Overclocking 7970m with Overdrive? Please help!

Hello. Here is my situation. I'm trying to overclock my 7970m card to 975/1500, which I've seen others run. However, whenever I make any edits with MSI Afterburner 2.3.0 (also tried 2.2.1), the screen flickers every once in awhile. When I'm gaming, the games will crash and the display will shut off and the laptop will need to be rebooted. I've tried numerous clock settings and this happens no matter what I set it to (above stock, of course).

I am using Catalyst 13.8 beta 2 and there is no Overdrive option. How do I get Overdrive in my CCC? I uninstalled 13.4 and installed a fresh 13.8, but it still didn't appear. I think if I can get overdrive to appear in my CCC then that will stop the flickering and crashing, since it will be a more stable, official overclock.

Please, someone help me get overdrive to appear in CCC. I'm pulling my hair out trying to get this to work. The game I'm playing has noticeable slowdown in busy areas, but when I'm overclocked it is WAY better with virtually no slowdown at all. So please, help a fellow gamer out who can't seem to figure out where to turn next. Thanks in advance!

 

You need to set
UnofficialOverclockingMode = 2
in MSIAfterburner.cfg file. This will resolve the screen flickering. You will loose the PowerPlay feature (your card will always run at OC clocks).
975/1500 may be a bit steep for your card. OC clocks vary from card to card, mine overclocks up to 950/1450 at stock voltage.

 

Thanks! I'll give that a try.

Just a little update, but I did manage to stop the game from crashing as well as the screen from flickering. I'm running 885/1350 and it's stable. May try to push it a little harder, little by little and see what the max is that I can set it.

 

Try 950/1400. That should be doable on stock voltage.

 

I will try that, TboneSan, although I tried similar numbers before and my game would crash frequently. Maybe if I ease into it that will help? It seems to help me that I eased into 885/1350 by taking "baby steps" to get to those numbers, lol...

Does anyone have any clue why I don't have a performance tab in CCC? No sign of performance, no sign of overdrive. Tried reinstalling and everything to no avail.

Update - I boosted it to 900/1350, and the screen tears and flickers while I'm browsing the web. Is this normal? Will it go away after time? I'm afraid to play my game while the screen is flickering because I'm guessing it will probably crash after 2 minutes like it did on 975/1500. Weird...

 

Okay, I did this, and now it's not letting me set my clocks properly. I type in 900 and hit apply, that works, but when I type in 1350 or whatever in the second clock, it makes everything go back to default clocks. What am I doing wrong?

Update - I had to add the "I confirm blah blah blah..." line to the cfg file to get it to work, but now it does. You sir, may be a genius. My screen flickers no more at 900/1350. I'm going to try to boost even further now. Thank you!!

Question though. Is disabling Powerplay really a good idea? That means the clocks will always be "on" basically. Can that wear out the card? Will it affect temps or anything? Just want to be sure it's completely safe and won't negatively impact me in any way before doing this. Thanks.

 

I was having a lot of problems overclocking through msi afterburner, a lot of what you're experiencing. I then updated to 3.0.0 beta 11 and it fixed all of my issues and it added in a few settings for amd compatibility that you used to have to update manually. The highest overclock I can seem to get on stock voltage is 950/1450.

 

Thanks for the input, Punkman. Everything seems to be cleared up when I switched the overclocking mode to 2. No screen tears or unwanted artifacts, but I haven't played a game yet to test if it crashes or not. My fingers are crossed.

Another related question. Is anyone using the 13.8 beta 2 drivers and getting decreased performance? My 3DMark11 scores are down about 500-600 points and I have no idea why. Thinking about rolling back to 13.4 which is what I was using, but I'm not sure what to do. Any ideas of why I'm seeing worse performance with these drivers?

 

I tried the 13.8 beta 2 drivers and experienced the same problems. I currently went back to the 13.2 beta 7 drivers and it's giving me the best performance in nearly everything I do.

 

Punkman, thanks again for the response! You may have solved my problem. I rolled back to 13.1 whql and voila! My 3DMark11 scores are back to 7300. Lovely!

Couldn't find 13.2 beta 7 mobility drivers to test them. Am I missing anything with those? I think I'll just stick with 13.1 for now and see how it goes. Can't wait to test these out more!

 

Okay, 950/1450 caused my game to crash. I am trying 900/1375 and see if that works better...

 

AMD Catalyst

Here's the 13.2 beta drivers and try 920/1400 on these.

 

Thanks, Punkman!

I'm running a pretty stable 925/1400 on 13.1. Thinking I can probably push just a little bit farther, we'll see.

 

You're welcome. I had one bsod at 950/1450 on the 13.6 beta 2 then I repasted and went back to 13.2 beta and it's back to great performance and temps. After 6 straight hours of bf3, max temp was 80c.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-flashing-vbios-may-work-other-gpus-also.html

some useful info for you.

 

This worked for mine, thank you very much. Got it to 1075/1500. Any above 1500 mem crashes me, even at 1.1v.

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2920XM Processor,CLEVO P170HMx P7871

 

Wow! You guys are AWESOME! Can't wait to try this! Thanks for posting!

Edit - Tried it, having issues.

First issue - Any settings changed in Trixx and 3DMark11 immediately crashes. What are your exact settings, Punkman? 1075/1500 is beautiful and I'd love to get that if possible, but I must be doing something wrong here. My game crashes immediately as well. Do I have to force constant voltage? Disable ULPS? Any ideas?

