7950 Problems

[Smartazz]

Hi all, I was talking about the issues I'm having with my new Sapphire HD 7950 in the 7950 thread but I don't want to derail it. I've spent hours trying to troubleshoot it. It doesn't crash if the drivers are not installed however I've tried 3 different types of drivers and I've had no luck. It will eventually freeze up and it won't restart or shut down either. Looking in MSI Afterburner, ATI Tray Tools and Cayalyst control center, the GPU clocks are wrong, power usage doesn't show up and neither does temperature. Any ideas on how I can fix this? Thanks in advance.

Here is my card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202006

[zaydq]

Is the card seated properly? Did you plug in both the 8pin + 6 pin power connector?

It seems you have a single rail PSU, so it couldn't be an overbearing load on 1 of 2 rails.

Lets start here and see if those are good. You may have unfortunately received a bad card. It might be worth flicking the bios switch on the card to the second one and see what that does.

[VulgarDisplay]

How did you remove the drivers from the 6870 you had previously?

This may make you want to puke, but you could also try a fresh windows install.

[Smartazz]

I decided to use driver sweeper and that appears to have fixed the problem. Temperature, power and clocks are correct, and it hasn't crashed while running my main monitor. I'm a little confused on how boost works though. I was playing Crysis 2 and the clocks keep jumping between 850MHz and 925Mhz. How do I just keep it at the higher clock speed and should I?

[zaydq]

Originally Posted by Smartazz

I decided to use driver sweeper and that appears to have fixed the problem. Temperature, power and clocks are correct, and it hasn't crashed while running my main monitor. I'm a little confused on how boost works though. I was playing Crysis 2 and the clocks keep jumping between 850MHz and 925Mhz. How do I just keep it at the higher clock speed and should I?

Ah just some driver clashing. Glad that it was just that!

I think your card should have a BIOS switch. If you switch it to the other BIOS, does it no longer boost?

Reference: http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&biw=1680&bih=920&tbm=isch&tbnid=2vphoq 35RhJRsM:&imgrefurl=http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php%3Ft%3D46695%26page%3D5&docid=RsslAc QIZJHCUM&imgurl=http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee170/jeremy1998/crossfirebridge_zps832df781.jpg&w=1024&h=768&ei=dX yUUILfGsfB2QXcpIDYAg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=409&vpy=30 6&dur=2344&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=140&ty=71&sig=1036 42031600321635904&page=1&tbnh=134&tbnw=174&start=0 &ndsp=34&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0,i:93

EDIT: Read somewhere that if you just turn up the power limit % in CCC the card will stay at 925mhz and not throttle down to 850mhz. Try this first.

[Plimogz]

*quite un-helpfully* eh, going from my MSI TF2 6950 to my first TF3 7950 worked like a charm. Didn't even uninstall the device from the hardware manager. just powered down, swapped cards and booted back up. After a couple of reboots, the thing was working beautifully. It apparently even has nice OC headroom and hit 1200/1600 with under 7970GE stock voltage -- and all this from an open-box card which I was dubious of...

And thus things worked fine for a week...

Tonight however, *ominous thunder and lightning in the background* I received my second TF3 7950...

Since then everything has been going askew... for one thing, this brand-new-in-box card evidently doesn't clock anywhere as well as the first -- the GPU is weak, but it's the memory which looks to be a real shame... For another, software that I'm accustomed to counting on doesn't accept the new card like it could. (WTF GPU-Z; how hard is it to log 2 cards' sensor readings, once you're already doing all the work for a single?) Then there's the fact that Multiple-GPU "micro"-stutter looks to be a blatant reality -- I mean, what's with a benchmark yielding higher FPS numbers but visibly skipping through more of the animation than with the single card?... And then there's the fact that I've finally exceeded my UPS' power limit and that this was apparently another factor in causing instability when crossfiring. Not that the UPS was triggering its over-current alarm when this happened, oh no, I only realized the problem on a rare occasion when the system didn't lock up but the UPS finally gave out an alarm signal. But sure enough -- and whether the APC "smart"-UPS was clever enough to notice it or not -- that was causing my lock-ups.

Was there anything else? oh, I don't quite remember, but in any case this seems like more than enough thread derailment for someone who was good enough to avoid derailing another 20+ page thread....

@ OP & TLDR Try disabling/uninstalling all 3rd party OC/Monitoring software. Though I can't remember exactly which combination was evidently causing me grief in the last week, I'm pretty certain that such a thing did happen.

edit: ... and upon reading the thread more carefully, I am now considering a good, deep driver sweep. ... further, I assume that what I'm feeling right now is akin to what people must be experiencing prior to their decision that it really is time to find out what a cleansing enema is all about...

[OCNewbie]

Wow, and JZ thought he had it bad with 99 problems.

[Plimogz]

How bad can a man have it who's been tapping Beyoncé for a decade?

[VulgarDisplay]

Originally Posted by Plimogz

How bad can a man have it who's been tapping Beyoncé for a decade?

Show me any beautiful woman and I can find the guy who's tired of having sex with her.

[Plimogz]

Is that a Sheen quote? cuz' it sure feels like one.

And good on you, sir, if it is.

[VulgarDisplay]

Originally Posted by Plimogz

Is that a Sheen quote? cuz' it sure feels like one.

And good on you, sir, if it is.

That saying has been around forever. No way to tell who thought of it.

[Plimogz]

Originally Posted by tweakboy

There is a fix for that it's called nVidia. jk just some humor guys ATI pownz, All this you explained sounds like my old x800 from 2004 to 2007 ... does same thing as you, low fps then suddenly its fast.

First off go to safe mode and uninstall everything ATI in cpanel. Then reboot
shut off any apps like ATI Tray tools and what not. Boot into normal mode and install the latest 12.11 and pray. gl

Don't worry, Tweakster, this might've been your most helpful pro-nVidia, anti-ati jab in the last couple of weeks...

But as I said, the first 7950 installed over my previous card without a hitch, hit 1200/1600 on a 384-bit bus, cost me ~$245 and came with 3 fresh games... yeah.

[Smartazz]

Originally Posted by zaydq

Ah just some driver clashing. Glad that it was just that!

I think your card should have a BIOS switch. If you switch it to the other BIOS, does it no longer boost?

Reference: http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&biw=1680&bih=920&tbm=isch&tbnid=2vphoq 35RhJRsM:&imgrefurl=http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php%3Ft%3D46695%26page%3D5&docid=RsslAc QIZJHCUM&imgurl=http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee170/jeremy1998/crossfirebridge_zps832df781.jpg&w=1024&h=768&ei=dX yUUILfGsfB2QXcpIDYAg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=409&vpy=30 6&dur=2344&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=140&ty=71&sig=1036 42031600321635904&page=1&tbnh=134&tbnw=174&start=0 &ndsp=34&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0,i:93

EDIT: Read somewhere that if you just turn up the power limit % in CCC the card will stay at 925mhz and not throttle down to 850mhz. Try this first.

Thanks, tuning up the limit 20% allowed it to stay at 1150MHz. I don't understand why my Heaven and 3dmark scores are low though.

[zaydq]

Refer to the 7950 owners thread. I explained it there.

[Smartazz]

Originally Posted by zaydq

Refer to the 7950 owners thread. I explained it there.

Thanks, just read it.