Disastisfied 7970 User

AthlonXP

Fully [H]
Joined
Oct 14, 2001
Messages
20,586
After spending this entire weekend playing around with these cards I am very impressed with the overall performance of the cards. There are still major drivers issues and to be honest I think the whole wait out for new drivers is unacceptable when it comes to being touted as the top of the line video card.

Here is a quick summary of the issues I have encountered (My setup is a PLP Monitor configuration (20x30x20) :

1. When playing various games (Payday the Heist, Skyrim, BF3, MW3, and CS Source) my 2 side 20 inch screens (Which I do not use for gaming.) after about 5 minutes start to disconnect and my game crashes back to the task bar.

2. Originally I removed my GTX 580 and GT520 (Originally used to power my 2x 20 inch screens.) and just put these cards in and with both the drivers on the disc and downloaded I would have windows restart with a blank black screen. (I did remove the drivers before installing the 7970's.)

3. One of the cards fans seems to be squealing when gaming. I think someone else reported this as well. Might be a faulty fan. I did try using just the 1 7970 that did not have the possible bad fan and I ran into the same problems that I described in 1 and 2.


I spent the entire day yesterday reloading windows and running various tests and all of the problems would pop up once again. I used a pair of 6970's last year and did not run into these problems and 1 of the 20 inch screens was using a mini displayport to dvi adapter. Its just very frustrating to have to put up with this until new drivers come out.
 
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I ran a similar setup before, have you tried possibly running CF on the single 30 and add the GT520 to run your 2x20's? Not sure if you tried this, but I was able to run 5 screens w. 2x6970's in eyefinity and a 9500gt to power 2 additional monitors
 
this is why I gave up AMD and stuck with Nvidia the last 2 generations. Their drivers are still their downfall.
 
I ran a similar setup before, have you tried possibly running CF on the single 30 and add the GT520 to run your 2x20's? Not sure if you tried this, but I was able to run 5 screens w. 2x6970's in eyefinity and a 9500gt to power 2 additional monitors

No but if that was the case I would of used 2 GTX 580's. I am trying to use only 2 video cards if possible.
 
I've had nothing but problems with AMDs shitty driver for the 7970; I had to re-install windows to stop it from locking up upon booting up. This is after using driversweeper in safe mode and everything...And then I found out one of my two cards artifacts in 3D like crazy, and for some reason using a crossfire connector other than the included one makes crossfire unusable (screen is hazy and massive flickering).

I would have jumped to Nvidia if they actually had something out right now to compete with the 7970.
 
Pats his old 480 gtx. Yep. Going to hold tight a while longer.

Sorry for the troubles. Seems to happen every gen. Early adopters get issues. Especially the weird ass ATI driver problems that I don't want to deal with.
 
The software side of the Radeon product is truely fucked up.

I have a brand new 7970 on the way and plan to Crossfire two of them.
It seems that no matter how much you try to wish good things, AMD continually finds ways to screw up their hardware.

I've said this more than once, "this is the last GPU I buy from AMD", but I just keep coming back like a dog that gets kicked off the porch.:eek:
 
Sorry for the troubles. Seems to happen every gen. Early adopters get issues. Especially the weird ass ATI driver problems that I don't want to deal with.
If it happens every gen and you know this, wouldn't this be your fault?

I don't get why people have to buy it day 1 when they know there will be issues and then complain about it... The card will still be there a month from now.. it's not going to just disappear
 
So I am going to try one more attempt with these cards.

30 inch: I have a displayport to mini displayport cable I will use.
20 inch #1: Use a dvi to hdmi cable.
20 inch #2: User standard DVI Cable.

I will report back my findings. If this does not remedy the problem then the cards are going back.
 
If it happens every gen and you know this, wouldn't this be your fault?

I don't get why people have to buy it day 1 when they know there will be issues and then complain about it... The card will still be there a month from now.. it's not going to just disappear

What's wrong with expecting the damn GPUs to just work out of the box, with W7 and appropiate installation protocols followed?

I don't think AMD is so stupid to think that people will be replacing their earlier cards, running the uninstaller, and loading "appropiate" drivers off THEIR WEB PAGE......simple enough, and should just plain work. If there was a different way to do it, they should tell us so.:mad:

It's very frustrating to see this problem right out of the box for new hardware.

But unfortunately not surprising.
We should get paid to Beta test their products.
 
For what it's worth, all 3 of mine have worked flawlessly out of the box. These things blow the GTX580s out of the water.

