7970M stock = poor performance | OC = 5 times better?

Hey everyone, hope your summer's going great (and winter for you guys down in OZ ) a quick question for you guys with R4s who might have overclocked your system. I've had mine for over a month and constantly game with an overclock of 920/1420 (at the very least) and have been very pleased with the performance. But I recently attempted to play a few of my games on stock clocks, just for the heck of it, and the performance I got was, shall I say, miserable in comparison...

This concerns me because I'm beginning to wonder if something is wrong with my 7970M? I'll post some examples of the kind of frames I'm getting -

(All games, Graphics maxed out @ 1080p)

• Bad Company 2 -- Stock = 30-35 fps || 930/1430 = 55-60
• Battlefield 3 -- Stock = 25-30 fps || 930/1430 = 50-60fps
• Sims 3 -- Stock = 45 fps (yes, really!!) || 920/1420 = 120-250fps (? strange)
• Assassin's Creed Revelations -- Stock = 35-45fps || 920/1420 = 60fps
• GTA 4 -- Stock = 35fps || 1430/1930 = 55-60fps
• Black Ops -- Stock = 40fps || 920/1420 = 60fps

So these are a few of my observations. As you can see, Stock clocks leave most games with below acceptable performance, while an overclock well below my limit of 965/1460 gives me a boost of 20 fps or more (have a look at the Sims 3 benchmark lol)

Just want a word on what you guys think is going on here. I'm baffled to say the least, seeing that my stock 3dmark 11 scores are P5913 which is higher than the average of 5.8k. So I'd like to know if you guys are getting the same performance as I'm getting and I'm simply over-reacting, or if I've been dealt a scrappy hand?

[PS - specs in sig]

 

Something does not seem quite right...I get 60FPS in BF3 with stock clocks on my 7970m so I don't know why yours would be so much lower unless you OC...

 

nkdv...something to do with Enduro and power management on your computer would be my guess

if you're getting great fps with it mildly overclocked, i'd just continue down this path...and no, i don't think you got a bad card

 

Did you down clock back to stock clocks then game, or were they on stock clocks after a fresh reboot? I have found that if I down clock to stock clocks, my FPS drop drastically. Granted mine are dropping down to less then 10 FPS, but perhaps it's similar?

 

Just thought I'd mention that I'm running the 12.7 drivers and got them when they were first leaked, and haven't installed the 'official beta' ones on AMD's site right now...

Mhmm, well at least that's my plan since I can't understand what's going on here. Do the 12.7 drivers support Enduro? Because I think the 12.5 modded ones that I used before didn't.. I'm always plugged in when I game, set to high performance too...
Playing with an OC indefinitely I suppose, but my curiosity is killing me

As a matter of fact, I think you might have nailed the issue buddy. Afterburner runs on startup for me so I manually downclocked every time I tested stock clocks. I'll have to check this out further.

Oh, another observation for you and SlickDude - when I run games on stock clocks, I sometimes notice that my core is running at 300MHz and memory at 150MHz (Using the afterburner OSD), before jumping up to normal for a while, following which it falls back to these atrociously low clocks again. I
m assuming that these low clocks are the whole problem after all. However, I have no idea why this is happening, so is Afterburner screwing something up? (A reinstall didn't help) I never notice this problem when I actually OC. Have you guys noticed anything similar?

 

Have you tried booting your system without Afterburner running on startup? If so, did it help? I'm thinking that the 7970Ms (or at least some of them) are having issues running with AB. Anyone know if/when another OC program for the 7970M is/will be available?

 

bump

I've noticed that the clocks become 300/150 when I go back to stock. WEIRD. No wonder I get terrible performance. Spec Ops: The Line was running at 10fps yesterday due to this. I OC to 855/1205 (5mhz increment) and it works fine and shoots up to 55fps.

 

bro, i just installed my card and getting the 300/150 reading.

Please please how do you change that? I've spent 4 hrs last night trying to fix this issue.

What driver are you running on?? the Modded 7900 drivers?

 

60 fps in battlefield 3 ?????????? singleplayer i hope....... i get around 44 in multiplayer

 

Are you overclocking then reverting back to stock clocks?

My clocks stay at 300/150 until I load up a game or program. If I apply an OC and play, then downclock, my clocks stay at 300/150.

 

Your answer is here, downclocking does not work well apparently :-
If you haven't overclocked at all, you should switch to dedicated graphics with fn+f7. should be all set.

Caspian Border can be a culprit. If I OC to 940/1440 or around that figure, I can usually get more than 50-55 fps, occasionally 60. Stock clocks give me about the same performance you're getting. All the Conquest maps are very resource heavy.

Have you overclocked your system at all?

btw, yeah, SP is a breeze.