Guide: How to Underclock your ATi 5870 Automatically

Guide: How to Underclock your ATi 5870 Automatically

The ATi 5870 in (Clevo/Sager notebooks) currently runs at full speed regardless if you need it or not, and the idle temps reflect this.

ATITool, ATI Tray Tools, RivaTuner, and MSI's Afterburner all have problems with this card, Catalyst drivers, and/or 64bit Windows 7/Vista.

However, AMD GPU Clock Tool works great. Its settings are just reset after reboot and it is annoying to have to manually enter the lower clocks every time windows starts.

The Solution: Use Command Lines!

1)Install AMD GPU Clock Tool for Radeon 5870. If you don't already have it, It is available from here: AMD GPU Clock Tool v0.9.26.0 For HD 5870 download from Guru3D.com

2)Copy a shortcut to AMD GPU Clock Tool and put it somewhere to edit it. (Copying the one from the start-menu is easiest.)

3)Right Click on the Shortcut, and click Properties. Click over to the Tab labeled "Shortcut."

4)Add the following command parameters to the target (OUTSIDE of the quotation marks):
-eng=200 -mem=300

For example, mine looks like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\AMD GPU Clock Tool\AMDGPUClockTool.exe" -eng=200 -mem=300

While you are here in the shortcut's properties, you may want to take the opportunity to assign a hot key. Simply click the "Shortcut Key" box and press the key that you would like to assign. I assigned "L". Ctrl + Alt +L now underclocks my card. Hit apply and now you don't even have to find the shortcut to change clock speeds!

For ease of use, I named the shortcut "ATi Min Heat"

5)Now, to apply this setting at every start up, copy the shortcut and paste it into the folder labeled "Startup" on the start menu (under All Programs).

Now your clocks will be set down at every boot!

6)Of course, sometimes you will want the full power of this card, so create another shortcut like above, BUT change the command parameters back to the stock defaults:
-eng=700 -mem=1000

Name it something like ATi Max Performance.

Now all you have to do is click that link (or assign a hot key like above) to go back to full power. When you are done you can click the underclock link in the start menu/use the hotkey or reboot.
Awesome.


*In my experience the engine at 200Mhz and the Memory at 300MHz is rock stable. My idle temps from the GPU dropped from 55*C to 45*C! Of course your mileage may vary.

*ALSO: 200 MHz engine and 225MHz memory has been very stable for me, but the occasional accelerated Flash movie may have hiccups.

*You should being running for the lastest drivers available, you can find them for Win7/Vista x64 here:
AMD Catalyst Mobility Display Driver

*You can use this same method to OVERCLOCK as well, just be careful to monitor temps.

 

How thoroughly has this been tested? Are those clocks 100% stable? I really don't mind the heat and I'm always plugged in, but I guess it would be good for my electric bill.

 

Pretty well, I've seen others reccomend it, and I've been running it for a week. It's not permanent, and you could adjust them if you like something else better. Keep the ratio of Core to Memory though. Much below those clocks and you may get artifacts.

I keep mine plugged it too, but for longevity I just want to minimize heat whenever possible. 10*C is a good drop. (Although, I doubt your electric bill will be affected, unless you keep your laptop next to your thermostat.)

 

how much longer battery will u get underclocking this much?

 

I can vouch that this works been doing that before you wrote this guide. I'm running same clocks. I didn't notice any change in battery life since and even if there was, it's probably not noticeable since voltage still stays the same.

One thing you could add is put hotkeys on those shortcuts so you don't have to place the shortcuts on your desktop. (I like my desktop icon free)

Nice guide +rep

 

I like where your head is at. Hot-Keys added!

 

There was a thread in the ASUS subforums with much of this covered for the G73JH here, with some interesting discussion.

A few of us have done the same thing for the HD 5850 in the MSI GX640 as well.

 

Thanks! I didn't mean to be redundant. I was just excited and wanted to share it because I had been trying (for quite a while) to get ATiTool, ATi Tray Tools, MSI Afterburner, and Riva Tuner to work without success.

