Issues with Radeon HD7870 performance

supine

Reputable
Nov 26, 2014
2
0
4,510
Hi everyone, I'm having performance issues with my GPU (at least I presume it's the GPU). I'm getting consistently unstable FPS. A few weeks back I could run TF2 at a solid 60fps with almost all settings maxed, and pretty much every game I had at at least 45fps comfortably. Recently I had BSOD issues with what appeared to be the RAM (namely MEMORY_MANAGEMENT and IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL_TO error codes), but I solved that. At the moment, whenever I load up a game (e.g. TF2), my frames dropped to around 30fps, often dropping to 10fps. I eventually turned all the settings down to minimum in-game, that made my FPS fluctuate seemingly randomly between 200 and 10 fps. I use randomly because in what would normally be an intensive setting with lots of characters and effects going on, my frames would without warning drop and shoot back up from 10 to 100 or so. This happens with every game I've tried - although the games play fine for a few minutes before these issues kick in. It doesn't appear to be temperature issues, I haven't seen my graphics card above 75C whenever doing this (using SpeedFan).
Solutions i've attempted: I cleaned my case during my attempt to fix the RAM issues, so it may not be dust but I'm going to clean the case again very soon. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers for my card and Catalyst Control Center.
I have used CCC to set my GPU clock speed in high performance mode to 1050 MHz, and the memory clock is 1210MHz. My GPU clock, however seems to stick at 300 - 450 MHz, it is very rare i see it at 1050MHz, even while playing a game and alt-tabbing to check catalyst, it still shows 300 or 450 MHz.
I'm unsure what could be causing this problem, short of there being an unfixable problem with my GPU requiring replacement.

Thanks in advance.

edit: adding specs
CPU: i5 2400 quad core at 3.1GHz
RAM: 2X4GB DDR3 GSkill Ripjaws
Mobo: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
GPU: Radeon HD7870
HDDs: 2x1TB Seagate
PSU: 650w Cooler Master
 
Well your GPU clock rate should be constantly at 1050 while running any 3d intensive application, such low clock will with no doubt cause performance issues.

Just to be sure monitor your clock rates and GPU temps with GPU-Z, Speedfan could be giving a bad reading and every time you alt+tab to see CCC the GPU could be dropping its rates being back in a 2D environment.

Also, what PSU do you have?
 

supine

Reputable
Nov 26, 2014
2
0
4,510
I use a 650W Cooler Master PSU. Yeah I figured the low clock would cause performance issues but I'm unaware of any way to force the GPU clock to 1050MHz, CCC has a note saying OverDrive's clock rates will only be applied in high-performance mode but due to there being no option to enable said mode I assumed that means "when it's needed".