7970 Voltage Dropping Under Load

[Spacekiwi]

I recently tried to over clock my HD7970 and suffered from instability even at the 1000MHz over clock recommended on the box. It was seemingly stable in Kombustor however I had artifacts in games. I reset to stock clock speeds and checked GPU-Z under load and noticed that 12V and VDDC dropped significantly.

(12V:12.22-12.16 VDDC:1.039-0.984)

Should I try RMA the card, is there something I can do to fix this issue or is this normal?

Hardware specs:
CPU: Intel i5 750
Power Supply: Seasonic M12 II 750W
Motherboard: GIGABYTE P55M-UD2
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD 7970 Dual X 3GB
Memory: 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws

 

[saint19]

Is that V drop change on load or idle state of the GPU?

 

[Rustyy117]

Possible Vdroop? It looks like when the card is idle the voltage is higher (which is odd in itself as it should be in a lower power state) and when it's under load the voltage drops...

 

[Spacekiwi]

Yes under load the card has Vdroop, I tried it on a different computer and the voltage increased under load but was still well under what it should be.

 

[rdc85]

Could it be Bad PSU? or need driver reinstall?

 

[Spacekiwi]

Could it be Bad PSU? or need driver reinstall?

I Tried reinstalling drivers and it did not help (On guild wars 2 with overclock at 1000MHz game would constantly crash giving me error something along the lines of AMD driver stopped working and successfully recovered, which made me try re install to see if it would fix).

My PSU was purchased in December 2012 so should be fine, but I cannot rule out that it might be faulty. However I did try my Card in another computer with a different PSU and it had similar problems. If you know a way I can test my PSU to rule it out as a problem please let me know

 

[rdc85]

..... However I did try my Card in another computer with a different PSU and it had similar problems......

I think that's already rule out PSU problems,...

 

[Spacekiwi]

I think that's already rule out PSU problems,...

Yes but under load the VDDC increased in the different system. However it was still well under what it should be

 

[Spacekiwi]

I have submitted a support ticket to Sapphire directly and will let you all know how it goes.

 

[rdc85]

I'm miss understand...

since with different PSU in the other system it not had this symptom..

could u try borrowing your friend PSU for testing...

 

[Spacekiwi]

I'm miss understand...

since with different PSU in the other system it not had this symptom..

could u try borrowing your friend PSU for testing...

Sadly borrowing his PSU is not an option. And yes the problems are different in the different systems.

In my system when the video card is under load the voltage drops lower than what it was at idle.
In my friends system the voltage increases under load like its meant to, however it is still well under what the voltage should be

 

[rdc85]

Hmmm...
I'm afraid this problems is out of my league ... (nor i had 7970 for testing )

anyways waiting for info updates ......

 

[Spacekiwi]

Sapphire support is being fairly useless at the moment

My last response from them was:
Dear Sir
Try use our new Trixx tool and try again.
Regards

Obviously they are taking my complaint seriously...

Edit: I also linked him some pictures trying to more clearly illustrate my problems. Hopefully some members of this forum will have a better time identifying it than the top quality support team at sapphire. http://imgur.com/a/2ocRQ

 

[rdc85]

The problems with support center now-days, they are more marketing or consumer relation officer (with minimum knowledge) than an technician / engineer...

sad reality....

back to topic...

try reset the clock setting as vanilla card (amd default) setting...

core @925MHz memory @1375MHz see if the artifact still happen....

if the artifact is gone in low clock and only happen when O.C. it could be bad factory O.C. profile....
if the card u bought was O.C. version and not stable out of box (as the labels indicate) I think u had the right to replace the card, or u can override the O.C. profile and try to find the stable clock by yourself.....

 

[Spacekiwi]

The problems with support center now-days, they are more marketing or consumer relation officer (with minimum knowledge) than an technician / engineer...

sad reality....

back to topic...

try reset the clock setting as vanilla card (amd default) setting...

core @925MHz memory @1375MHz see if the artifact still happen....

if the artifact is gone in low clock and only happen when O.C. it could be bad factory O.C. profile....
if the card u bought was O.C. version and not stable out of box (as the labels indicate) I think u had the right to replace the card, or u can override the O.C. profile and try to find the stable clock by yourself.....

I have done some more testing and noticed that if I overclock my card at all (even just a 10MHz increase) I get artifacting issues etc. then when I reset to default values (950MHz or even lower them to 925MHz and lower memory to 1375 like you recommended) I still have artifacting issues etc.
Then when I reboot (with settings at stock values) the card works fine again.

I don't think its an O.C. Card here is a picture of the box: http://imgur.com/a/oYIGk

 

[saint19]

10MHz give you artifacts?...that's not good, even a very basic GPU can support 10MHz overclock without any extreme change or even artifacts.