2 problems with 7970: high clock during desktop activity and strange noise under load

[autior]

Hi, I just bought a Sapphire 7970 and installed the latest drivers, but this is what happen:

For few seconds the VGA switch from low to high clock (like when gaming) and then return to low clock, all of this during normal desktop activity, like surfing on internet,

The second problem is that the VGA emits a strange noise (like a whistle) under load, and I noticed that when it emits this sound I can see the PWM backlight flickering clearly.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[RCoon]

The second problem is that the VGA emits a strange noise (like a whistle) under load, and I noticed that when it emits this sound I can see the PWM backlight flickering clearly.

coil whine is superfun! last had that on a gigabyte 570, rare but plenty of people know about it.

 

[the54thvoid]

Hi, I just bought a Sapphire 7970 and installed the latest drivers, but this is what happen:

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/13/04/23/2vk.png

For few seconds the VGA switch from low to high clock (like when gaming) and then return to low clock, all of this during normal desktop activity, like surfing on internet,

If your browser is using hardware acceleration this will cause the gpu usage to ramp up during browsing. Check your browser options and disable hardware acceleration if it's on.

The second problem is that the VGA emits a strange noise (like a whistle) under load, and I noticed that when it emits this sound I can see the PWM backlight flickering clearly.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

The noise is most likely electrical. It seems a lot of the HD7970 cards have it. But it's something all cards can get. It gets called coil whine mostly but I have no idea if that is the cause. It's telling as it will get very high pitched when the card renders very high frame rates. Using v-sync can reduce the noise as it reduces load. Not much can be done about the buzz i'm afraid - if it is 'coil whine'.

 

[d1nky]

and I noticed that when it emits this sound I can see the PWM backlight flickering clearly

is that normal guys??

 

[autior]

Actually the noise was the coil whine you were talking about (tried with Civ5: no noise with V-sync activated, noise without it). Never heard about this, thank you guys.

About the "clock switching" during desktop activity, I disabled HW acceleration in my browser, and now I got the clock switch less frequently (but I got it anyway. Is due to Aero?). I'll try to reinstall the drivers and see what happen.

 

[RCoon]

Actually the noise was the coil whine you were talking about (tried with Civ5: no noise with V-sync activated, noise without it). Never heard about this, thank you guys.

About the "clock switching" during desktop activity, I disabled HW acceleration in my browser, and now I got the clock switch less frequently (but I got it anyway. Is due to Aero?). I'll try to reinstall the drivers and see what happen.

i get clock switches just by loading Chrome, not something i would be concerned about.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

If your browser is using hardware acceleration this will cause the gpu usage to ramp up during browsing. Check your browser options and disable hardware acceleration if it's on.

I wouldn't disable hardware acceleration at all, I tried this a while ago when I had to uise a 9600GSO as it only had 384MB RAM and my homepage which consists of 6 tabs would take 4 times as long to open, heavy flash based pages would not load or respond very well etc there's no reason not to use HW acceleration in this day and age of the web as general browsing shouldn't require you're GPU to run full clock states unless your playing heavy web based games and even then it would be more of a constant.

This is my GPUZ readout for the last minute with 6 browser tabs open

Aero also doesn't require full clock states and will happily run on lower profiles, the fact that it's fluctuating on a regular basis would lead me to believe there's something else.

 

[RCoon]

Aero also doesn't require full clock states and will happily run on lower profiles, the fact that it's fluctuating on a regular basis would lead me to believe there's something else.

Thinking along these lines. Check taskmgr.exe for a process called iehighutil.exe
it's a bitcoin mining virus that runs your GPU sporadically, and can be found in C:\Program Data

 

[d1nky]

mine does that stupid frequency spike, but its msi afterburner that causes it when tampering with clocks or after unstable clocks return to lower frequencies