx.dll file (can't remember the exact name at the moment)...I can lok for the file if you want to know it.
- The reason that your clock speed shows as 300 mhz, is because powerplay is enabled...3dmark gets your clock speed while the loading screen is working. If you want it to show the true speed, you will need to disable powerplay by going into the afterburner cfg file, enable the unofficial overclocking by entering 1 and then the next line instead of putting a 1 there, put a 2 to disable powerplay...this can actually help with games and 2d applications, but it will require more power even at idle, so be warned if you worry about your electric bill.
- if you plan on going crossfire, you might want to disable the ULPS...it seem that 128 drivers have done a pretty good job at using ulps, but there is still a possibility that it can get buggy when overclocking with crossfire.

 

[khobbs_uk]

sorry for delay, thanks all for your comments, I will be looking in to all of these, thanks again

On a note:

I have always had my motherboards XMP enabled, so little confusing why my memory is still running at 1333mhz

Thanks

 

[Totalslaughter]

Appreciate the info dude but still not working all that well for me. I uninstalled afterburner, reinstalled drivers. Tried monitoring with gpu-z refreshing while in game and then checking on it. Tried with power setting at 0, 10. Tried it overclocked a little through CCC and stock clocks. With power at 10 and small overclock it did pretty well but still dipped to 300 couple times in diablo 3. So a lot better but still doing it. Messing with other settings mentioned above it still kept dropping in game, when I alt tab and check Gpu-z the little graph is just up and down all over the place. Guess I'm sending the cards back and wait awhile.

Maybe wait till next gen or have to switch to 680's but the whole pixel clock restriction thing in the nvidia drivers make me not want to do that yet. I've got a 1440p monitor coming soon looking to drive at 120hz but nvidia is limited to 84hz at that resolution, big part of the reason I snagged the 7970's. I'll just go back to my old cards for now I guess, maybe try to hold off till next gen, old cards are 5970 and 5870. They just struggle on new games at high settings though and only on 1080p atm, 1440p going to make it worse. Ugh.

And I lost my badass ranking in borderlands 2, nice little bad luck streak I'm having.

 

[Pinhedd]

Appreciate the info dude but still not working all that well for me. I uninstalled afterburner, reinstalled drivers. Tried monitoring with gpu-z refreshing while in game and then checking on it. Tried with power setting at 0, 10. Tried it overclocked a little through CCC and stock clocks. With power at 10 and small overclock it did pretty well but still dipped to 300 couple times in diablo 3. So a lot better but still doing it. Messing with other settings mentioned above it still kept dropping in game, when I alt tab and check Gpu-z the little graph is just up and down all over the place. Guess I'm sending the cards back and wait awhile.

Maybe wait till next gen or have to switch to 680's but the whole pixel clock restriction thing in the nvidia drivers make me not want to do that yet. I've got a 1440p monitor coming soon looking to drive at 120hz but nvidia is limited to 84hz at that resolution, big part of the reason I snagged the 7970's. I'll just go back to my old cards for now I guess, maybe try to hold off till next gen, old cards are 5970 and 5870. They just struggle on new games at high settings though and only on 1080p atm, 1440p going to make it worse. Ugh.

And I lost my badass ranking in borderlands 2, nice little bad luck streak I'm having.

Borderlands 2 uses the Steam Cloud, so if you lost your save it should be downloaded next time you launch the game

 

[Dude496]

From everything that Ive seen, the 7970 can go blow for blow with the 680...especially once overclocked to 1200+ mhz. Have you installed afterburner and opened the clock speeds up past the 1125 mhz limit? Also, from what you wrote, it looks like you havent disabled powerplay yet. I'd recommend doing both of these things before jumping ship to nvidia...not knocking nvidia at all, just both cards are very close to the same level of performance. Here is a quote and a link to disable powerplay...

Seek UnofficialOverclockingEULA field and add following text:
I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it

****Set UnofficialOverclockingMode to 1 to keep PowerPlay active (may not work on old ASICs), 2 to traditionally disable PowerPlay or to 0 to temporary disable unofficial overclocking path

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=338906

 

[Totalslaughter]

Well thanks dude.

I searched on google a bit after disabling the powerplay feature and trying to unlock unsopported OC because AB wouldn't detect / show the clock speeds and voltage. Had to put the two missing .dll files in AB directory and startup the AB shortcut with the -xcl and reboot. After that all worked well, I got an overclock of 1250 / 1700 on both cards and played Borderlands 2 with the best perfromance I've been able to manage, I also have a Gts 450 for dedicated physx.

I kept an eye on clock with AB OSD and they didn't drop once. Sucks to have to run the cards at full speed all the time though and was a lot of tinkering to get them to not downclock in game. Not sure if I will send them back or not now. The only other thing bothering me is the electrical "clicking" noise of the cards. I see online a lot of complaints of the same on the 7970's. Mine it is loud enough to hear over the case fans with the case all closed up. Never had a Gpu that made so much noise other then the fan.

Thanks again, I at least got them working like they should for now.

 

[Pinhedd]

Well thanks dude.

I searched on google a bit after disabling the powerplay feature and trying to unlock unsopported OC because AB wouldn't detect / show the clock speeds and voltage. Had to put the two missing .dll files in AB directory and startup the AB shortcut with the -xcl and reboot. After that all worked well, I got an overclock of 1250 / 1700 on both cards and played Borderlands 2 with the best perfromance I've been able to manage, I also have a Gts 450 for dedicated physx.

I kept an eye on clock with AB OSD and they didn't drop once. Sucks to have to run the cards at full speed all the time though and was a lot of tinkering to get them to not downclock in game. Not sure if I will send them back or not now. The only other thing bothering me is the electrical "clicking" noise of the cards. I see online a lot of complaints of the same on the 7970's. Mine it is loud enough to hear over the case fans with the case all closed up. Never had a Gpu that made so much noise other then the fan.

Thanks again, I at least got them working like they should for now.

If it's a really high pitched, high frequency clicking noise then it would be coil whine. This has nothing to do with the 7970 chip itself and everything to do with the OEM components and construction on the PCB. It's nothing to worry about, but if it's really bothering you it may be grounds for an RMA

 

[Dude496]

Glad to hear that you got it working! Changing powerplay is super easy, might be worthwile changing back and forth when not playing games....I know that is kind of a pain, and definitely a bandaid fix

 

[khobbs_uk]

Well thanks dude.

The only other thing bothering me is the electrical "clicking" noise of the cards. I see online a lot of complaints of the same on the 7970's. Mine it is loud enough to hear over the case fans with the case all closed up. Never had a Gpu that made so much noise other then the fan.

Thanks again, I at least got them working like they should for now.

HI again,

Did you retuen the cards? I have the same noise, a whisle type whining, annoying, only when under load, I will RMA if it gets worse, just was curious how yours is getting on.

 

[bloc97]

[...] I have the same noise, a whisle type whining, annoying, only when under load...

Be sure that its the graphic card that does the whining sounds...
Most of the time it is the Power Supply. The iron cores on the Graphic Card are too small to make a significant noise, but the Power Supply has a Huge coil.

 

[khobbs_uk]

Hi,

Def the graphics card, tried it in 2 different systems with different psu's, think I will see how it goes, as I have seen a lot of people with this issue with noise on the 7970's.


Thanks for reply