Issue with 7970-From 60FPS to 40 then skipping frames.

[masakruwolverine]

A couple of days ago I was asking here in the forum if my 7970 is performing the way it should,with my i7 860 @ 3,6Ghz.
According to synthetic benchmarks and GPU usage in games,it is performing the way it should.
But now I am here once again because I am seeing more than 60FPS in games yet, they stutter to 30,40FPS every now and then and also games tend to skip frames and feel slow.
I see minimum 60FPS yet it feels like it is actually 20FPS and,as I said,every game is skipping frames.
Also,the GPU is making weird noises like coil whine(it's a second hand GPU I bought a couple of days ago, yet it is only 2 months old).
If it helps. I run a Core i7 860 O.C. to 3,6Ghz(I'm pretty sure it's stable),8GB DDR3 RAM 1333Mhz downclocked to 1020Mhz(because of the O.C.),ASUS P7P55LX motherboard and I think this is really important to mention. I have a PSU I bought a couple of years ago,it's the Cooler Master Real Power M620W 80PLUS.
Does it help if I say that when I bought the PSU,I bought it refurbished,yet in all this time,with my old 6850 and 7850 it never let me down neither do games felt like skipping frames/suttering.
I was getting low FPS on the 6850 and 7850 compared to the 7970,of course,but no stutter or frame-skip was present.
Help guys?
Cheers.

 

[masakruwolverine]

Also, for example, playing Metro:Last Light at top settings(1080p and no SSAA) I am getting constant 60FPS but the game tends to "freeze" every couple of seconds, like I am hitting a wall and can't move when I press the keys.
Also,when quiting the game,Windows 7 says I should switch to basic aspect because I am getting low on resources.
In The Witcher 2,I get non-responsive keyboard during more than 10 seconds and the back to normal,on maximum settings.
On high settings, everything's just fine(except for the tzzzz,fuzzzzzz, coil-whine, I guess).

 

[mauller07]

i believe it is the speed of your ram that is bottle necking you, you want to try clocking the ram up to 1600mhz at least if possible

 

[masakruwolverine]

i believe it is the speed of your ram that is bottle necking you, you want to try clocking the ram up to 1600mhz at least if possible

I can't, it's a 1333Mhz memory and I'm not going to try overclocking it last time I did that was a total disaster.

Also, I have another stable O.C. profile on my mobo, it's 3,4Ghz and the RAM's working close to it's defaults clocks(1320Mhz), still I get the same stutter and poor performance.

 

[mauller07]

it would be better to go with that option for best performance because even with the cpu being clocked higher its just going to be waiting more on your ram since its clocked lower.

it could be a driver issue, get the latest amd beta driver 13.8 and driver fusion.

uninstall current amd driver and dont restart.
run driver fusion amd driver cleaner and restart.
install amd driver as custom and only install display and hdmi driver.

see if this help at all.

 

[firaaero]

Having the same problem from every driver i use. No matter what driver i use always stutter/frame skipping. Its really annoying i have a Gigabyte 7970 Ghz editon. Any fix?
using 2 monitors, tried using one kinda helped. Still there tried many many many methods of reinstalling/uninstalling drivers. Clean install of windows (While back) Used to have a 6970 never had a problem with that. Just this 7970. Don't know why! Been like this for a few months. Mainly windowed mode games especially source games.

 

[mauller07]

grab hw monitor and check your temperatures.

 

[firaaero]

grab hw monitor and check your temperatures.

Yeah, i get like 60 degrees celcius GPU playing Counter strike go. Get about 60 degrees cpu

 

[mauller07]

do you have another psu you could try? it could be that its your psu unable to cope and whining or is the whine definitely coming from the gpu?

is your psu fairly old, what wattage is it also? the 7970 will definitely be using more power than your older cards did.

 

[firaaero]

do you have another psu you could try? it could be that its your psu unable to cope and whining or is the whine definitely coming from the gpu?

No, i dont get whining. I just get stutter/framskipping. I don't have another PSU to try unfortunately.
Although, This mainly occurs when playing windowed mode/Fullscren windowed mode as i have two monitors and i usually multitask. This problem has been bugging me so much.

 

[FinalHunter]

Well It turns out this just started happening to me and a few others on Final Fantasy ARR. 60 frames for the first 5 minutes and drops to >5 fps and eventually crashes. I'm running everything at stock settings I have a i7-950 12gb ram and crossfired 7970's with a 1000 watt xfx platinum psu

 

[firaaero]

This sucks, i've been trying to deal with this since december last year. It comes back every now and then. I might just try to sell my 7970 and buy a Nvida 780 or something.

