HD 7970 clocks problem

[rsnubje]

Hey guys,

 

I recently got me some HD 7970's from XFX.

Last night I tried to overclock with them and noticed that everytime I raise the clocks, the system hangs as soon as it starts a benchmark, so I decided today to pick one card out and see what it's capable of.

 

Here's what I figured out:

Stock clocks are 925/1375, I just flashed a custom bios with 1050/1500 clocks(not GHz bios).

At these clocks it still runs fine, but when I up the core to 1060MHz for example I already got enormous artifacts, even though it's only 10MHz more. I modded the bios again with 1075/1500 clocks and it ran fine...

 

What is going on here? Why can't I set a normal overclock without it crashing or artifacting and when I flash the clocks there's no problem?

Edited August 23, 2013 by rsnubje

[thebanik]

You have not mentioned which software you are using to raise the clocks? The problem might be software and not the card

[rsnubje]

I tried Trixx, GPU Tweak and the latest afterburner. I use Catalyst 13.8 Beta.

Edited August 23, 2013 by rsnubje

[ObscureParadox]

Hmm interesting, my mate had a similar problem with a 7970 Power edition. Glad to see he's not the only one with this problem.

[rsnubje]

My solution for now, even though it's not the best, is to use this tool to at least be able to run a decent overclock. Got my card running 1100/1700. Not much more is in it because it doesn't have voltage control. When you use it, don't forget to use this command: atiflash -f -p 0 bios.rom. If you don't use -f the flash will not work because it doesn't have a checksum.