Dreaded under-utilization issue with the 7970m. Can anyone help?

Hello. For some reason, my 7970m seems to have bit the dust somewhat. I used to play Lord of the Rings Online with no issues on ultra settings, but now the FPS has dropped dramatically. In cities, I get 25 FPS or less, with lots of jerkiness and lag. GPU-Z shows my card performing at 47% load and only using 450mhz and 300mhz of memory, rather than the maximum it is made to use. Any ideas of how I can fix this? Or am I just screwed? Thanks.

 

7970m underclocks itself in everyday use which is perfectly normal but it should switch back to performance mode automatically. try a gpu benchmark/stress test just to make sure that its isnt related to the game
if even on stress test you cant get it to work then you most likely have a driver issue. in this case you can manually overclock it to 850/1200 with programs such as msi afterburner,
or you can uninstall all amd driver components and install latest WHQL one from amd cite.

if none of these work then you have a issue with your hardware but i doubt it.

hopefully these will help you

 

Thanks! I'm going to run a 3DMark11 test on it now and I will report the results.

This issue happened on 13.2 beta drivers as well as 13.5 beta 2 drivers.

My 3DMark11 scores were very low. I was getting 10 FPS in each of the tests on average, some a little higher, some even lower. So my next move is to download the latest WHQL drivers?

Tried 13.4 WHQL drivers, no improvement at all.

 

sometimes amd drivers corrupt themselves for some reason. i know because same thing happened to me. I had a screen tearing issue that cant be fixed with uninstalling/updating drivers. what i did was clean installing win7 and all the drivers. Probably your issue is somewhat similar. if nothing works just backup and clean install everything.
as for driver installing i did follow batboys guide and its quite easy. Everything you need is in alienware resource CD.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/556721-how-clean-windows-7-install-driver-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

 

3DMark11 scores:

P2967

Graphics Score
2918

Physics Score
3496

Combined Score
2697



Edit - I've also gotten a warning error when I rebooted my laptop that I wasn't using the correct power adapter. I'm using the one that came with the laptop. Could that be the problem?

 

atleast now we know that there is a issue for sure. Probably it is driver based. Amd drivers love corrupting themselves for no reason. happaned to me to and i found my solution in Clean instaling win7 and all the drivers. I dont know why it happens, but i know that its real frustrating. if nothing works feel free to clean install everything. It doesnt take that long. Driver installing may seem complicated. Just follow batboys windows 7 Install (Driver Install Order) Guide

if its not 240W adapter then yes it could be the problem

 

Your physics score is way low too, check your power plan and adapter.

 

The adapter is the original one that came with the laptop, though. As far as I know it is 240w, but how can I double check that? Is there any way to check how much power my laptop is drawing?

I thought the error message for the power adapter was just a glitch or something. Is it possible that the adapter is not outputting enough power?

My power plan is set to high performance.

I fixed it! It was my power supply. By unplugging it and plugging it into a different socket, it fixed the problem. My card runs at full capacity and the games perform with high FPS once again.

Hopefully I won't have to replace the power supply, but that may need to happen if this happens again. Anyone ever heard of this issue? I found it by researching online, a user on this site posted awhile back about the same issue and it was his power supply causing it. Weird. For now though, it's fixed. Thank god!!!

 

That doesn't sound likely if you were able to fix it by switching outlets, but, even if so, it'd be a relatively inexpensive fix (~$60).

 

Do you have an R3 or R4? Have you checked what triggers the clocks to get stuck at 450/300? (Resuming from sleep, after using it on battery etc..)

Which BIOS version are you running? Is Enduro on or off in the CCC?

 

Thanks for the response Luis, but I solved the issue by unplugging the adapter and plugging it into a different socket. For some reason, the power supply was severely under-powering the laptop. Once I switched sockets it runs perfectly fine now with proper test scores and FPS in games.

Thanks for all the responses trying to help! Much appreciated.

 

I'd get your socket checked out by a professional electrician to prevent any damage or fire.