Need help: HD 5870 Never stepping beyond the 600/900Mhz frquencies

[voidburn]

Hello all,

It's been a month now that I'm looking for a solution. I have a Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X card, which is supposed to run @ 875/1250Mhz under full load. The problem is that even the heaviest game engines never trigger that powerplay mode, best I get is the GPU to run @ 600/900Mhz. I even tried to RMA the card but it returned with a clean bill of health. I'm turning to you guys for help.

Here's my system spec:

CPU: Intel i7 980X @ stock freq
Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Extreme
Memory: Corsair 6x2Gbyte (Choice based on the QVL provided by asus for such configuration)
PSU: Chieftec 560W - Sli/Crossfire ready (Getting a brand new modular Enermax 850 this week)
OS: Genuine Win7 Ultimate x64 fully updated
Driver: Catalyst 10.4 (I've tried 10.3/2/1 with same results)

I already submited my bios to Sapphire and they reported no apparent issues with it, though I'm attaching it here (fresh dump with GPU-Z 0.4.2, for some reason v. 0.4.3 refused to save the bios).

There must be something wrong with my windows installation, and this thursday I'm getting a new Raptor-X hard drive together with the Enermax 850W, and will attempt a clean install, but I've reinstalled before, with no results.

There must be something in my system that prevents powerplay to switch to the correct frequencies, but I'm at a loss of ideas.

I have an APC UPS connected to this machine via USB which reports battery charge, this isn't tricking the system into thinking it's running in a laptop environment, is it? Under power options the system is set to run at High Performance, with no power saving applied in any scenario to the PCI-E rails.

I hope some of you can provide some fresh ideas on how to tackle this issue. If any of you as ever seen or heard of something like this I'd love to hear from you.

Full resolution screenshot of furmark running @ full settings with CPU-Z sensors in view:

[kenkickr]

Have you hit the unlock tab in the Catalyst Control Center?

[voidburn]

Yes indeed, I went as far as to create a personal profile for Overdrive, forcing all frequencies to 875/1250 in every operating mode, but as much as it happens with MSI Afterburner, most of the settings I apply via software modifications are completely disregarded.

For example, I cannot tweak the frequencies via CCC panel or MSI Afterburner, any change I made is completely ignored.

By editing the currently loaded bios I can see that there is no voltage specified for the mode3 setting, could that be an issues? would it be worth it to try, edit and flash the bios? If so, what voltage would be adequate for the high performance mode?

Screenshot of the current settings:

[kenkickr]

I would go and grab Driver Sweeper, uninstall all ATI/AMD drivers and OC tools like Afterburner, reboot into safe mode, install Driver Sweeper, run and clean ATI drivers/reg entries with Driver Sweeper, reboot back into Normal Mode, and install 10.4 drivers.

[voidburn]

Been there, done that The only more thorough method I can think of I'm postponing for when I get the Enermax + New hard drive, which is a complete reinstall of windows.

I have tweaked the CCC profile again, this time I managed to get the frequencies to work in mode 2 by copying the mode 3 settings over to mode 2:

<Profile>
  <Caste name="Graphics">
    <Groups>
      <Group name="Overdrive5">
        <Feature name="TimeUnlocked" />
        <Feature name="OverclockEnabled">
          <Property name="OverclockEnabledProperty" value="True" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="AutoTuneSupport" />
        <Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="15700" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="87500" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="87500" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="30000" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="125000" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="125000" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="CoreVoltageTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="950" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="1163" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="1163" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="MemoryVoltageTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="0" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="0" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="0" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="FanSpeedProtocol_0">
          <Property name="FanSpeedProtocolProperty" value="Percent" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_0">
          <Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Automatic" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want" value="962" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want" value="50" />
        </Feature>
      </Group>
    </Groups>
    <Adapter name="PCI_VEN_1002&amp;DEV_6898&amp;SUBSYS_E140174B&amp;REV_00_4&amp;2F1C4782&amp;0&amp;0018A">
      <Aspect name="Overdrive5" />
    </Adapter>
  </Caste>
</Profile>

If anyone has a clue as to why my system is unable to step into mode 3 I'm all ears

[voidburn]

After further testing with the software mod, I decided to embed the settings within the bios. Since I also sporadically experienced the infamous striped crash I also normalized the voltages across the various powerplay states, that is because I was able to confirm that every crash took place during a sudden switch between high and low states. As I presumed, it wasn't an issue of frequencies dropping, as much as voltages.

Here is a table containing the new settings for a stable Sapphire HD 5870 Vapor-X OC Edition, together with some improvements to the fan management, which keeps the GPU cores within 75 degrees celsius even under long hours at full load (the stock settings never push the fan beyond 55%, allowing the board to reach 87 degrees, which I don't like).

The following settings were applied to a fresh dump of the bios, using TechPowerUP's Radeon Bios Editor 1.25 + WinFlash 2.0.1.11.

Clock info 00:
850/1250 Voltage 1.063 (original voltage 0.950)

Clock info 01:
157/300 Voltage 1.063 (original voltage 0.950) [Aero/2D state, overvolted to avoid the vdrop when switching between 3D and 2D, frequently happening during loading screens]

Clock info 02:
875/1250 Voltage 1.163 (original voltage 1.063) [Pushed the medium state up to 3D, since my system would ignore that one, with this I can get the card to correctly go @ full speed in games]

Clock info 03:
875/1250 Voltage 1.163 [untouched]

Clock info 04:
600/900 Voltage 1.063 [UVD state, slightly pumped up]

Clock info 05:
875/1250 Voltage 1.163 [No idea when this is used, since the state structure that contains it has the same name as the main one, normalized and pumped up]

Clock info 06:
875/1250 Voltage 1.163 [Same as clock info 05]

Fan throttle:

Tmin: 40 Degrees
Tmax: 75 Degrees
Tslope: 39%

Duty cycle min: 15%

With these settings I completely god rid of artifacting and so far couldn't experience any stripe crashes. If your card is acting up, I strongly suggest you normalize your power-play settings across the board, especially avoiding the gap btween 0.950v and 1.163v in the low/high modes.

Good luck.

[DanishDevil]

Glad to hear you got it figured out, and thanks for actually posting the solution for others!

Oh, and welcome to TPU