Temp/Clock/Voltage Increases when Duplicating Displays (7950)

[squick3n]

I recently purchased a stock 7970, and decided to hook up my HDTV as well as a monitor. When in single display mode, my temps run at 40C idle, voltage is 800mV, and the core clock is 300 mhz.

When selecting duplicate displays, the clock goes to 500 mhz, voltage to 1150 mv, and temps to 60C. All of this is idle at the desktop. No overclocking. I haven't tried gaming with the displays dupicated, but I have no issues when gaming in single display mode.

This seems very abnormal. Nothing like this happened with my old GTX 570. Both displays at 1080p and running at their native rez. How should I proceed? Is this a hardware error? Driver error? BIOS? I really don't have much experience with diagnosing video card issues, and none with AMD cards. I'm used to them just working

Any help is appreciated

 

[KompuKare]

That's normal. 2D 'idle' and multimonitor use different settings. Which is one of the reasons that the energy savings of APUs is so big: AMD or Intel onboard really sips power compared to even cards like the 7770.

Anyway from the below review:
dual monitor single idle
570GTX 69.73W 24.14W
7970 48.84W 14.15W

So it looks like all the cards in their results do that.

(SOURCE: http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...me&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1067&bih=690&prmd=imvns )

(A pity more review sites can't be bothered to measure the actual usage of cards with a multimeter etc.)

 

[Tempered81]

(A pity more review sites can't be bothered to measure the actual usage of cards with a multimeter etc.)

I agree. Very few review sites actually have the equip to measure pull through the PCI-E slot and Power connectors. Not a DMM, but something much more expensive. Techpowerup, Xbitlabs, Kitguru and JonnyGuru have them.

 

[squick3n]

Thanks for the info. I did notice it was running at full memory timings, and according to that, AMD said the core clock goes up to keep it stable. Very informative.

The only reason I noticed was b/c of how much louder it was. It's almost nuisance in a desktop environment. May have to look into a cooling solution

Either way, again, thanks!

 

[KingFatty]

Perhaps the difference is exaggerated now that the card has improved idle performance, it's more noticeable because it does such a good job saving power with just one monitor connected, compared to previous cards?

 

[wbynum]

I hate to resurrect an old thread but I have a question. Is there nothing like NVInspector for AMD cards where you can manually bump down the idle speed when running multi-monitor setups?

 

[birthdaymonkey]

The GTX 670 is the first card I've owned that hasn't required high 2D clocks. It stays at idle clocks all the time, even when I'm running mismatched display res.

OP, (if you're still around) one thing you might try to fix the problem is running your second display off the onboard video instead of the 7970.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The GTX 670 is the first card I've owned that hasn't required high 2D clocks. It stays at idle clocks all the time, even when I'm running mismatched display res.

OP, (if you're still around) one thing you might try to fix the problem is running your second display off the onboard video instead of the 7970.

8800GT didnt have this issue for me. HD5770 did. GTS450 didnt. And my GTX680 doesnt either.

Im using 2x24" 1920*1200.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

8800GT didnt have this issue for me. HD5770 did. GTS450 didnt. And my GTX680 doesnt either.

Im using 2x24" 1920*1200.

I had the issue on a 6950, 6870, and 560 Ti.

 

[BrightCandle]

You do not want to bump down the speed. The extra memory bandwidth and core clock speed is necessary to render that second display, if its not there then you'll have severe performance problems within Windows. At least in your circumstance this rather brain dead approach to power saving is making Windows tolerable, for many people this strategy causes tearing and other performance related problems.

 

[wbynum]

Bumping my 460, 480, etc down to stock 2d clocks in a dual monitor setup using NVInspector worked fine with no perceivable performance or stability hit.

 

[fullback100]

The GTX 670 is the first card I've owned that hasn't required high 2D clocks. It stays at idle clocks all the time, even when I'm running mismatched display res.

OP, (if you're still around) one thing you might try to fix the problem is running your second display off the onboard video instead of the 7970.

Thanks for your info. I was searching the internet for a card with the low power consumption with the "mismatched displays"

I see 670's core clock stays at idle for 2 different monitors but what about the voltage? I assume it doesn't change much if any but I was wondering this since OP's 7950 fully increases to its 3d voltage even though the clock goes up by a little bit. Thanks in advance!