This method is optimal since it requires no background processes.

 

will constantly switching between min. and stock clocks going to have detrimental effects on my gpu?

 

Can you elaborate on this, please? Do you mean a 2:3 core:memory ratio? I've been downclocking stably to 300/300, so is that bad since it's a 1:1 ratio?

 

No. None at all. This is basically what ATi's PowerPlay and nVIDIA's PowerMizer do. They downclock the card when it is not in use.
For some reason, ATi diabled the PowerPlay functions in the card's video bios. Maybe they were in a rush to get it out the door and be the first DX11 card, or maybe they didn't want to bother integrating DirectCompute (use GPU for calculations off-loaded from the CPU) into powerplay. Who knows?

At any rate, the worst case scenario here is that your system becomes unstable or your display gets artifacts. However, that is an easy fix. Just adjust your clocks to something that is stable for you.

If anything, your card will last longer because it is staying cooler.

Oh, that's just a general rule of thumb for finding stable clocks, if 300/300 is stable for you and you prefer the extra MHz, then by all means, use it. Some hardware is more picky about it than others.

Unless you are overclocking, the hardware will not be damaged. And even then, the damage isn't from the overclocking so much as it is the excessive heat produced.

 

It might just be the Sager, but PowerPlay works in both the ASUS G73 and MSI GX640. There's a thread dedicated to PowerPlay in the G73 here.

However, PP in those laptops only underclocks at times when the screen turns off, and the clocks are 300/1000 in the G73 and 100/1000 in the GX640. Because they don't underclock the memory, it's far from optimal, and in fact the GX640 cannot wake up from sleep or boot if the clocks are at 100/1000.

Your Sager may be similar.

 

Yeah, for whatever reason, they disabled it for the Sager cards. It freaked me out when I first discovered I didn't have powerplay.

I have read that you can set powerplay so that it is automatically activated as soon as the notebook goes on battery (read it in the G73 forums), not just when the screen turns off.

And are you saying that it is a good thing that we also underclock our memory?

 

Interesting. That could very well be. I just assumed PowerPlay wasn't implemented at all from the complete absence of any mention of it in the catalyst control center. I will dump my video bios later and poke around.

But even so, that setup is silly. Windows 7 with Aero, DVDs, and flash movies are all quite stable with the 200 engine & 300 memory clocks. I can even average 30FPS in FurMark (at 800x600) with it. Why keep the card ramped up perpetually?

Maybe the intial batches weren't as stable? Or because the card idles at around 55*C they decided it wasn't important enough to do? It will be interesting to see what they do with PowerPlay in the next refreash of their Mobility Radeons. Hopefully, nVidia's mobile Fermi lights a fire under their feet.

Also, yeah, dropping the memory helps as well.

 

There has got to be a guru out there who can edit the bios on the 5870m for the clevo/sager models so that it can utilize power play.

 

well, just poking around a google a couple of weeks ago, when I discovered I didn't have powerplay, it seems that with other ATI gpus (in other brands/notebook models), powerplay was pretty buggy. There was a lot of issues with powerplay not turning off when you loaded up certain games and what not, which resulted in very poor performance in those games. It was quite a mess, so I think that's why ATI disabled the feature. This is just my speculation, though.

 

@kingtz:
That makes a lot of sense and is most likely true since the card can handle the low clocks. They just couldn't get the software together... (What? Ati? Eh?)

@KipCoo:
As mentioned above it may be a lot worse than manually ramping up/down the clocks... Also, flashing the video bios is very risky and you can brick the thing. Unless you want to donate a card to test on, not many people will want to test it on their own cards.

I actually kinda like this route with the AMD GPU clock tool, it gives the most control over what the card is doing without having to have a utility running in the background and there's no risk.

 

The earlier bios on this card had powerplay working the new one did not. Currently all the powerplay settings in the bios are set to the same clock of 700/1000.

 

Yeah, there's another PowerPlay setting that keeps the lower clocks on the whole time, and you can choose either setting for when it's plugged in or when it's on battery (e.g. you can even make it downclock on AC but prefer stock clocks on battery).