Except for Crysis 2 not starting with Crossfire, I have not had a single problem. Actually, they are better in my system overall vs. the nVidia cards since I can alt-tab out of games just fine, I can run my monitors in any arrangement I want without a problem, etc.

Hope you get it all figured out!
 
i installed these drivers and it totally got rid of the tearing for me, everything has been running great except single screen games in 1080p which now run in clone mode instead of sending my 2 side monitors into power save...thats about the only "bad" issue i have run into so far, this is coming from 6870 crossfire cards.


http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038263753&postcount=15
 
After spending this entire weekend playing around with these cards I am very impressed with the overall performance of the cards. There are still major drivers issues and to be honest I think the whole wait out for new drivers is unacceptable when it comes to being touted as the top of the line video card.

Here is a quick summary of the issues I have encountered (My setup is a PLP Monitor configuration (20x30x20) :

1. When playing various games (Payday the Heist, Skyrim, BF3, MW3, and CS Source) my 2 side 20 inch screens (Which I do not use for gaming.) after about 5 minutes start to disconnect and my game crashes back to the task bar.

2. Originally I removed my GTX 580 and GT520 (Originally used to power my 2x 20 inch screens.) and just put these cards in and with both the drivers on the disc and downloaded I would have windows restart with a blank black screen. (I did remove the drivers before installing the 7970's.)

3. One of the cards fans seems to be squealing when gaming. I think someone else reported this as well. Might be a faulty fan. I did try using just the 1 7970 that did not have the possible bad fan and I ran into the same problems that I described in 1 and 2.


I spent the entire day yesterday reloading windows and running various tests and all of the problems would pop up once again. I used a pair of 6970's last year and did not run into these problems and 1 of the 20 inch screens was using a mini displayport to dvi adapter. Its just very frustrating to have to put up with this until new drivers come out.

I'm wondering if you actually have a bad card thats dropping the display outputs. Have you tried a fresh install of windows? I don't think this is a standard driver issue because I see lots of people playing on a single display with their side monitors not having any issues. I have an eyefinity setup, but there are a number of games I just play on the single center monitor with my 6850's, and I have never seen that issue before. Seems like its either a hardware issue, or you have a truly messed up Windows/driver installation.
 
i installed these drivers and it totally got rid of the tearing for me, everything has been running great except single screen games in 1080p which now run in clone mode instead of sending my 2 side monitors into power save...thats about the only "bad" issue i have run into so far, this is coming from 6870 crossfire cards.


http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038263753&postcount=15

When using crossfire and playing fullscreen on a single monitor the non-primary monitors of the eyefinity group turn themselves off. When crossfire is disabled the image is cloned across all three displays. This is normal behavior in my experience with the 6xxx series.
 
this is why I gave up AMD and stuck with Nvidia the last 2 generations. Their drivers are still their downfall.

Their early/day one support is lacking. It takes days or weeks for them to update their driver for game compatibility or fixes.
After 2-3 months they stabilize and everything is fine, but the customer shouldn't have to wait weeks to use the product as advertised.

To OP:

You got PLP to work? Really?
Is it enabled through CCC or third party software?
 
When using crossfire and playing fullscreen on a single monitor the non-primary monitors of the eyefinity group turn themselves off. When crossfire is disabled the image is cloned across all three displays. This is normal behavior in my experience with the 6xxx series.

Playing in extended mode with crossfire on the center of 3 displays, my side monitors stay on, so I can have web pages and things next to my game. If I enable the Eyefinity group I play on all 3, so I don't understand what you are saying about the side monitors turning off. He is using PLP, so he has to be using an extended desktop configuration, so the side monitors should NOT turn off.

Their early/day one support is lacking. It takes days or weeks for them to update their driver for game compatibility or fixes.
After 2-3 months they stabilize and everything is fine, but the customer should have to wait weeks to use the product as advertised.

To OP:

You got PLP to work? Really?
Is it enabled through CCC or third party software?

the OP has noted several times now that he is only gaming on the center display, not PLP eyefinity. You can do PLP extended without any issues I believe.
 
Thanks Fly for reiterating that, also I have re installed windows. I am going to try some other cables and then just one card each to see if one is bad. After today though if I cannot get this fixed the cards are going back.
 
Thanks Fly for reiterating that, also I have re installed windows. I am going to try some other cables and then just one card each to see if one is bad. After today though if I cannot get this fixed the cards are going back.

