Can't overclock Saphire 7970 OC with Boost

[billiardicus]

I bought a SAPPHIRE 100351SR Radeon HD 7970 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card OC with Boost from newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202008

I've tried overclocking it using both Catalyst and Trixx, but it will not go past 1000mhz core. It works fine at 1000mhz, but at 1001 it artifacts like crazy. I've turned off Graphics Overdrive in Catalyst (I assume this is "Boost") and I've increased the Board Power LI to 20 in Trixx. I checked the box for maintain constant voltage, etc. I'm sure it doesn't need more voltage, but I tried increasing that some, and it doesn't help. Temperatures are like 50C when running heaven.

I've never owned or overlocked an AMD GPU before, so I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. But changing the core clock from 1000 to 1001 mhz is like flipping a switch, and artifacting occurs immediately.


Computer:
3570k OC to 4.5ghz
PSU: Antec Earthwatts 500
MOBO: Asrock Extreme 4

Please advise and thank you,

 

[billiardicus]

I have also completely uninstalled the ATI driver, ran Atiman 7.0.2, and reinstalled the driver from Saphire's webpage (I choose the one for 7970 OC with Boost).

 

[soheil253]

its already factory overclocked, you really shouldn't be pushing it much further lol

 

[Intel God]

OP try MSI Afterburner for overclocking

 

[socialassassin]

That is strange. I have the same card and can get mine to 1200/1700 on 1.25V using Trixx.
Which BIOS are you using? The card has a switch on it (labeled 1 and 2), setting 1 is 925MHz, setting 2 is 1000MHz. Maybe try flipping the switch and try overclocking again.

 

[ihog]

That is strange. I have the same card and can get mine to 1200/1700 on 1.25V using Trixx.
Which BIOS are you using? The card has a switch on it (labeled 1 and 2), setting 1 is 925MHz, setting 2 is 1000MHz. Maybe try flipping the switch and try overclocking again.

+1

 

[billiardicus]

That is strange. I have the same card and can get mine to 1200/1700 on 1.25V using Trixx.
Which BIOS are you using? The card has a switch on it (labeled 1 and 2), setting 1 is 925MHz, setting 2 is 1000MHz. Maybe try flipping the switch and try overclocking again.

Okay great suggestion. I was doing some googling last night, and I learned about this switch (I didn't know it was there). I will try that. Since we have the same card, can you tell me your settings in Trixx and Catalyst and anything else you did that I might be doing different? Did you have to switch the bios switch or did your card just work right out of the box? Also, I understand there are several versions of this card. I believe mine has 2 8 pin power connectors. It seems there's another version with a 6 and an 8 pin.

Thanks so much for the help!

 

[socialassassin]

That is strange. I have the same card and can get mine to 1200/1700 on 1.25V using Trixx.
Which BIOS are you using? The card has a switch on it (labeled 1 and 2), setting 1 is 925MHz, setting 2 is 1000MHz. Maybe try flipping the switch and try overclocking again.

Okay great suggestion. I was doing some googling last night, and I learned about this switch (I didn't know it was there). I will try that. Since we have the same card, can you tell me your settings in Trixx and Catalyst and anything else you did that I might be doing different? Did you have to switch the bios switch or did your card just work right out of the box? Also, I understand there are several versions of this card. I believe mine has 2 8 pin power connectors. It seems there's another version with a 6 and an 8 pin.

Thanks so much for the help!

I keep my card on position 2 (1000MHz). If I need extra gaming horsepower, these are my settings in Trixx:
GPU Clock 1200
Memory Clock 1650 (discovered a few artifacts yesterday on 1700)
VDCC 1250
Board Power Li 20
And all I have selected in Settings is Synchronize cards and Disable ULPS. Never touched any overclocking options in Catalyst.
Obviously your clocks/voltage wont be exactly the same, but it gives you an idea.

 

[billiardicus]

That is strange. I have the same card and can get mine to 1200/1700 on 1.25V using Trixx.
Which BIOS are you using? The card has a switch on it (labeled 1 and 2), setting 1 is 925MHz, setting 2 is 1000MHz. Maybe try flipping the switch and try overclocking again.

