Does anyone observe 5970 throttling?

[TehQuick]

According to this article, 5970 doesn't even hold up on stock clocks for long, i.e. due to heat or power consumption issues it downclocks to 550mhz on cores during long gaming/benching sessions.

I wonder if that article has any merit or did they simply have a dud videocard? Does any of the 5970 owners observe these issues?

 

[RamonGTP]

This isn't the first time I've heard about the 5970 throttling. I read somehwere it was due to the VRM's that were overheating and not the actual GPU's

 

[vjcsmoke]

According to this article, 5970 doesn't even hold up on stock clocks for long, i.e. due to heat or power consumption issues it downclocks to 550mhz on cores during long gaming/benching sessions.

I wonder if that article has any merit or did they simply have a dud videocard? Does any of the 5970 owners observe these issues?

Generally only if the GPU gets over 100C.
Running a single 5970 with furmark got me to the high 80s range.
Running two 5970s was somewhat scary because 2 of the 4 gpus ran over 100c.

I suspect some throttling might have happened at that point.
But a single 5970 should be fine, depending on how much you are overvolting/overclocking it.
I am waiting for some Accelero 5970 extreme edition 3rd party coolers.
Not sure if I'm ready to go for waterblocks in my system yet. Hmmm.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

Generally only if the GPU gets over 100C.
Running a single 5970 with furmark got me to the high 80s range.
Running two 5970s was somewhat scary because 2 of the 4 gpus ran over 100c.

I suspect some throttling might have happened at that point.
But a single 5970 should be fine, depending on how much you are overvolting/overclocking it.
I am waiting for some Accelero 5970 extreme edition 3rd party coolers.
Not sure if I'm ready to go for waterblocks in my system yet. Hmmm.

a piece of folded paper between the cards will solve the heating issue with the top card.. just needs to be spaced enough for the fan to pull in cool air..

 

[x3sphere]

According to this article, 5970 doesn't even hold up on stock clocks for long, i.e. due to heat or power consumption issues it downclocks to 550mhz on cores during long gaming/benching sessions.

I wonder if that article has any merit or did they simply have a dud videocard? Does any of the 5970 owners observe these issues?

Gets up to 80 C here under load at auto fan speed, no throttling. Haven't tried overclocking because overdrive is missing in the Dirt 2 drivers. I think going up to 5870 stock clocks at 50 % fan speed won't be an issue.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

It only throttles speeds when it exceeds 100 degrees, it shouldn't do this under normal circumstances since the fan spins up to keep the temps down, the cooling solution clearly isn't working correctly and you'd need to RMA.

I have mine running at 5870 speeds with an overvolt on the core and the card has no problems keeping the temps in the mid 80's during full load with a fan speed of only about 40%

 

[defaultluser]

According to this article, 5970 doesn't even hold up on stock clocks for long, i.e. due to heat or power consumption issues it downclocks to 550mhz on cores during long gaming/benching sessions.

That's not the impression I got. They overvolted the card, and clocked it up fro 725MHz core (stock) to 875 MHz core for the testing. All the graphs show falloff from 875 MHz.

The card will not get stuck in thermal overrun at stock clocks/volts with proper airflow.

That said, we were able to push both cores from a modest 725MHz to an impressive 900MHz, where we did see quite incredible performance gains. However in order to reach this frequency we were forced to use a special voltage tool which was provided by AMD

The card ware overclocked, overvolted, and SURPRISE, the stock cooling solution couldn't cut it. These reviewers are utter geniuses, call me back when they actually get a clue and try water cooling.

That voltage tweak plus core increase from 725 to 875 pushes the core's dynamic power consumption %35. That probably puts the card's consumption close to 400w!

 

[TehQuick]

read on, and you find the bit where they mention that the card throttles back to 550mhz from stock values.

However what we are most concerned about is the throttling that was seen when operating the Radeon HD 5970 at its default specifications.

 

[defaultluser]

read on, and you find the bit where they mention that the card throttles back to 550mhz from stock values.

Could you link the page,and show me a graph as proof? I thought I read the entire article, and completely missed that.

 

[TehQuick]

last page. I got no time to spell it out for you, read the article carefully or just ignore this thread.

 

[JCDenton]

The first 5970 I had would throttle when it got to around 93c. The second one does not throttle at all even right up to 100c.

Also, I tried it in both the top and bottom slot with the 5870. I was pretty sure it would be cooler in the bottom slot where the fan could breathe, but I had to try it the other way too since parts of the card on the bottom are exposed and I thought having my CPU heatsink blowing relatively cool air right across them would help. Long story short: putting it in the bottom slot where the fan can breathe more is MUCH cooler if you're doing multigpu.