Sapphire HD 7870 Ghz Edition Underclock?

Myrddin

Hi folks

I'm having a bit of trouble lately with the pc, when trying to run certain games, the gfx card drivers will crash & then recover, sometimes it'll loop like this three of four times before quitting to the desktop. Scribblenauts Unlimited I can't get running because of this, the game crashes when level 1 begins. I also got a lend of an Oculus Rift, & 80% of the demos I try & run cause the same issue, pc will freeze, recover, freeze, recover, & quit to the desktop.

I've tried running DirectX Runtime Webinstaller, I've updated the gfx card drivers to the latest ones, DXdiag seems fine & as it should be. I'm kinda at a loss here. I've read that an overclocked gfx card can cause these issues, & as my 7870 is the Ghz edition, it comes factory overclocked.

If I enable the clock adjust utility in CCC, would I be able to underclock the card to a standard 7870 reference setting? Help!

game4it70

Sometimes factory OC'ed cards can be flakey so your right to try under clock it to see if that fixes it.
You can use CCC and just drop the core and memory down say 150mhz to test.
Another thing to try is the power control setting,set that to +20.All that does is allow the card to draw more power if needed.

Download and check temps using GPUZ and make sure the fan is ramping up while the card is under stress.

Myrddin

game4it70 wrote: »

Sometimes factory OC'ed cards can be flakey so your right to try under clock it to see if that fixes it.
You can use CCC and just drop the core and memory down say 150mhz to test.
Another thing to try is the power control setting,set that to +20.All that does is allow the card to draw more power if needed.

Download and check temps using GPUZ and make sure the fan is ramping up while the card is under stress.

Will do that & report back, thanks a mill

Myrddin

No joy, same results

I uninstalled all the previous AMD drivers, ran driversweeper then to remove all traces, then ran CCCleaner to scan/repair the pc & registry...still the same results. I'm thinking at this stage it might be a hardware issue with the card...

game4it70

That doesn't sound good.
Can you test it in another rig?

Myrddin

game4it70 wrote: »

That doesn't sound good.
Can you test it in another rig?

It'd be a major hassle, the only other rig I have here is a HTPC which wouldn't have enough juice to run the 7870, so I'd have to swap the psu out too which isn't appealing given how tightly everything is tucked into the htpc.

The more I've researched the problem, the more it seems people have been having trouble with this card for whatever reason. The advice a lot of people have gotten is to RMA the damn thing it seems. I'm out of ideas at this stage:

Driversweeper & CCCleaner
Complete clean install of latest drivers & CCC software
Dxdiag, both 32 & 64bit modes, everything looks perfect
DirectX runtime web installer ran/won't run as it detects newer version
Underclocked card by 150Mhz on core & memory
Upped the power control to +20%
Changed certain settings in CCC, to no avail
Changed resolutions to see if it made any difference, to no avail.

It's funny, the pc can run GTAIV pretty well, but then things like Scibblenauts Unlimited & the vast majority of Oculus Rift demo's just cause the display driver to crash, recover, crash, recover & then eventually quit back to the desktop. I'm sure there's other games that work, & others that will crash too...seems very odd

the_syco

Myrddin wrote: »

cause the display driver to crash, recover, crash, recover & then eventually quit back to the desktop. I'm sure there's other games that work, & others that will crash too...seems very odd

This sounds like my current card. Instead of newest driver, try to find an older driver that works well. I think I have a thread somewhere saying what I did to fix it. Pretty sure it was some DLL somewhere that was causing the majority of the crashes (found it through the Windows event viewer or system viewer).

In the meantime, use MSI Afterburner, and leave it running in the background. When the card disconnects, open up Afterburner, and check temps, etc. The card used to disconnect at 89 degrees celsius, but after a recent driver upgrade, it now crashes when the GPU hits 99% usage. Only really crashes after a good solid gaming session now, though.

the_syco

Oh, and another thing, try not using the Catalyst Suite. Just the driver, and MSI Afterburner (which can also control your fan speed).