HD4870 Powerplay Strange behaviour

[fluffyze]

Hello, my frist thread here !

First I'd like to thanks the RBE team for making a such great prog with a nice tutorial :P

Now the question is :

In normal operation, (windows, browser and that's all) my GPU core clock is constantly switching from low (or mid because they are the same) to high state.
Resulting in this :
check GPU core clock and VDCC current - voltage

I don't know if it's in any way risky ?

here is my settings in RBE :


Is there something wrong ?

Thanks a lot for your answers

[Formula350]

My guess is something in Windows is running that makes the drivers, or indirectly the BIOS, think there is a big enough load/3D requirement that the higher clocks are needed. My guess would be something in the task bar. Try making another account in Windows and log in there, that should essentially be like a "fresh" start, and then limited startup programs.

My two individual 5770s are sort of the opposite, Card 2 runs full speed ALL the time and randomly will drop down, where as card 1 runs 400 core and 1200 mem, UNLESS I start watching media on like YouTube. Then it drops down to 400/900 -_- I've debated going back to Cat 10.3 for the old 157/300 clocks :\ I miss em!

[fluffyze]

Ok :P it appears to be my browser (chrome) who is responsible of that (even w/o any website loaded) also when flash is launched, clock is @full 100% of the time unless I kill flash in chrome's task manager.

when I close it and do nothing on windows my card is operating @low clock.

Strange ^^

So basically I'm wondering if in my case the PowerPlay mechanism is very meaningfull regarding powersaving. Cause I pretty much always have a browser started when I'm using my computer :P

Also I hope that small but permanent current variations like that arent too bad for the card !

[Formula350]

The fast switching of voltage/current I'd think would be OK, but could in a certain instance create a stability issue. Since you have yet to experience one, I'm sure you won't.

Whether or not the clocks actually help anything, I'm willing to say "No" based on my 5770 experience. Crossfire isn't used in desktop mode (and apparently windowed 3D operation) so you're relying on a single GPU to do all your tasks, yet my 5770 with it's 128bit memory bus still managed to do everything fine at the Pre-Cat 10.4 157/300 clocks... Just some users reported issues with Flash performance when running one or more monitors, so they punished all of us as a result >_< I've tried what I could to set a custom CCC's 2D PowerPlay, but it won't Tis why I went for a BIOS mod and that may not have worked out so well, but waiting to see what the verdict is on my thread.

Anywho you could use something like ATiTrayTools to set a 2D and 3D profile and have it set your clocks FOR you, or just test out lower clocks to see if you experience any degraded performance. That's what I'd be doing, but last time I tried to set the clocks on both cards it crashed, so I've been a little hesitant to do it again (no harm in it, just don't feel like invoking a crash lol).