Okay great suggestion. I was doing some googling last night, and I learned about this switch (I didn't know it was there). I will try that. Since we have the same card, can you tell me your settings in Trixx and Catalyst and anything else you did that I might be doing different? Did you have to switch the bios switch or did your card just work right out of the box? Also, I understand there are several versions of this card. I believe mine has 2 8 pin power connectors. It seems there's another version with a 6 and an 8 pin.

Thanks so much for the help!

I keep my card on position 2 (1000MHz). If I need extra gaming horsepower, these are my settings in Trixx:
GPU Clock 1200
Memory Clock 1650 (discovered a few artifacts yesterday on 1700)
VDCC 1250
Board Power Li 20
And all I have selected in Settings is Synchronize cards and Disable ULPS. Never touched any overclocking options in Catalyst.
Obviously your clocks/voltage wont be exactly the same, but it gives you an idea.

Well I flipped the switch, and now I run at 1000mhz "stock", but changing the core clock to 1001 produces artifacts. I've tried this with overdrive on and off in catalyst, I set Board Power Li to 20, etc. Again, I tried increasing the voltage, but I don't think it's a voltage issue as everyone can OC these boards quite a bit without touching voltage. I tried a few frequencies over 1000 just to make sure there's nothing weird about 1001. I'm using 1001 because I think it demonstrates there is something going on other than temperature, voltage, clockspeed, etc.

Something prevents this card from going over 1000 core clock.

 

[socialassassin]

That is strange. I have the same card and can get mine to 1200/1700 on 1.25V using Trixx.
Which BIOS are you using? The card has a switch on it (labeled 1 and 2), setting 1 is 925MHz, setting 2 is 1000MHz. Maybe try flipping the switch and try overclocking again.

Okay great suggestion. I was doing some googling last night, and I learned about this switch (I didn't know it was there). I will try that. Since we have the same card, can you tell me your settings in Trixx and Catalyst and anything else you did that I might be doing different? Did you have to switch the bios switch or did your card just work right out of the box? Also, I understand there are several versions of this card. I believe mine has 2 8 pin power connectors. It seems there's another version with a 6 and an 8 pin.

Thanks so much for the help!

I keep my card on position 2 (1000MHz). If I need extra gaming horsepower, these are my settings in Trixx:
GPU Clock 1200
Memory Clock 1650 (discovered a few artifacts yesterday on 1700)
VDCC 1250
Board Power Li 20
And all I have selected in Settings is Synchronize cards and Disable ULPS. Never touched any overclocking options in Catalyst.
Obviously your clocks/voltage wont be exactly the same, but it gives you an idea.

Well I flipped the switch, and now I run at 1000mhz "stock", but changing the core clock to 1001 produces artifacts. I've tried this with overdrive on and off in catalyst, I set Board Power Li to 20, etc. Again, I tried increasing the voltage, but I don't think it's a voltage issue as everyone can OC these boards quite a bit without touching voltage. I tried a few frequencies over 1000 just to make sure there's nothing weird about 1001. I'm using 1001 because I think it demonstrates there is something going on other than temperature, voltage, clockspeed, etc.

Something prevents this card from going over 1000 core clock.

This may be an odd suggestion, but did you try restarting your PC? I had a strange issue when overclocking this card.
Once I OC'd to the point of artifacts, they would remain even after turning the clocks back down. I had to reboot to get rid of them.

 

[billiardicus]

That is strange. I have the same card and can get mine to 1200/1700 on 1.25V using Trixx.
Which BIOS are you using? The card has a switch on it (labeled 1 and 2), setting 1 is 925MHz, setting 2 is 1000MHz. Maybe try flipping the switch and try overclocking again.

Okay great suggestion. I was doing some googling last night, and I learned about this switch (I didn't know it was there). I will try that. Since we have the same card, can you tell me your settings in Trixx and Catalyst and anything else you did that I might be doing different? Did you have to switch the bios switch or did your card just work right out of the box? Also, I understand there are several versions of this card. I believe mine has 2 8 pin power connectors. It seems there's another version with a 6 and an 8 pin.