 

[mauller07]

final hunter try fresh installing your drivers using driver fusion and see if it helps and install the latest amd beta driver 13.8 and make sure frame pacing and vsync is on.

oh firaaero i thought you were op to begin with since he says his card whines lol. how powerful is your psu?

something you could try firaaero is to get radeon pro and add the games to the list and change the flip queue option for each game to 1 under the advanced tab if you use crossfire have it set to 2

 

[FinalHunter]

Thought the beta drivers were going to fix this issue by introducing microstuttering...
I made sure I used the 13.8 drivers when I installed these 2 gpus last week. I'll look into the others. Thanks

 

[firaaero]

Thought the beta drivers were going to fix this issue by introducing microstuttering...
I made sure I used the 13.8 drivers when I installed these 2 gpus last week. I'll look into the others. Thanks

Yeah... i was on my 13.6 beta that was okay. Then i decided to install 13.8 drivers and back to the salty mines i am. If you get it working. Don't ever update again until you absolutely have to. It's messed up i really want to sell this card and get and nVidia card. I'm sick of this 7970 all these problems with stutter and incompatibilities i've been having. If you're enjoying you're 7970 then, that's great! I would love mine if it worked well for me.

 

[firaaero]

final hunter try fresh installing your drivers using driver fusion and see if it helps and install the latest amd beta driver 13.8 and make sure frame pacing and vsync is on.

oh firaaero i thought you were op to begin with since he says his card whines lol. how powerful is your psu?

something you could try firaaero is to get radeon pro and add the games to the list and change the flip queue option for each game to 1 under the advanced tab if you use crossfire have it set to 2

Hmmm. Never tried that. Yeah i have Radeon pro. I also have a 750w psu which i think it plenty or at least enough for what i have. i also got 8gb ram, i7 3770k (stock), samsung 840 ssd

 

[mauller07]

run driver fusion to clean the amd driver remnants after you uninstall one and before installing the next for best compatibility.

 

[firaaero]

run driver fusion to clean the amd driver remnants after you uninstall one and before installing the next for best compatibility.

Never tried driver fusion. I've tried amd's removal tool, driver sweeper, manually removing it by uninstalling ( deleting registry, other files) none of that helped. Ill try the Driver fusion but currently trying the queue option to '1' thing atm so far so good, only when im alt tabbed like right now it's stuttering because i think its set to idle fps to like 15 or something. But sometimes when i play it always stutters like i am alt tabbed
CSGO

 

[mauller07]

oh right i see, yeah driver fusion is the updated version of driver sweeper so it could make a difference.

the flip queue is a brilliant change, it makes the cpu prepare fewer frames ahead of the gpu from its default of 3 and tends to reduce stutter and input lag when you change it to a lower value from the default of 3.

also make sure your bios is up to date incase its an incompatibility at all.

 

[firaaero]

oh right i see, yeah driver fusion is the updated version of driver sweeper so it could make a difference.

the flip queue is a brilliant change, it makes the cpu prepare fewer frames ahead of the gpu from its default of 3 and tends to reduce stutter and input lag when you change it to a lower value from the default of 3.

also make sure your bios is up to date incase its an incompatibility at all.

Hmmm... Nice i think this worked! Will report back soon, or tomorrow. If i don't get this problem anymore then it's awsome! Thanks for the help. If it happens again the stutter, i guess ill try updating my mobo drivers. If not. Will be lurking around again!

 

[firaaero]

Spoke too soon! Had a good round of CS : GO and thought this was all over. Then bam! second round stutter everywhere! GOd damn

 

[firaaero]

I'll try more stuff tomorrow. Too tired for now, guess ill just play fullscreen or something :S no more multitasking when i die

 

[mauller07]

what antivirus are you using by chance? firaaero

 

[firaaero]

what antivirus are you using by chance? firaaero

Hmm. Avast! Never speculated my antivirus. But i might try uninstall it since i don't really need an anti-virus, just have it for the sake of it.

 

[mauller07]

i would get rid of avast, it could be the problem, its a terrible system hog and can cause all kinds of performance problems, its horrendous how people reccomend it to anyone.

grab AVG instead if you want an antivirus.