Sapphire 7870XT can't OC 1 mhz w/o artifacts

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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Is this on stock voltage? Did you move PowerTune to +20% in CCC? Attempted to use a different version of drivers, perhaps non-betas? Did you try overvolting in MSI AB?
 
Apr 17, 2003
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Is this on stock voltage? Did you move PowerTune to +20% in CCC? Attempted to use a different version of drivers, perhaps non-betas? Did you try overvolting in MSI AB?

Hey Russian:

1. Tried w/ stock volts first.
2. Then did 20% of MSI AB -- that seems to help but no resolve it completely (but is it not odd that I can't move it 1 Mhz w/o overvolt)
3. I'm using the latest Non-beta from AMD
 

hjalti8

Member
Apr 9, 2012
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I am guessing you have unofficialoverclocking set to 1 in your AB config?
if thats true then you need to disable it or set it to 2(disable powerplay)
 

Eureka

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
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It's probably the MSI AB. When I did the same thing on a 7970, the screen would tear like crazy with any kind of overclock.
 
Apr 17, 2003
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I am guessing you have unofficialoverclocking set to 1 in your AB config?
if thats true then you need to disable it or set it to 2(disable powerplay)

what exactly is a AB config? I'm not very familiar with Catalyst since I haven't OCed a AMD card in a couple of years now...
 

hjalti8

Member
Apr 9, 2012
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what exactly is a AB config? I'm not very familiar with Catalyst since I haven't OCed a AMD card in a couple of years now...

the afterburner config file in your afterburner folder(C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner)

in that cfg. file look for: UnofficialOverclockingMode = ?

if you have never changed that from 0 to 1 then I do not know what is wrong but it does look like a problem with afterburner since what you are experiencing is EXACTLY what I was experiencing with UnofficialOverclockingMode set to 1. If that doesnt fix it you could try overclocking with trixx
 
Apr 17, 2003
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the afterburner config file in your afterburner folder(C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner)

in that cfg. file look for: UnofficialOverclockingMode = ?

if you have never changed that from 0 to 1 then I do not know what is wrong but it does look like a problem with afterburner since what you are experiencing is EXACTLY what I was experiencing with UnofficialOverclockingMode set to 1. If that doesnt fix it you could try overclocking with trixx

I believe I changed that value when I was OCing my GTX570...I'll look into it tonight.

Thanks!
 

Termie

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
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You might want to uninstall afterburner for now and try overclocking through the Catalyst control panel. That's one nice perk of going with a Radeon. The limits are somewhat low but they'll be enough for you to test with.
 

justgopown

Junior Member
Jul 12, 2013
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i know what that is cause i got a laptop and thats not your graphic but its windows that shit head installed a cracked windows it's missing some files get a legit windows download and crack that or use a cracked key works best but you cant do anything about it that was the same issue on macbook's throug the update to leopard ;) and if ur windows is legit get a new copy it missing something
 

Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
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When you OC the card, that sets its max speed to that.

When you are looking at a browser, its running at idle clocks. So something strange is going on. It almost seems like the speed/voltage is too low at idle.
 

unixwizzard

Senior member
Jan 17, 2013
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what version driver you running? that video looks close to what I get with my 7770 1ghz when I try to use any of the 13.x drivers (windows 7 or 8 64 bit).. using the older 12.10 driver all is fine.

*shrug* its worth a shot
 

KingFatty

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2010
3,034
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That totally looks like the known issue in earlier cards with multimonitor.

So the card likes to down-clock to save power consumption. Usually the card is set to downclock pretty low, because that's fine with one monitor. But, in multimonitor, it needs the clocks to be a little bit higher. So it downclocks too low, and you see this issue.

Have you tried adjusting the idle clocks?

Also, I'm guessing the problem goes away completely with just one monitor?

As a test, can you run a 3D utility in a window, and move it to that monitor, and see if the issue goes away? The reason is there are 2 sets of clock values, one for 2D and one for 3D, and the 3D utility would trigger the card to use the 3D clock values, which are typically higher to make the problem go away.

The problems is exacerbated I think by your example video where you have a website that has a lot of embedded videos showing, where you need more juice to display them (in contrast to a plain 2D screen with just text and no embedded videos where the video engine is used).

My information is relevant to 5XXX series cards, but it may be a similar issue with yours, as it can be caused by a particular vendor setting their idle clocks too low. I resolved this issue by getting a replacement BIOS from the vendor, but the only difference was they bumped up the idle clocks. So it consumed a tiny bit more power, but worth it for the rock solid stability. You can edit your own bios if you want, then re-load it.
 
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