Radeon 6950 Aftermarket cooler has low clocks

[menorton]

Ok so last week my 2+ year old Sapphire Radeon 6950 had a fan that broke. I did my research and bought a good but cost effective Arctic Accelero Mono Plus. I also was able to install two more case fans around my CPU to replace those that werent working. So my case now has better cooling with the new cpu fans and aftermarket (working) fan then it did before. However, games are now stuttering bad when they werent before. The stock clocks are 800/1250, but after running GPU-Z today, the clocks are most a 200/150 during games like Borderlands 2. I checked the CCC, everything appears right with the power, and the CPU and GPU arent electronically limited by drivers (you can do that in the CCC, lower the CPU/GPU for heat/stability reasons)

And in case it was a steam issue, i have already verified cache integrity, moved folders, etc..

What could be making my games choppy now when they were working just fine last night with a cooler that had just one working fan?


Specs:
AMD Phenom X2 945 3.0 ghz Quad Core
Sapphire Radeon 6950, now with aftermarket cooler
4 GB Ram
Win 7

 

[menorton]

Bump! I would really appreciate some help on this, as every game and benchmark is still stuttering. I installed to 13.12 and no change

 

[Shmee]

Hmm, odd issue. Have you tried a reinstall of drivers? Maybe use DDU if need be.

 

[KingFatty]

To solve the mystery, more information might reveal something.

Can you set up a software tool that will monitor/chart the various video card temperatures over time? A video card will automatically throttle itself if it gets too hot. And this is true for not just the GPU core, but also other components like the power delivery (called voltage regulator modules, VRMs). Perhaps your new cooler is keeping the GPU core at a good temperature, but somehow failing to cool the VRMs and so the video card is throttling itself.

But we can't tell for sure unless you obtain the data. Maybe try GPU-Z or other various utilities that can plot the temperature charts over time, and you can run a game or stress test to see how the temperatures behave over time, and update the post with the results.

A very silly issue to check is also, maybe there is a gap between your new cooler and the GPU, so the GPU gets super-hot while the heatsink stays relatively cool (but is prevented from transferring the coolness to the GPU because of the gap). Can you touch your heatsink cooler and check if it is merely cool/warm under load (indicating a gap), instead of blazing hot like it should be if there is no gap and it's sucking all the heat off the GPU? If so, you would just remove the heatsink and reapply the thermal compound and re-seat the heatsink.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

To solve the mystery, more information might reveal something.

Can you set up a software tool that will monitor/chart the various video card temperatures over time? A video card will automatically throttle itself if it gets too hot. And this is true for not just the GPU core, but also other components like the power delivery (called voltage regulator modules, VRMs). Perhaps your new cooler is keeping the GPU core at a good temperature, but somehow failing to cool the VRMs and so the video card is throttling itself.

But we can't tell for sure unless you obtain the data. Maybe try GPU-Z or other various utilities that can plot the temperature charts over time, and you can run a game or stress test to see how the temperatures behave over time, and update the post with the results.

A very silly issue to check is also, maybe there is a gap between your new cooler and the GPU, so the GPU gets super-hot while the heatsink stays relatively cool (but is prevented from transferring the coolness to the GPU because of the gap). Can you touch your heatsink cooler and check if it is merely cool/warm under load (indicating a gap), instead of blazing hot like it should be if there is no gap and it's sucking all the heat off the GPU? If so, you would just remove the heatsink and reapply the thermal compound and re-seat the heatsink.

+1 Was thinking same thing that heatsink may not be making contact and card is thermal throttling.