With my MSI GX640, I've found that it's much better to have PowerPlay off, because its chosen clocks of 100/1000 cause problems. If I set it to the permanent downclock mode rather than the one that only downclocks when the screen is off, it can fail to boot into Windows altogether - I had to use System Restore to get out of that a couple of times while I was experimenting. The mode that downclocks when the screen is off doesn't have this problem, but it still causes the system to fail to wake up from sleep.

Strangely, while it couldn't wake from sleep at 100/1000, it was fine at 100/300, which is interesting because it suggests that the problem with 100/1000 is not the 100MHz core clock but the combination of the two (probably the 1:10 ratio).

 

Hm. Interesting. I get instant artifacts at anything below 200-175MHz for the core.

It could be that AMD yields are spotty. Maybe some batches of chips underclock better than others.

The ratio definitely could be causing the problem with 100/1000... I've never seen a card that just downclocks only the GPU... Timings can be important.

 

ATI does the same thing with the 5870 in the ASUS G73 as well, but the downclock is to 300/1000 which works fine.

The MSI GX640 might underclock better because it has a 5850 rather than a 5870, but since that's pretty much the same card apart from 75MHz of core clock that doesn't make sense either.

 

I just tried a battery test after underclocking the GPU (300/300).

My Settings:
Power Saving mode
Min. Brightness
WIFI ON
BT OFF
Underclocked GPU and CPU (the (M) button on the panel above the keyboard)
Just browsing the internet only (no youtube or anything intensive).

My time was still around 58-59 mins when it shut down, so no change from before underclocking the GPU.

The only benefit of underclocking the GPU that I've noticed is GPU temps dropping by ~10C. Whoever mentioned the need to undervolt the GPU as well is probably right.

 

Oh yeah, the voltage is a huge factor. My undervolted core 2 duo saw a dramatic drop in temps even while locked at full speed..

I'm really happy losing 10*C. People spend a lot of money to get a lot less (ex: Sager spitting IC7 on the dies for $40, my expensive Zalman cooler)...


Update:
Well, I dumped the bios and indeed, powerplay is completely disabled.
Engine/Memory/Voltage
Clock Info 00: 700/1000/1.15
Clock Info 01: 110/1000/0.95
Clock Info 02: 500/1000/1.15
Clock Info 03: 500/1000/0.95
Clock Info 04: 300/1000/0.95
Clock Info 05: 400/1000/0.95

BUT all possible PowerPlay states point to Clock Info 00. And for some reason the memory is never changed from 1000 anyhow...

Oddly enough, AMD's GPU clock tool reads a voltage of 1.05, which is not even mentioned in the bios... It's either inaccurate or software other than the bios affects it. Too bad the tool can't change the voltages, it looks like .95 is supported, and a lower voltage may make the card more stable at lower clocks...

 

Ya I brought this up a while ago in another thread. Funny thing is the older bios had it working correctly.

 

make a simple batch file...

Last I tried RBE did not actually change the clocks or voltages I will toy around with the newer version to test it soon

 

Yeah a batch works too. The shortcut how-to is good for a novice.

Definitely let us know how that goes with RBE.

 

I will whip up somthign soon if anyone likes ... batch files that is ...

 

I wonder if there is a way to automatically load a profile or batch file when you run a 3D app or game and then once it has exited the app or game, load the low power profile / batch file. I don't have my 5870 yet so can't test anything yet.

 

ok question, what if i dont want to udnerclock it, instead overclock it, lets say to 800/1200, can i still use this method?

 

Yes you can.

 

Yes, you can choose the clocks you wish to use. Just make sure you check for stability. My card maxes at 900/1100

Edit - Doh beaten by sp-1

 

does the bandwidth of the card effect the overclocking? mine is only 64.0gb/s

 

The bandwidth is affected by the speed the memory is running at - if you overclock, the bandwidth will increase.

