Having trouble overclocking. Is it my psu?

[dlee098]

My current specs:

Phenom ii x4 955 - oc'd to 3.7
Kingston Blu 8gb
Sapphire 7970 OC Edition with Boost
Seasonic 520w 80+ bronze psu

I've been trying to overclock my 7970 and on stock voltages I've been able to get up to about 1120 on the core and 1550 on the memory. I run passes through Heaven 3.0 to test for stability. But as soon as I start raising the voltages even a little bit to push it a little moe, I fail at some point during the bench mark and I get the message "AMD drivers have failed but have recovered."

I see online that my card is supposed to be a pretty good overclocker, but I can't seem to do anything past stock voltages. So I'm wondering, is it possibly that my psu is not enough? Or is it possible that I just got unlucky with my card?

Thanks as always for the help.

 

[animal]

It is recommended to run a 550W PSU on a system with a 7970. In all likelyhood, yes, your PSU is holding back your oc'ing ability.

 

[mlcaouette]

Try removing your cpu overclock and then try the video card overclock by itself.

Check your system draw here: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

If it is more than what you PSU can put out than I'd upgrade before overclocking any further, when a PSU goes it can take a whole system with it so be carefull.

 

[dlee098]

Try removing your cpu overclock and then try the video card overclock by itself.

Check your system draw here: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

If it is more than what you PSU can put out than I'd upgrade before overclocking any further, when a PSU goes it can take a whole system with it so be carefull.

Thanks a lot, will be trying this out later tonight.

 

[dlee098]

Try removing your cpu overclock and then try the video card overclock by itself.

Check your system draw here: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

If it is more than what you PSU can put out than I'd upgrade before overclocking any further, when a PSU goes it can take a whole system with it so be carefull.

Tried removing the cpu overclock, but no luck. The psu calculator says that my power draw is under, but just barely (by about 50w). Just hesitant to buy a new psu if that's not really the issue. Thanks for the help though.

 

[mlcaouette]

Well I assume you have the latest drivers cleanly installed.

The only way I can think of to be sure it's the power supply would be to try another PSU.

Or try your card in someone elses machine.