Underclocking an HD 3850?

[Alexraptor]

Appearantly HIS got the bright idea of setting the clock frequencies the same all across the board on the HD 3850 IceQ 3 Turbo AGP. Meaning that both the 2D and 3D clock frequencies are the same.

I still had a default profile i created with my RMA'ed Sapphire HD 3850 AGP which is basicly a stock card, so the core frequency in 2D mode was 300mhz and the Voltage set to 1.17, both cards had the same on 3D 1.21v

So i tried creating a custom profile for this one and editing the 2D clock values. Partial success, i can indeed underclock it but for some reason i cannot get below 660 MHz on 2D. If i try it just dosent recognize it when i load the profile and continues on the current setting.

Anyone able to shed some light on this? is there any way i can lower the 2D clock and Voltage without mucking around with the BIOS?

 

[Foxery]

That's odd, actually - I have the PCIE version of this same card, and mine automatically clocks down to 300mhz when it's idle. Which OS and driver version? (XP, Cat 7.12 - 8.6 have all worked here)

One silly thought - if you're in Vista, is the Aero Glass UI keeping your card in 3D mode?

 

[Alexraptor]

No i am in XP. The graphics card by default is actually set in the BIOS to 720/910 in both 2D and 3D mode and has also been confirmed by their tech support. Why HIS chose to do it like that is beyond me.