NP. Good luck though man- seems like a really odd issue.
P.S.- If you can get it working, you can just send them to me;-) JK
 
On a side note, in situations like this. Grab a copy of Acronis True Image 2012. Once you've installed windows, updated it, installed all your drivers and baseline utils, applied your tweeks, then, make an Image of your install. Makes getting back to a fresh clean install with everything already in place a breeze savings you a vast amount of time.
 
On a side note, in situations like this. Grab a copy of Acronis True Image 2012. Once you've installed windows, updated it, installed all your drivers and baseline utils, applied your tweeks, then, make an Image of your install. Makes getting back to a fresh clean install with everything already in place a breeze savings you a vast amount of time.

I'd recommend Clonezilla instead. It's free and works just as well if not better. I image my work machine semi-regularly with it.
 
On a side note, in situations like this. Grab a copy of Acronis True Image 2012. Once you've installed windows, updated it, installed all your drivers and baseline utils, applied your tweeks, then, make an Image of your install. Makes getting back to a fresh clean install with everything already in place a breeze savings you a vast amount of time.

HELLS YEAH!!

Everyone do this and your life will improve by 2%.
 
My girlfriend got me a Radeon HD 7970 this weekend after getting tired of my bitching about my GTX 580's over heating all the time and having to crank the fans to ear-splitting levels to prevent it. The 7970 should be quieter and run cooler than a pair of GTX 580's while still being fast enough for single-monitor gaming and multimonitor gaming on older games. I'll add another one later after I get moved into my house. I'll definitely be looking to water cool a pair of these bad boys. Air cooling just isn't getting it done for me anymore. Not with multiple GPUs anyway.

Running my new Radeon HD 7970 I played SWTOR pretty much all weekend. I had some issues with SWTOR and the 7970, but as it turns out, the problems were with SWTOR and not with AMD's drivers. Though it looked to be the other way around initially. I got all of those resolved pretty easily. At any rate I've fired up BF3 and a couple other games to check them out on my new card and everything has been working great so far. I've not heard my Radeon HD 7970 even once no matter what I've been doing.

My biggest complaint so far is with needing MINI-DP to active dual-link DVI adapters to connect my additional monitors.
 
Just so you know OP, it's called the "bleeding edge" for a reason.

Fair enought, now I might have found our problem. The adapters that came with my cards (dvi to mini displayport) might be the culprit.

This is how I have it setup currently:

20 on the left (Using a dvi to hdmi cable)
30 in the center (Displayport to mini displayport)
20 on the right (Standard dvi cable)

Played 30 minutes of BF3 and so far so good. Will try another game and report back.

I am miffed but I do consider this a learning experience.
 
What's wrong with expecting the damn GPUs to just work out of the box, with W7 and appropiate installation protocols followed?

I don't think AMD is so stupid to think that people will be replacing their earlier cards, running the uninstaller, and loading "appropiate" drivers off THEIR WEB PAGE......simple enough, and should just plain work. If there was a different way to do it, they should tell us so.:mad:

It's very frustrating to see this problem right out of the box for new hardware.

But unfortunately not surprising.
We should get paid to Beta test their products.

I think the 'problem' with expecting GPUs to work out of the box 100% on every persons machine, is more Quality Assurance testing would need to be done in-house and with more combinations of hardware. IE, trying a 7970 on every major motherboard from every major manufacturer /w every major sound card, on different PSUs and all different kinds of ram configurations.

You'd still get your video card, but, it would be coming out in April versus January. Did you want to wait 4 more months for months of QA testing to be done --and-- pay probably $200.00 more per card for the QA work?

Most people just want it now versus want it done right. We're all a little spoiled and especially on [H] where we demand tri-7970s for running whats mostly console ports over multimonitor setups.

Companies want to release it now as well because they can say "We have the performance crown!! Our GPUS are the best :p :p" for a period for an extra few months versus had they waited till April for QA. If they waited till April, who knows if they would get the performance crown either or if nVidia's card will be out by April(probably?)
 
Fair enought, now I might have found our problem. The adapters that came with my cards (dvi to mini displayport) might be the culprit.

This is how I have it setup currently:

20 on the left (Using a dvi to hdmi cable)
30 in the center (Displayport to mini displayport)
20 on the right (Standard dvi cable)

Played 30 minutes of BF3 and so far so good. Will try another game and report back.

I am miffed but I do consider this a learning experience.

Nice man- I can understand the frustration, but it does make sense. Just glad you've got it working:) Enjoy!
 
