7970 underclocking in games?

heroxoot · **7970 underclocking in games? -** 07-21-2012, 06:10 | posts: 203 | Location: TN

Well I am unsure of it really. Mainly noticing it in Super Street fighter IV Arcade Edition. Sometimes the clocks will run 501/1400 instead of 1070/1400. The load is rather low, usually less than 30%.

SO is it a problem or is it due to no load the card underclocks?

heroxoot · 07-22-2012, 04:35 | posts: 203 | Location: TN

So no one can give me an answer? Awws.

BrightCandle · 07-22-2012, 12:29 | posts: 88 | Location: UK

I saw the same thing on my 7970's with Star Wars the Old republic and a few other very low utilisation games. It happens when Vsync is on for the most part as the card realises it can get away with considerably less power consumption, so it does. Unfortunately in SWTOR it was wrong and the cards full performance was necessary and it was causing performance problems.

It also seems to happen when you play the games Windowed. For whatever reason the cards seem to downclock often when in Windowed mode (which you use as an eyefinity user sometimes to trick a game into working across 3 screens) and its equally a problem then as well.

In short I traced the problem to AMD's drivers, its there rubbish power saving code that is causing the problem and that is why I now have a 680 GTX. I don't have this problem anymore.

heroxoot · 07-23-2012, 05:15 | posts: 203 | Location: TN

Ahh ok. Can I turn this off? I have already disabled UPLS via ATIman. It has a shortcut for it. I have a 7970 lightning and I should be on the unlocked bios, 1070mhz.

Lane · 07-23-2012, 16:48 | posts: 4,866 | Location: Switzerland

Are you sure it happen when you are "playing" and not between the " fight " . when you are on the menu.

I dont have the last SF, but on the other one, the thing was the games run so fast 200+fps, if you lock the framerate at 60fps with v-sync, the card could just not need this power lol ..

If i run BF3 without v-sync, i have 85-99% usage on both cards, if i use v-sync, the usage on both is at 40-60% ( even less ) ... just the cards dont need more for stay at 60fps.

But i have never seen a card who run in this case at a lower clock speed ..

Lowki · 08-25-2012, 03:12 | posts: 402 | Location: miami

This is happening to me awsell does anyone know a fix?

main_shoby · 08-30-2012, 04:18 | posts: 805 | Location: Miami

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lane

Are you sure it happen when you are "playing" and not between the " fight " . when you are on the menu.

I dont have the last SF, but on the other one, the thing was the games run so fast 200+fps, if you lock the framerate at 60fps with v-sync, the card could just not need this power lol ..

If i run BF3 without v-sync, i have 85-99% usage on both cards, if i use v-sync, the usage on both is at 40-60% ( even less ) ... just the cards dont need more for stay at 60fps.

But i have never seen a card who run in this case at a lower clock speed ..

^ this. a 4870 can run that game at 60 fps, max settings .... hmmmm.... i wonder how this card will respond to pacman.
off topic (lol) : what kind of slow downs you are facing when card declocks ?

heroxoot · 08-31-2012, 18:15 | posts: 203 | Location: TN

After a while 2.2.3 MSI AB came out and it started showing properly. There are old games the 7970 will run stock clocks at during 3d, but because its too powerful. Like Halo 2. These guys gave out tons of halo 2 keys and I got one. Whn I played I noticed my GPU runs idle clocks a lot. Everything else is great.

Lowki · 08-31-2012, 18:44 | posts: 402 | Location: miami

It only happens to me on the ghz BIOS. I actually did a test. Ran unigine on ghz bios then on regular BIOS overclocked. Better score with standardt BIOS. Also u see a little stutter when it downclocks to either 500 oor 300 Mhz

Falkentyne · 09-01-2012, 12:06 | posts: 367

Try disabling powerplay and then run the exact same test. You should have the same performance then.

Disabling powerplay is easy. Just open the CCC overdrive page and create 2 profiles with overdrive open, PPEnabled and PPdisabled. (make sure no other pages are open in CCC).

Then open the profiles (PPdisabled) in notepad (should be in c:\users\xxxx\appdata\local\ati\ace\profiles.

Look for coreclocktarget, core voltage target and memory clock target (ignore memory voltage). Change the want_0 values for core clock target and core voltage and memory clock to match the overdrive values for want_1. The current want_0's should be your 2d idle clocks.
Make VERY sure you remember to set want_0 for core voltage to match the overdrive voltage shown (even if the overdrive voltage doesn't seem to make alot of sense, e.g. 1256), otherwise you're going to crash or GSOD EXTREMELY fast if you apply the profile.

When you want powerplay reenabled, just activate the ppenabled profile (which is just a duplicate before you started editing stuff).

here's an example from mine.
In my case, on the ghz card, the stock 1256 3d voltage, for some reason, is 1.187v (before vdroop).

<Profile>
<Caste name="Graphics">
<Groups>
<Group name="Overdrive5">
<Feature name="TimeUnlocked" />
<Feature name="OverclockEnabled">
<Property name="OverclockEnabledProperty" value="True" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="AutoTuneSupport" />
<Feature name="CoreClockTarget_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6798&am p;SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A&0& amp;0008A">
<Property name="Want_0" value="115000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="115000" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="PowerControl_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6798&S UBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A&0&amp ;0008A">
<Property name="Want" value="20" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6798& amp;SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A& 0&0008A">
<Property name="Want_0" value="170000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="170000" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="CoreVoltageTarget_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6798& amp;SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A& 0&0008A">
<Property name="Want_0" value="1256" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="1256" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="MemoryVoltageTarget_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_679 8&SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A&am p;0&0008A">
<Property name="Want_0" value="0" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedProtocol_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6798&a mp;SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A&0 &0008A">
<Property name="FanSpeedProtocolProperty" value="Percent" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6798& amp;SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A& 0&0008A">
<Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Manual" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6798& amp;SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A& 0&0008A">
<Property name="Want" value="1064" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6 798&SUBSYS_30001002&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A& amp;0&0008A">
<Property name="Want" value="60" />
</Feature>
</Group>
</Groups>
<Adapter name="PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_6798&SUBSYS_3000100 2&REV_00_4&2D68EC9A&0&0008A">
<Aspect name="Overdrive5" />
</Adapter>
</Caste>
<Caste name="Platform">
<Groups />
<Adapter name="PlatformAdapterUDID" />
</Caste>
</Profile>