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    Need Help 7970M stuck at max clock speed.

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by nclardy, Mar 19, 2013.

  1. nclardy

    nclardy Newbie

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    Hey guys, I've been lurking around here searching for information and stuff from time to time. I have had my R4 for almost a year now with no major issues. Well Saturday night I goofed up and didn't install the new video car driver correctly and ended up have to intsall windows again. My 7970M was stuck at idle clock 300/150. After a while of playing around with MSI afterburner I was able to get it to change, but now it is stuck at 900/1400 all the time. I am running the video card drivers from dells page. Every time I try to get the new drivers off AMD's site and install them I get the blue screen of death. I also have the internal gfx switched off as well.

    Thanks in Advance

    Nick
     
    nclardy, Mar 19, 2013
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  2. nclardy

    nclardy Newbie

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    Hey guys, I was able to install the new 13.3 beta drivers today. After I installed them, my graphics card had the same issue. I re-enabled the integrated graphics card and now it is functioning correctly. I just need to figure out how to over clock the card a different way due to afterburner not allowing me to overclock the 7970m because of the integrated graphics.
     
    nclardy, Mar 20, 2013
    #2
  3. hellsfire

    hellsfire Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hmm, have you gotten this problem solved yet?
    I recall having that problem in the past. Did you flash a modified vbios into your 7970M by any chance?
    Also, did you follow the overclocking guide in:
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/658958-guide-installing-overclocking-amd-mobility-7970-m17x-r3-illustrated-guide.html

    Some of the registry tweaks in there may contribute to your clocks always staying at max and not decreasing itself when under no load.
    All this is coming from memory in the past so I may be wrong :X

    I would suggest you uninstall afterburner and your graphics driver and reinstall, also making sure you didn't do any registry tweaks.
    There's an alternate afterburner overclocking method that I've found very stable and nifty to overclock:

    Enable Higher Clock Limits With -xcl + .dlls (not Unofficial Method) - Guru3D.com Forums

    Just make sure you perform that method with the the integrated graphics switched off and only running in the 7970M mode.

    +Thanks if that helps :)
     
    hellsfire, Mar 21, 2013
    #3
  4. nclardy

    nclardy Newbie

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    I believe the problem that started all of this is that I used driver sweeper to uninstall everything instead of the control panel uninstall. I did re-install the driver's and msi and that solved the problem with the card being at max clock. I tried the -xcl and I can overclock the card now but I can't tweak the voltage or anything like shown in the thread link you provided. On a positive note my core clock is now 925mhz and 1450mhz memory clock on stock voltage.

    Thanks

    Nick
     
    nclardy, Mar 21, 2013
    #4