Thanks, I am going to continue to observe and test though before I say its completely fixed.
 
I've not heard my Radeon HD 7970 even once no matter what I've been doing.

Coming from watercooled 480s for the past year and a half, the fan noise I'm getting from my two 7970s is pretty loud. It is very low during idle and game start up but when things get going, there volume gets loud. Temps are around the mid to upper 60s and the fan ramps up in the upper 40% range, which dosn't seem like I have a defective card but others state the noise isn't an issue.

Other than that, I have an issue with installing the drivers off of AMDs site as they would not work for me in crossfire. I was using a 6950 for a few weeks before getting the 7970s, and before that a gtx 480, but installing the drivers for the 6950 was a non issue.
 
Sorry to hear about your problems. I have a Sapphire 7970.

I too have PLP 20/30/20.

Here is my config.
1. 30" is connected to DVI out
2. left 20" is connected to miniDP to DVI
3. right 20" is connected hdmi to dvi

I've had nothing but good luck with mine. It took me a bit to set up PLP in windows (im thinking just a simple restart did it) but the orientation selection was missing when I'd hook up all three monitors, but not with two.

I've overclocked at a stable 1110/1510 without touching voltage and play BF3 with no issues. To use all three monitors, I just simply "expand" the BF3 window to cover all three monitors. The title bar is still visible, but that doesn't bother me too much right now. It gets comparable benchmarks to my friends 2x6970 overclocked setup also.

The fan speed seems to never go over 45%.

What brand is yours? Just curious as I doubt that matters since they're all reference cards, right?
 
windows backup has system imagine built right it, just stuff an image on an old hard drive in the system and have it backup on a schedule, makes for quick recoveries
 
Playing in extended mode with crossfire on the center of 3 displays, my side monitors stay on, so I can have web pages and things next to my game. If I enable the Eyefinity group I play on all 3, so I don't understand what you are saying about the side monitors turning off. He is using PLP, so he has to be using an extended desktop configuration, so the side monitors should NOT turn off.

I was talking to Haste266, not the Op. I was just stating that when you play with crossfire enabled at single monitor resolutions on an eyefinity group the other two monitors switch off (probably because of the no mirroring with crossfire limitation). This is not related to the Op's issue.
 
So with 3 connections hooked up my top (main card) is idling at 60c. Is this normal??
 
So with 3 connections hooked up my top (main card) is idling at 60c. Is this normal??

yeah it's normal. my idle temps go up +20 C when i connect a second monitor to my card. when you have multiple monitors connected your idle core clock raises from 300 to 400 MHz and your memory is bumped all the way up to 3D clocks.
 
Your move from GTX580 + GT520 to X-Fire 7970's, was it SLI GTX580?

I ask because if it was only 1 GTX580 then you weren't using SLI, and running different cards for different monitors is a lot less work for the drivers (I think).

So going from using separate cards for monitors to x-fire is a pretty big setup change. I'm not saying AMD drivers don't need work for x-fire. Just saying that there is a difference between setups.
 
Your move from GTX580 + GT520 to X-Fire 7970's, was it SLI GTX580?

I ask because if it was only 1 GTX580 then you weren't using SLI, and running different cards for different monitors is a lot less work for the drivers (I think).

So going from using separate cards for monitors to x-fire is a pretty big setup change. I'm not saying AMD drivers don't need work for x-fire. Just saying that there is a difference between setups.

Understandable but with the 6970's I tested over the summer I ran 2 in crossfire and the same config just fine. So far everything is working well but I need to do some further testing to make sure everything works.
 
Been loving every minute of my 7970. quieter than CF or single card 6870s and soooo much more power for me. OCing this card is flawless. no driver issues so far although installing the drivers was tricky. I ended up using the drivers on the disk because none of the web based drivers seemed to work.
Loving the upgrade.
 
Coming from NVidia I'm also dissatisfied with my 7970 probably exclusively due to the drivers.

1) Maya now hangs the whole PC when I start it
2) Some windowed 3d apps can hang the whole PC
3) It seems the OpenGL driver isn't fully backwards compatible, even using its compatibility profile.

I've got 25 days left to return this thing, so I'm going to try and hold out for an updated driver in the next 10 days. For something like a video card which is so closely tied to the kernel, the driver needs to be rock solid. In the meantime, it's sitting in the box on the floor going totally unused. :(
 
This is why I have native DP monitors. The DP adapters have ALWAYS been shit and cause problems.
 
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