Is the memory clock suppose to be running at Max speed when watching youtube?

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dn7309

Senior member
Dec 5, 2012
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I never seem to noticed this until today, but my 290x memory clock is running at full speed when watching youtube. Is this normal?
 
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bystander36

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Apr 1, 2013
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It is normal if you leave hardware acceleration on with your browser, flash and many other programs these days.
 
Zodiark1593

Zodiark1593

Platinum Member
Oct 21, 2012
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Hardware acceleration. It means the video card is doing it's job by feeding you video.
 
Bubbleawsome

Bubbleawsome

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Apr 14, 2013
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Just because clocks are at full doesn't mean it is running at full tdp. :p I've never understood why memory only has 2 or 3 clockstates while the GPU is near unset.
 
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f1sherman

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Apr 5, 2011
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Bubbleawsome said:
Just because clocks are at full doesn't mean it is running at full tdp. :p I've never understood why memory only has 2 or 3 clockstates while the GPU is near unset.
Click to expand...

Of course it doesn't run at full TDP.

But few % of CPU usage on i5 vs Hawaii P-states going up and down liek crazy... yeah...

512bit MC @1250MHz alone can pull as much as fully stressed i5
 
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dn7309

Senior member
Dec 5, 2012
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f1sherman said:
Of course it doesn't run at full TDP.

But few % of CPU usage on i5 vs Hawaii P-states going up and down liek crazy... yeah...

512bit MC @1250MHz alone can pull as much as fully stressed i5
Click to expand...

so just turn off hardware acceleration to save power when using chrome?
 
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Lepton87

Platinum Member
Jul 28, 2009
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Your GPU should not enter P0 state just for WEB acceleration, that's what intermediate P states are for. Maybe your Radeon runs memory at full tilt at higher P-states then P0? (P0 is the highest performance while P8 is idle)
Did you check that it actually enters the highest performance state i.e does your core clock also run at full speed?
 
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dn7309

Senior member
Dec 5, 2012
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core clock stays at 350 mhz, but the mem clock spike to 1250 with occasional dips
 
Deders

Deders

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Oct 14, 2012
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There was a thread recently when an AMD user's gpu wasn't clocking up when using Flash videos and it wasn't performing well because of it.
 
Deders

Deders

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Oct 14, 2012
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toyota said:
lol really? even Internet Explorer is HTML5 for youtube. I ditched Firefox a long time ago.
Click to expand...

For a while IE was the only browser that used HTML5. The only reason I don't use Chrome is I because I use Rocketdock which emulates the program bar you get with Mac's for easy access to programs I use frequently. It pops out every time I go to the top of the screen which gets in the way of me manipulating tabs in Chrome.
 
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Lepton87

Platinum Member
Jul 28, 2009
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dn7309 said:
core clock stays at 350 mhz, but the mem clock spike to 1250 with occasional dips
Click to expand...

Can you check which P-state it employs? NV inspector can check that in NV cards but I don't know which app reports P-states for Radeons.
 
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Haserath

Senior member
Sep 12, 2010
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This was a normal thing for previous Radeon cards. The core clock would be at an intermediate step and the memory would be at 3D clocks.

Clocking up like that on a 290 can make it use 60W+ without really doing anything. Nvidia is much better in this regard.
 
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Muyoso

Senior member
Dec 6, 2005
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Haserath said:
This was a normal thing for previous Radeon cards. The core clock would be at an intermediate step and the memory would be at 3D clocks.

Clocking up like that on a 290 can make it use 60W+ without really doing anything. Nvidia is much better in this regard.
Click to expand...

Yea, this issue drove me nuts with my 5850 and really turned me off to AMD. My displays would flicker every time a web video was loaded because of the changing memory clock. The "solution" was to just peg the memory clock constantly. Absolutely zero problems since dumping AMD and picking up a pair of Nvidia cards.
 
BrightCandle

BrightCandle

Diamond Member
Mar 15, 2007
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I had performance problems with this on the 4870X2, the 5970 and then again on the 7970's in SLI. For whatever reason when x264 video is playing AMDs cards typically require the memory speed to run faster than the lowest power setting. I have never understood why sometimes that isn't the case, I never got to the bottom of why sometimes it didn't need that memory clock speed but in a lot of cases it really did, especially in multiple monitor scenarios. Initially all these cards I had came with the memory set as slower, and I had a lot of performance problems and even crashes associated with the power saving.

So in all cases I ended up running a custom profile that increased the clockspeed to maximum so alleviate the problems I was having, which fixed video and windows stuttering in general. I don't think it should work this way but it has on all the AMD cards I have owned in recent years and its one of the many bugs I raised with AMD support. Presumably they haven't fixed it since people still have issues in and around Windows 2D and video with memory clocks.
 
Stuka87

Stuka87

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Dec 10, 2010
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The memory hardly uses any power in comparison to the GPU. Plus the memory on the 290/290x does run at that high of a speed in comparison to some other GPU's thanks to its wider bus.

If you stuck a Kill-a-watt on your PC, I bet you would hardly see a difference between the GPU memory clocks at idle, and at full speed. I would estimate it at less than 5 watts. Although I do not have a 290 to test that theory on.
 
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