Radeon HD 6970 - crashes and poor performance

[StrangeBeing]

I recently upgraded (?) a system, replacing a Radeon HD 6850 card with the 6970.

Other system specs are:
64-bit windows 7 with
i7 3930k @ 3.2 GHz on dx79si, 16 GB RAM

... with all the latest OS & game updates, bios & mobo drivers, and so on.

Nothing is overclocked.

The system has a 1000W power supply and the video card has both of its supplemental power sockets plugged in. The card drives a single 1920x1080 monitor via DVI


The two problems have been:

1. Frequent crashes (The video driver has stopped responding...)

Other symptoms, amid the driver freezes/crashes, have been incorrectly colored textures, and an occasional application/game crash.

I have read about this problem and other fixes including changing TDR settings in the registry. Given that the default TDR timeout is 2000ms and the video card is meant to be operating at 10-20 ms per frame, I think that TDR is unlikely to be the underlying problem.

RESOLUTION:

I have FIXED this problem. The video card manufacturer had quietly set the default GPU clock speed to 940 (up from the base spec of 880).

By using the Catalyst console and downtuning the GPU clock speed to 900 MHz the video driver has become completely stable under all of the conditions that would crash it earlier.

The slightly detuned (although up from original spec) returns 3dmark scores consistent with what I expected, significantly up from those with the 6850 card.

BUT... problem number...

2. Very poor in-game video performance. Shocking. A few frames per second. Despite a killer 3dmark and good furmark scores. Basically unplayable. Pretty much every 3D game we've tried.

I've tried a few in-game/configuration options as recommended here and there (e.g. changes to default.cfg in Doom 3 BFG) but nothing has made a useful improvement.

I've re-installed (completely) the old drivers; I've tried the latest beta as well as
the whql approved versions.

Eventually I gave up and removed the 6970 and replaced it with the the old 6850. Performance back to normal.

The reason for writing about the resolved first problem is that it is not a solution I have seen widely promoted despite many hits on searches for 'video driver not responding' - so I'm hoping it might be useful for some people out there.

But I'm stumped by the performance issue. So if anyone has a useful suggestion as to how the actual game performance of the 6970 can be brought up to what might be expected, I (and I suspect others) would be quite interested. Otherwise it seems I've bought an expensive paperweight.

StrangeBeing

 

[StrangeBeing]

Your first mistake was buying 16 gb RAM and i7 processor.
Anyway, check the wiring and the connectors, you may have bent a pin or something. But that performance failure is really puzzling. How could such an amazing card fail so bad? You must have gotten a lemon.

I'm guessing that you're joking about the RAM and the CPU. Seriously, is there a problem? If so, why the huge performance difference between the graphics-intensive benchmarks and graphics-intensive gaming?

Similarly, I suspect that a bent pin or loose connection would either prevent the system working at all, or hit the benchmarks.

StrangeBeing

 

[StrangeBeing]

In terms of gaming, they don't really provide much of an advantage compared to price. i7 and 16 gb RAMis better for a lot of multitasking, 3D design, rendering things, etc.

Lol, that's more or less why I originally bought the system (relatively cheaply). But the kids were complaining their gaming system was getting obsolete so I 'repurposed' it, by replacing the original video card with the 6850 and later, in an effort to get even better performance, with the 6970.

Currently the system is really humming along with its 6850, but I'm still wondering why the 6970 should have been such a disappointment.

StrangeBeing

 

[StrangeBeing]

I wonder if there's a cache issue or some other problem related to having large RAM. The games really really slow down when action occurs (just when you want need good refresh rates!) - which obviously shouldn't be an issue with high performance components (sadly, everything will be obsolete in a few years!), but is presumably associated with moving large chunks of textures around from main RAM to the card.

Otherwise I'll have a poke around the BIOS settings and see if there's anything obviously wrong there.

If all else fails I'll wait until I build another system, and try the card in it.

toastybatch565, thanks for your input over the last few days. I'll let you/the forum know if I resolve the issue

 

[smeezekitty]

I wonder if there's a cache issue or some other problem related to having large RAM. The games really really slow down when action occurs (just when you want need good refresh rates!) - which obviously shouldn't be an issue with high performance components (sadly, everything will be obsolete in a few years!), but is presumably associated with moving large chunks of textures around from main RAM to the card.

Caching in ram can only make it faster because the disk is much slower. There is no harm in having too much RAM.