Thanks so much for the help!

I keep my card on position 2 (1000MHz). If I need extra gaming horsepower, these are my settings in Trixx:
GPU Clock 1200
Memory Clock 1650 (discovered a few artifacts yesterday on 1700)
VDCC 1250
Board Power Li 20
And all I have selected in Settings is Synchronize cards and Disable ULPS. Never touched any overclocking options in Catalyst.
Obviously your clocks/voltage wont be exactly the same, but it gives you an idea.

Well I flipped the switch, and now I run at 1000mhz "stock", but changing the core clock to 1001 produces artifacts. I've tried this with overdrive on and off in catalyst, I set Board Power Li to 20, etc. Again, I tried increasing the voltage, but I don't think it's a voltage issue as everyone can OC these boards quite a bit without touching voltage. I tried a few frequencies over 1000 just to make sure there's nothing weird about 1001. I'm using 1001 because I think it demonstrates there is something going on other than temperature, voltage, clockspeed, etc.

Something prevents this card from going over 1000 core clock.

This may be an odd suggestion, but did you try restarting your PC? I had a strange issue when overclocking this card.
Once I OC'd to the point of artifacts, they would remain even after turning the clocks back down. I had to reboot to get rid of them.

Okay, that's very helpful. Just last night, I noticed this. Still thinking it was drivers, I was about to run Atiman again when I noticed that Atiman was finding old Nvidia drivers on my system (which it doesn't remove). So I ran driversweeper. Anyway, this completely screwed up my system, and it would not boot out of safe mode with the 7970 installed. I had to take out the card, boot without it, run Atiman again to remove traces of the ATI driver that was causing the BSOD, and then reinstall the 7970 and reinstall the ATI drivers.

So 3 hours later, I'm stable with (hopefully) a clean system driverwise. I tried the overclock again, and was able to get 1025 core without artifacts. I then tried 1050 and Heaven crashed. I upped the voltage, but got artifacts. I tried 1001 and got artifacts. In a moment of brilliance, I tried completely stock and got artifacts. So yes, I'm seeing this too.

This morning I was thinking either I have a bad card or Heaven just causes artifacts in this ATI architecture (I've been playing Metro Last Light, and there's terrible artifacts with the card at stock whenever I look at a light/etc that should be casting rays. I googled the Metro problem and learned that this is an issue with ATI cards, and it has been patched).

At this point, with the time I've wasted, I would do better to just buy two 7970's and forget OC'ing, but I guess it's the challenge that lures me onward.

 

[ihog]

How high did you set your voltage?

 

[xzerqiin]

hi, I've overclocked my 2 7970's and my primary as the trial card because the 2nd card came 3 days after i started overclocking. anyway, I prefer CCC than Trixx, because you could tweek your card in CCC without moving volts and it doesn't cause lines if you fail in heaven benchmark. Now after a long trial and error session, I've found out the most stable OC that I could push out from sapphire 7970 dual-X with 1Ghz boost. go to CCC and never touch the power tune or if you ever do, the most stable power is 9% above or below = crash, memory and core needs good mixing in it, the best mix and most stable mix is 1070/1500. if you run heaven benchmark use 100% fan speed, if its just passmark then auto fan speed is enough.

 

[schmuckley]

It could be the version of Trixx you're using.Try the 4 latest

 

[xzerqiin]

I've downloaded trixx 4.6.0 this version could unlock the voltage lock but sadly when I restart my PC i need to OC again.. the values I got was 1125 (1.198v)/1700 (1.600v) no PT.. when ever I restart, the card also reboots and doesn't keep my OC, but I was able to run it all in 3D mark 11, 3D mark 13, heaven, valley, crysis 3, cinebench 15, cinebench 11.. My only problem now is keeping the OC..

My trixx settings is:
Load on windows startup
start minimized
restore clocks
synchronize cards in multi-gpu config
save fan settings with profile
disable ULPS

 

[schmuckley]

Try a different Trixx or unchecking/checking settings again.