Problems with 7970.

[Akrian]

Hello. I've recently got myself a 7970 from gigabyte through newegg.

Now I'm having some straaange problems here.

1. If I install the drivers that come with the card from the cd.

I get 120hz refresh rate with minor screen tearing in the middle of the screen once in about 30 minute. Only when the desktop is idle and the clocks are in 2d mode.

Also OCCT fails misirably showing 100k+ errors no matter the stock clocks or OC, no matter the volatges. it just goes nuts as soon as coef. 24 or coef 28 kicks in.

2. If I install the newer drivers from 7900 series.

I get screen tearing at the botton of the screen in 2d mode when refresh rate is 120hz. The tearing are pretty bad. BUT 60hz refersh rate completely fixes the problem and tearing dissapears.

OCCT - dx9 mode coef. stays at 13 and no errors on stock or OC.

So here's the question:

Is that the "awesomness" of the new ATI drivers playing trick on me

or is my card defective and I should RMA it asap?

Thanks.

 

[cadaveca]

I'd try other stuff other than OCCT for GPU testing. For al lwe know the new AMD GPU design is not compatible.


Refresh problem, etc...might jsut be drivers. if 60hz fixes it, that's probably all it is....hopefulyl a fix will come soon.


FYI, there is no "official" WHQL 7970 driver yet. Yes, I do realize the cards ahve been sold for a month now, but it is what it is. AMD jumped the gun.

 

[Akrian]

well I dont seem to see any artifacts in 3d mark 2011 Extreme settings benchmark loops.

Does the afterburner comes with error check now ?

Thx.

 

[FierceRed]

FYI, there is no "official" WHQL 7970 driver yet. Yes, I do realize the cards ahve been sold for a month now, but it is what it is. AMD jumped the gun.

IIRC, doesn't it take exactly one month (one month and change for the variables of reality) for something to be WHQL certified by Microsoft?

For all we know, the driver has been submitted and the ball has been in Microsoft's court for weeks.

Just saying. Occam's Razor and all.

And while I know this is going to sound like I'm dipping my toe into the toxic green (AMD red?) sludge of the "Fanboy" pool, I would think that the current 7970 driver situation is much more preferable to the current Nvidia driver situation. The last WHQL driver they've released was before Halloween.

Yeah. October 24th, 2011.

 

[cadaveca]

I understand that, for sure. but submitting a driver 30 days before launch would then make sense, right?

Unless, of course they pushed the retail date earlier...

nVidia isn't so much of an issue..they haven't released any new cards. They did, however, relase an updated card with more shaders. If they didn't ahve a whql driver ofr that card, they'd fit in the smae boat, but becuase I do not use nV cards, I don't pay much attnetion to stuff like that.

I'm just saying it's hard for me to expect beta's to work right..doesn't matter which camp it's from. For all we know, it could be windows issues.

 

[FierceRed]

I can see where you're going with that, but I would imagine that the entire retail package of the 7970, including the Partner specific burned CDs with the "default" drivers on them, would have been RTM about a month or more before the actual in-store release date in order for the partners to get their supply chain ramped up and the retail packages out the door.

Then within days from when the card hits the stores, theres a "newer default" driver released that isn't WHQL certified because it was just baked and removed from the oven, to give the early adopters something to move to. In other words, "only" a month or so has passed since launch to the release of the newer drivers - which only then could have entered the WHQL certification process.

In contrast with Nvidia, I personally have 3 friends in the US using 560 Ti's in BF3 and are having very odd video lag related issues, and they have no option to experiment with that isn't over 3 months old. Of course, they do have the Betas... that mention no improvement / fix to their game whatsoever.

Nonetheless, since the issue is WHQL certified 7970 drivers aren't available yet and not whether or not some Beta driver solves BF3 or refresh rate issues for either camp, I will cede the point. I just don't believe they're so far off that "jumping the gun" is correctly being used. Time will tell of course.

 

[LiveOrDie]

I get 120hz refresh rate with minor screen tearing in the middle of the screen once in about 30 minute. Only when the desktop is idle and the clocks are in 2d mode.

I'm getting a similar problem on my desktop over the window taskbar it will flicker and if i drag a window over it it stretches it, I would also like to add if i run the GPU-Z burn test it stops this from happening so like Akrian said its when the cards clocked down.

EDIT i forced my clock speeds to load speeds and the problem was still there but running GPU-Z burn test some how fixes it, also tested my monitor on 120hz on my old GTX 480 no problems at all if AMD doesn't fix these problems they can go suck my ballz.