Force Clocks on 7970M?

I recently did some upgrades on my M17x R2 (SSD, 940XM, 16GB RAM, 2x7970Ms), which have worked out well for the most part (I still haven't sorted out the power issue fully, feedback welcomed! [ Original Thread]).

The power issue notwithstanding, everything is still usable with CrossFire disabled and/or games that don't really need it. I was replaying Fallout 3 to finish up the achievements when I noticed that it dipped intermittently below 60 FPS. I was curious, so I tried Skyrim and Crysis 2, both of which ran at about 20 FPS with every on Ultra. I checked and noticed that the cause was both cards running at constant 300 MHz Core / 150 MHz Memory clocks.

I'd ran into a similar issue with my 5870Ms previously, where the secondary one would never go above default clocks. I fixed that by using the AMD GPU Clock Tool, which would fix the clocks at specified values. Regardless of the drivers/vBIOS, it always gives a "No valid devices found" error.

I tried MSI Afterburner since I'd read about others having success with it. For me, it causes the laptop to immediately stop responding whenever I open it, about 80% of the time (requiring a full restart). On the rare occasion that it actually loads, changing the clocks with it only adjusts the ceiling; it doesn't actually change the value that they're running at currently, so it still relies on whatever mechanism isn't working.

I think this may have started when I turned off PowerPlay a few days back. I upgraded from 12.11 to 13.2 to see if that would help anything, but the only significant change that I've noticed is the lack of an option to disable PowerPlay.

Any thoughts on how to fix the underlying issue and/or a tool that might work for manually setting the clocks?

 

Check powerplay for starters.

Also check the Windows power plan, and make sure the one you use (Performance or Balanced likely) still has the cards on 100% performance under load.
Control Panel -> System and Security -> Power Options (check the plan settings/Advanced power settings).
Then ATI Graphic Power Settings (all at the bottom I believe) -> ATI Powerplay Settings.
When plugged in it should be on Maximize performance (I assume you're not testing the cards on your battery ).

Also, the cards will up and downclock under load, if they don't need power they will show the low clocks. When they need power, the clocks will jump to their correct value on the fly.
You can check this while doing a benchmark and monitor the clocks of the cards.

 

Thanks for your reply! I did a complete uninstall of all the drivers and reinstalled the latest non-beta official set and they seem to have fixed the issue with it not upclocking.

 

Awesome! I'm glad you got it sorted out.