Second issue - My card is idle at 58 degrees, which is hotter than normal. Any reason for this? It used to idle at 50 or 51 before I tried overclocking, but now it seems to stay hotter, even when I'm not playing any games.

Any help appreciated! Thanks!

 

What are you trying to run at currently? I had a lot of instabilities at 1.1v after further testing and it wasn't a huge performance increase over 1000/1500 at 1.05v now. I'll probably end up settling at 1030/1500 @ 1.075v, give or take a little. I disabled any setting on afterburner that would conflict with trixx. You also want ULPS disabled.

 

I tried running 1000/1500 at 1100 VDDC, which I'm assuming is 1.1v. Instant game crash and 3DMark11 crashes instantly as well.

I will disable settings in Afterburner that conflict with Trixx. I also noticed that CCC had a different setting than Trixx, which I changed as well.

 

Just tried 950/1450 at 1.075 and it crashed after a minute of playing. Guess I just don't have a card that can handle much overclocking.

925/1425 is about the best I can do. It seems to be pretty stable at these clocks.

Edit - It's crashing even at 925/1425. I think there is a conflict with the different overclocking programs. I disabled CCC overdrive and the game didn't crash after that, but I also turned off all overclocking programs. Now that I'm back at zero, I'm going to solely use Trixx and see if it doesn't work this time. I have a feeling it might...

 

I would honestly go back to stock on mem and see how much you can get out of the core. Then proceed to testing the mem overclock.

 

Okay, FINALLY got it somewhat figured out. Turns out I had to disable settings in Afterburner as well. Now I'm using Trixx exclusively, and something very odd just happened.

I ran a stable 3DMark11 at 1000/1500/1.075 ...went smoothly, and I noticed in the beginning the FPS were higher than usual (usually I get around 39 on that opening test, this time it was 42+). So that's great, right? Well, my final overall score was actually lower than the score I had while running 925/1425/1.0 ...how the heck does that happen?

Sorry for the triple post but I thought it might actually come in handy to people who search for this in the future, to see everything that I've gone through in this process so they don't make the same mistakes as me!

Edit - In the 3DMark11 results page, it also shows my driver version as 9.12.0 ? Shouldn't that read 13.1 since that's the driver I'm supposedly using?

 

The score was lower because the overclock was/is unstable. Again, I'd suggest just leaving the memory clock stock and see what you can realistically do with the core clock first.

 

Thanks once again, Punkman!

It seems to be running well now at 1000/1500. I'm getting a 3DMark11 score of about 7000, though. Seems a bit low, but at stock clocks I get about a 5900, so it's a significant increase over stock.

 

Ahh the joys of overclocking...

Just take it one step at a time. Quite often a clock will run fine for a few games and then blue/red screen on others. You will just have to find a balance....

This was my best, got one run on 3DMark11 before it choked. Normally I run at 950/1400 for gaming, anything more and it gets unstable and the gain is insignificant anyway...

 

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2920XM Processor,CLEVO P170HMx

Here was my best, it was definitely unstable, 1070/1500 at 1.1v.

1000/1500 at 1.05v has the best performance for me, very stable and see increases. However, I may just take it back down to 950/1450 at 1.0v for gaming 24/7.

 

Well, after spending hours with it, I'm back to square one pretty much. 925/1400 is about the best I can run the game I'm playing at without it crashing.

I'm wondering why my performance has dropped. I used to get a 6600 score with no overclocking, now I'm down to 5900. I guess it's these drivers.

After extensive testing, it seems that 1400 is the highest mem clock I can go for, but the core clock is still up for grabs. I'm at 950/1400 now and it's very stable in-game. So yeah, I think I got this figured out. Finally, LOL.

 

Have you tried putting your memory clock back to stock then seeing what you can do with just the core?

 

Yeah, I did some extensive testing that way. Did multiple 3DMark11 runs with the memory clock at stock settings and just increasing the core. Eventually I got up to 1000/1500, which ran fine in 3DMark11 but the game I'm playing crashes at those settings. After even more testing I got it to run stable at 925/1400. Any higher in either the core or memory clock and the game will crash.

 

Ouch, sorry to hear. At least you got it figured out now though. 925/1400 isn't bad performance, still very good fps.

 

To check for stability, I now always run 3D mark 11, then the FFXIV benchmark. The latter is good at testing real world gaming stability that 3D Mark 11 misses.

I have a tough time choosing 920/1375 @ 1.025 or 940/1400 @ 1.05 for my 24/7 clocks. For me anything beyond that isnt worth it.

 

Yeah the difference from from 950/1450 and 1050/1500 for me is only 400 extra points on the FFXIV benchmark. 8613 at 950/1450 and 8997 at 1050/1500.

 

I'm getting pretty good performance at 925/1400. It's stable and I get a few FPS gain in my game. Sadly, Nehrim isn't optimized entirely, so I still get some slowdown in major cities, but it's still very playable.

You guys playing FFXIV? How is it?

 

Not playing it, too busy finishing all the games I bought in the steam summer sale.

 

I was referring to the benchmark not the actual playable game

 

Oh, ok. Didn't realize FFXIV had a benchmark test as well.

 

FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Official Benchmark (Character Creation)

Check it out, let us know what you get.

 

The best kind of testing is real world testing. I find the Sleeping Dogs benchmark to be quite taxing. And the Tomb Raider one. Obviously there is really no point getting mad clocks if it doesn't translate to performance in the real world. Nothing more frustrating then red screening during a raid or something similar