LtMatt - How To Overclock The Official Way Using MSI Afterburner on AMD

[Final8ty]

Apologies if people already know this, but ive only just discovered it and doing it this way has fixed a few of my problems with screen flicker, flash problems, and the GPU not clocking down when idle.

Two ways of overclocking with AMD 7970 cards. The official way using CCC and overdrive and the un-official way using MSI afterburner which involves editing a CFG and cutting and pasting the two dll files into the msi afterburner folder.

The problem is the un-official way throws up some problems in terms of screen flicker, especially when switching between profiles. As well as other problems. It also affects powerplay, meaning cards don't always clock down as they should.

As i recently discovered the best way to overclock is with the official method. Doing it this way you will find less problems with power play and ULPS as well as the other problems i mentioned.

The problem with the official way was the limits imposed by CCC. To get around that do the following.

1. Install the Latest Drivers.
2. Install latest MSI Afterburner. After installing afterburner you must install these clock control files. http://www.sendspace.com/file/r7jys0 & then...
3. Run atferburner once, it will promt you to restart. Restart.
4. Create a Shortcut for MSI Afterburner, place it on the desktop.
5. Right click the shortcut, click properties and in the target box add /xcl.
6. It should look like this
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner\MSIAfterburner.exe" /xcl
7. Open the shortcut. It will says the CCC limits have been increased.
8. Exit afterburner and delete the shortcut. Restart.
9. Load up afterburner. Settings>tick unlock voltage control + monitoring.
10. Now you can overclock using AMD's optimal method. There are no CCC limits and you can adjust the voltage. This is SO much more stable than overclocking the Un-official way using msi afterburner.

I also found this removed the flicker problem and flash problems that AMD users have been complaining about recently.

EDIT

You shouldn't unlock overdrive in CCC using this method otherwise it might interfere with afterburner.

You can set everything with afterburner once you've done this. Clocks, volts, power level and fan control.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=22535819#post22535819

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Thanks for posting this, I was having those very issues with my 6850. Hopefully this will fix it.

 

[thilanliyan]

Hmmm...I never had to do any of those steps with my 7950...it detected everything properly on the first go...although my one is a MSI card so maybe that's why.

 

[thujone]

yeah i'll give this a go later today... something seems off when i try and overclock just doing the unofficial afterburner OC. it's very inconsistent... sometimes certain clocks/volts that i've used before that seem to work fine will be unstable, etc.

i've even seen it crash at stock settings when it first loads afterburner at boot up. i thought about RMA, but it seems like it might be a software (afterburner) problem. this is on a msi 7950 btw.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Sometimes when Afterburner set my clocks on boot I would get flashing and have to reboot and also the voltage wouldn't throttle down until until I ran/closed something 3d accelerated. So far after doing the above everything has behaved properly. I had nether issue until I upgraded from the 12.4 drivers.

 

[thujone]

so i just tried doing this... but when i run the shortcut with the /xcl added... nothing happens. afterburner doesn't start and i don't get any sort of message.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

You should get the message but Afterburner won't start. I closed Afterburner, set unofficial overclocking to 0 in the cfg, ran the shortcut and got the message, then rebooted. That was the first time in a long time my voltage idled down after a boot without me having to fiddle with it.

 

[thujone]

nope. i get nothing.


cut and pasted the command line to make sure everything was right even. cat 12.6 and AB 2.2.3.

 

[thujone]

ok i messed with this a bit more... i went through and uninstalled everything ATI, uninstalled afterburner, ran driver cleaner in safe mode, then scoured the registry for any leftover afterburner keys.

reinstalled drivers, reinstalled afterburner, ran the edited shortcut... nothing happened. but after about 30s... maybe a minute.... i heard the windows system noise you hear when you disconnect a device. nothing else happened. no message or anything. it also made this noise when i started afterburner.

clocks are still limited in AB... but everything seems to run a lot more stable now. not sure if they /xcl flag had anything to do with it... or if i just had some lingering registry keys i finally got rid of.

 

[blackened23]

OP- Its -xcl, not /xcl. All command line parameters for afterburner use a minus sign - Pretty sure anyway, thats what I used when I had 7970s.

--SECOND METHOD FOR GETTING EXTENDED CLOCKS WITH AMD CARDS--


There's another option as well. Download GPU tweak from the asus website for their 7970 (in the download section.) Install it, reboot, and then open the program up - click on advanced. Click on tuning - Then click "extend overclocking range". After you do this, reboot again.

Note that this effect will WORK in afterburner as well, so after you extend your clock ranges with GPU tweak you can uninstall it, and you still get extended clocks with afterburner. Thats the easiest method to get extended clocks with AMD cards IMO.

So to summarize:

1) download asus gpu tweak, latest version
2) install, reboot
3) enable advanced settings in gpu tweak
4) reboot again
5) enable "extend overclocking range"
6) reboot again
7) uninstall gpu tweak and use the extended clocks in afterburner

 

[Final8ty]

I've figured out the problem i forgot to add this part.

I've edited the first post.

Basically after installing afterburner you need to install these clock control files.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/r7jys0

That's why the /xcl command was not working for some people. Apologies.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=22543588&postcount=18

 

[thujone]

that fixed my problem... got the message the first time i ran the shortcut this time.


also... it worked with /xcl

 

[Alex780]

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=22543588&postcount=18

I know it's been a while since this thread has been started but I was curious about the clock control files installer. Do I need to install it again every time I install a new display driver? What files does this installer install? Is there a way to uninstall/remove them? Thanks!