Sapphire 7970 wont OC to 1000 MHz from stock 950

[dahuddman]

Hello, I'm new to overclocking but I've checked a lot of the things I've researched about and have found nothing wrong so far. I am trying to OC my Sapphire 7970 3GB to what most people can get in core clock speeds (1100-1200MHz). I get display driver crash after running Heaven on max settings almost immediately when I try to OC at anything more than 40 or 50 MHz above stock. I have the latest non-beta driver installed for my gpu and am trying to OC with AMD Overdrive.

Here is what I am using:
AMD FX8350 CPU
Sapphire Hd 7970 3GB GPU
8(2X4) GB 1866 MHz RAM
750W Seasonic PSU

I checked the ASIC rating of my card and it is at a pretty standard 73%. My card runs at 1.175 V stock. I bump the power up by 5-10% with AMD overdrive when trying to OC but it doesnt seem to do anything. The 7970 has never gone above 55 degrees, so I can't see heat being any sort of a problem. The display crashes happen at the same OC level (next to no OC) in Skyrim (modded heavily) as in Heaven.

This is all the information I can think of that I have gathered. I don't really know what else could be causing this problem. One thing that I noticed in BIOS is that my stick RAM are defaulted to 1333 MHz so I don't know if that could have any adverse effects on what I am trying to do.

Cheers, and sorry for another n00b thread :/

 

[matsamas]

if some1 helps you it will also helps me. I have the exact problem with my sapphire hd 7970 3gb (non oced/w/o boost). my asci quality is also 73.3%
i cant oc at all. and i tried everything even voltage adjustment with trixx/msi afterburner.

 

[dahuddman]

Imma let this run through one more time because I've still not been able to get it working right :/

 

[matsamas]

I was in a situation like yours for over 1 week trying to get it stable and i never succed. After so long i realised that even a single sapphire hd 7970 non oced and w/o boost can play any game even crysis 3 on ultra at 1080p 100% smooth. I also played skyrim,the witcher 2, remember me,prototype 2,need for speed most wanted 2012,payday 2,bioshock infite at higher settings with vsynch on completely smooth. So i found out i dont need to overclock it at all. Its cool and quite and highly perpforming at stock. Why should i play with voltages and damange it or reduce it life time? So i am fine atm waiting for my next salary to buy 1 more and go crossfire. After that i would be ok for 3 to 4 years.