Sapphire Radeon HD5670 Issues

I've honestly just registered on this site as it seems people actually have a clue what they're talking about. My old tower burnt out (HDD Fried) so I felt like upgrading to a new one, and have been slowly upgrading it as I've seen fit. I've read quite a few threads of problems with the 5670 HD but none quite answering my question/problem.

The problem I've been having is my Sapphire Radeon HD5670 GPU seems to perform far below what it should. In near any game I've tried to run, it performs at a lower frame rate than the integrated Radeon 4200, or my laptop's Geforce 9650m GT.uke2:

Athlon II x4 (2.2 x 4) CPU
4Gb DDR3 1333 RAM (Can be boosted up to 8Gb, but DDR3 1333 is the maximum speed supported for my current mobo)
SeaSonic S12II 620w 48a PSU
Sapphire Radeon 5670 HD 1Gb
Win 7 premium 64bit

Been thinking of ditching the hunk of junk and moving on to a GTX 570 but I'd rather attempt to fix up what I currently have, else it may be a bottlenecking problem that would persist even in a 570.

 

Clearly something is wrong with the card. From your specs and what you've told me, this thing sounds like an RMA pos! That is, hopefully you can still RMA it

 

Well it has a 2 year warranty and such, I've just never had a problem quite like this.. I've had things DOA, overheat, or fry, but never just poor performance.. The card still works, just far under expected levels.. What should I even say in the RMA form? :3eyes:

 

First, if you haven't already, I would try doing a full uninstall of the drivers on your card. Reinstall a fresh set of downloaded drivers, re-start and give it a go. If that doesn't fix the issue, its quite likely the card is bad.

On the RMA form you'd tell them the same thing you're telling us basically lol. The damn thing doesn't work

 

I've just realized I'm an idiot.
I've never really overclocked... Anything, and felt like attempting to boost the card before sending it back, and noticed something.. Both CCC and GPU-Z say that my card is set to the lowest possible settings. I used CCC's Auto-Tune to try to boost my card up to something usable, yet there is no apply, or accept option. It seems to tell me what my card can handle, without actually changing the speed. How can I change the speed of my card? :/
Picture Link.

I've tried reading the ATI Graphic Card Overclocking.... post, but unless I missed it, no where in it does it mention HOW to overclock. It repeatedly mentions limits set by physical boundaries and your Bios, but not how to actually overclock.

 

@ Noobiest

The frequencies you're seeing (the locked ones) are most likely 2D or low-power 3D frequencies (power-saving features). The "full power 3D" frequency will only be used when required (any 3D game or real time 3D scene should be enough). You can try to set GPU-Z as always refresh in background, and launch any game or 3DMark and alt tab out after some time to see if the frequencies moved or not

 

So the settings SHOULD auto change to what CCC is set to once a graphic intensive program is running? I'm wondering if this is not happening, considering my current computer is lagging in games more than my laptop.
Tower vs. Laptop
2.8 x4 - 2.66 x2 cpu
4GB DDR3 - 4GB DDR2
ATI HD5670 - Geforce 9650m GT

Attempted to look at RivaTuner just in case I could find something out without asking, and was stopped dead at step 2. "No support drivers detected for this display adapter."

 

Maybe I spoke too soon. It took CCC 7 1/2 hours to finish its auto-tune (......really necessary?) it suddenly seems to have updated as well.
gpu clock 835 default 775
gpu memory 1035 default 1000

GPU core clock 157.00 Mhz, GPU Memory Clock 300 Mhz.

There's some power savings..
Guess CCC just likes to screw with me time to test it again.

 

Cool! Let us know. :biggun:

 

Now runs better than my integrated 4200! (Yet still not as well as my laptop's 8650m gt)
Ran the same game on both computers, laptop/tower. At first neither lagged and both had reasonable FPS. 20 minutes in my tower's FPS fell a little but still reasonable. 2 hours in my laptop's FPS fell because it started to overheat..
Did one test that made my laptop lag before, and still does, on my tower.
Laptop FPS crashes to 2-5 FPS for 1-3 seconds then restores to normal FPS after powering through it.
Tower dropped to 10 FPS for 15-30 seconds and felt like major laggy crap.
Overclocked tower still sucks compared to older, weaker laptop... What gives?

 

An HD 5670 should be way more powerful than any geForce 86xxGT/S series of cards as the HD 5670 is about as fast as an HD 3870 which matches the 8800GT that also smokes any 8600 series of cards, odd.

 

I also believe that it is quite odd and wish to test it further, but am not sure how. Do you know any programs that could test if it's my GPU maxing out or my system bottlenecking?

 

Well, Rivatuner have a GPU monitoring tool with a diagram and can save it so you can watch it once you are done with gaming. GPU-Z works similar but doesn't have the fancy graphics that Rivatuner has, it will save the results on a text, but it still useful if you don't want to complicate yourself too much, as Rivatuner haven't been updated for a while and it can cause crashes on a system.

 

Attempted with GPU-Z.
Not a fan of how it records it.. It could be worse, but GPU-Z simply samples your GPU every 2 seconds, not giving a fully accurate high or average load.
(sampling temp, clock speed, gpu load, and a couple others)

From GPU-Z my average GPU load was 28 in game, and my high was 76 in game, 88 while alt-tabbing out of game.
Is there a more accurate test I could run? I'm not sure how Rivatuner does its recording..
Also, if my high truely was in the high 70s, low 80s it (most likely) wouldn't be my GPU causing me to lag. Is there any way to check what might be bottlenecking my system?

 

Which game are you testing it with?try 3dmark11 instead and post your results.

 

Tower in 3dmark11:


Tower in 3dmark03:


Laptop in 3dmark03:



3Dmark03 told me a lot more than 3dmark11, specially for my laptop.
Seems both of my computers are limited by their processors, although my laptop's GPU isn't very limited as it isn't much more powerful.
My tower's on the other hand is getting slaughtered by its processor.
I wanted to believe a 2.8 x4 would be much stronger than a 2.6 x2, but I guess not for gaming or testing.

Am I reading this wrong?

 

I think its ok,
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_5670_1_GB/25.html

to confirm it,i will later on run 3dmark11 and post some results of my rig.

 

Which processor do you have in your tower? Athlon II X4 630 right? Those CPU lacks of a large cache (It has only 512KB L2 cache per core) and it may perform up to 15% slower than a similarly clocked Phenom II X4 which owns a large 6MB L3 cache. My GF has a similar CPU as you (Athlon II X4 635) and sometimes she has some minimal slowdowns with her HD 3870, but yet, games that are so CPU hungry like Assassin Creed Brotherhood, performs maxed at 1680x1050 with 2X FSAA, which isn't bad for a card that's over 3 years old.

 

It's sounds like a driver problem. What set of drivers are you on?

 

So you also agree it's my processor that is slowing down my performance?
I've messed with graphics cards, ram, HDDs and PSUs, but I've never dared touch a processor or motherboard. Is there anything I can do? Or is replacing it the only real option?

The biggest reason I don't want to continue using my laptop is not because it's slow but that it overheats like hell. I suppose ASUS laptops are known for this. Got bored and tested with gpu-z. Idle: 40C After 25 minutes of gaming: 97C and rising. (generally stays around 105-110, or my computer randomly restarts if it gets too high)