 

o thank you, all this time i thought i get a lousy card

now testing it, so far im able to do 3dmark o6 at 800/1150 and scored 14340
stock 700/1000 scored me a 13462.

when i tried 800/1200, i get lines and freeze the system
now doing 810/1150.

 

Nice! How are your temps at 810, 1150?

 

intensive gaming kinda spiking high at 70 degree in air con room, im able to spike it up till 840/1150, but the score upping is too little, 14496. i think the memory play more role then the gpu....

if i up it to 1160, it will froze the system or give me black and white lines

trying like bro mandrake, his at 830/1230. which enabled him to score 17k+, guess i can only dream

 

Those temps are not bad at all. I can still hit 80c in Stalker Clear Sky. I've underclocked it to 500/800 to get it to stabilize around 79c with acceptable framerates.

I guess you're more limited by voltage than temps as far as how high you can go.

I'll be redoing the thermal pads and paste here soon, so hopefully I get my temps down. Maybe add some heatsinks for good measure.

 

Well, 14.5K isn't bad by any means. What are your specs, Gen? IIRC, Mandrake had a pretty uber CPU on his G73. Also, don't those extreme OC/benchers just use systems with only the OS and the benchmarking software installed (apparently stuff like other programs and games and antivirus can lower your score a bit)?

 

What temps do you guys get at idle when your 5870 is downclocked and what do you get under load during gaming when your clocks are set to high?

My idle does not go below 52C, usually 55C no matter what I do and my gaming temps can go up to 85C so far.

Edit:

Higher temps were caused by the GPU not sitting completely flush. After fixing, idle temps are now 46C!

 

idle 250/300 39-42
idle 700/1000 ~50
load 700/1000 ~70

 

@SP-1: Those are great temps what are your ambient temps and are you using a notebook cooler?

@LaptopNut: Ah ha, was that from Sager or had you been messing around with it before?

I redid my thermal paste as Sager did a pretty sloppy job with it. They even had that black sticker on the CPU heatsink on a bit off center so part of die was against the pastic instead of the copper.

 

My ambient temps are standard indoor temps around 21C, and it sits on an old antec notebook cooler while on my lap but it is not on ever.

 

I see, well that's great that you get those temps. They are on the low side from what others have posted.

Good thing I like to tinker. I am itching to get started on my cooling mods. Just waiting on Fedex and Hong Kong Mail.

 

No, that was a 5870 I installed myself, but a few issues were caused by the existing GPU aluminum enclosure.

 

Oh, ok, that makes sense, I really wish these cards were more standardized. Same size and same interface would be ever so helpful.

 

Very helpful thread, Mike!
My idle temperatures:
700/1000: 53
200/300: 46-47

I estimate my room temperature at around 20degrees.
I guess there is still room for improvement, better cooling paste and coolingpad for instance.

 

i wonder why when i downclocked the GPU HWinfo32 get it wrong. i downclocked to 300/300 but on HWinfo32 it written 300/1200... do anyone experience same thing as me? i wonder if it will do harm to my system or not...

 

my specs are using 820qm, 320gb 7200rpm by seagate, apacer 1333mhz 4gb (2x2gb), running under windows 7 pro. well my 5870m scored almost 1500 point higher compared to my original gtx280m, all running under stock.

i think hdd dont play that much role, as when i changed my hdd to intel ssd, i scored 4 more point when doing benchmark with my hdd -_-

nevertheless im still happy with this 5870m, now i need to invest on more ram gb i guess

o yeah my temp under full load playing jsut cause 2 is at 75 in aircon room, when playing without aircon and in hot saturday evening, it can spike from 82 to 92, still under stock thermal though.

 

I'm glad people are still finding it helpful, Logion. Enjoy your lower temps!

That is the effective frequency of the memory. 300x4=1200. It is just a calculation HWInfo32 performs. Your memory is clocked at 300MHz.

(By the way, the memory is rated for 1,250MHz (5000MHz effective) the card doesn't clock it that high for heat and voltage reasons.)

 

haha... thx for the enlightment. now i feel relieved... haha...

by the way with downclocking it my GPU temps got minimum of 39C at a some time.