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Overclocking a 6970

T

TheSmJ

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
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Received my 6970 last night. After installing the latest 12a hotfix drivers and checking out performance in a couple of games, I tried OCing the card in the CCC.

I managed to get the card clocked to the CCC's limits for both memory and GPU without any problem. Is there any other software I could use to push the card further than CCC's preset limits?
 
Have you checked MSI Afterburner? I'm not sure if it is yet updated to support the 69xx series cards, but the utility works quite well.
 
NO support yet.
ITS coming, wait a week or so, Unwinder havent got the cards yet when he does, he fix it.

so you can overclock but on stock voltage atm.
900/1355mhz for me 6950x2 stock voltage.
 
I am really thinking that since Flopper is able to clock his cards to 900 you should be able to hit 975-980 atleast on the 6970's without having to bump up the voltage.
 
Ya well mine only goes to 920 and I have to put the fan speed to 60% for that.
930 requires 75%. 940? Fine in some older games, but 3dmark 2006 or Sacred 2= vpu recover pretty fast.

It's luck of the draw. A reviewer who was testing the cards got one 6970 to 940 and the other one to 931...(he didn't mention the fan speeds).
 
Falkentyne said:
Ya well mine only goes to 920 and I have to put the fan speed to 60% for that.
930 requires 75%. 940? Fine in some older games, but 3dmark 2006 or Sacred 2= vpu recover pretty fast.

It's luck of the draw. A reviewer who was testing the cards got one 6970 to 940 and the other one to 931...(he didn't mention the fan speeds).
Click to expand...

I got mine all the way to max on CCC without doing anything for 6970..

didn't even change the fan profiles...
 
Im at 985 mhz on my core currently on my 6970 without a voltage increase. My memory on the otherhand wont bump hardly at all past CCC limits. Stock is 1375mhz, Im lucky if my 1460mhz stays stable. It was fine at 1450mhz, 1475mhz errors though.

After further testing as well, it seems temperature could be an issue w/ clocking. When my temps hit 70c, I started to get errors, but when I was at 60c during MSI Kombustor, everything was good. Not sure yet, must test more. I do want to get an aftermarket cooler for sure though, this stock one sucks compared to my old HR03 on my 5850 that kept it at a cool 63c w/ 1.25v.

I could pass 3dmark11 @ 1000/1450 but gaming doesnt like it :(
 
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Mine will go through 3d mark 11 at max ccc. But the card doesnt same to get that hot on 3d mark. I bought just case 2 yesterday on the steam deals. Played that for a little while and you can really hear the fan kick up.
 
doz said:
Im at 985 mhz on my core currently on my 6970 without a voltage increase. My memory on the otherhand wont bump hardly at all past CCC limits. Stock is 1375mhz, Im lucky if my 1460mhz stays stable. It was fine at 1450mhz, 1475mhz errors though.

After further testing as well, it seems temperature could be an issue w/ clocking. When my temps hit 70c, I started to get errors, but when I was at 60c during MSI Kombustor, everything was good. Not sure yet, must test more. I do want to get an aftermarket cooler for sure though, this stock one sucks compared to my old HR03 on my 5850 that kept it at a cool 63c w/ 1.25v.

I could pass 3dmark11 @ 1000/1450 but gaming doesnt like it :(
Click to expand...

What app are you using to OC your 6970?
 
Sapphire TriXX. Allows to get past the 950/1450 barrier.
 
The TRIXX 3.2 beta is out though and still doesn't seem to have voltage tweak.
 
6970 doesnt clock well at all right now because of lack of voltage controls. I think heat might be an issue with the 6970. preliminary testing shows that (atleast for me) when the temperature gets up to 70c+, overclock becomes VERY unstable. Up until that point its fine (ie: run 100% fan speed its good all day, lower it and it crashes). Need an aftermarket cooler asap!
 
i wonder if the crazy heat output has something to do with the power on demand feature on the card. it may be throwing as much power as possible to the card to keep it stable. i have a feeling the ability to manually tweak the voltages will solve a lot of the heat issues. hopefully we see something next week.
 
tried overclocking a 6970 recently to max in CCC and games would just freeze on me.
 
Humm weird. I have my 6970 on the stock cooler @ 950 / 1450 with no problems whatsoever. My temps are around 120F in games. Thats amazing with a stock cooler only at 50% speed.
 
doz said:
6970 doesnt clock well at all right now because of lack of voltage controls. I think heat might be an issue with the 6970. preliminary testing shows that (atleast for me) when the temperature gets up to 70c+, overclock becomes VERY unstable. Up until that point its fine (ie: run 100% fan speed its good all day, lower it and it crashes). Need an aftermarket cooler asap!
Click to expand...

Seems unlikely, I think you'll just have a borderline unstable overclock. At stock I accidentally let my 6970s get to 108C without incident. (Forced 20% fan speed before you ask)
 
I tried booting up BFBC2 for giggles at 950/1450 with fan at 45% and +20% power control. Would load but as soon as you started a game it black screened on me but I could alt tab and go to windows and kill the program, very strange. Might me a memory thing not so much a core frequency, I'll try again.
 
Crippy144 said:
Humm weird. I have my 6970 on the stock cooler @ 950 / 1450 with no problems whatsoever. My temps are around 120F in games. Thats amazing with a stock cooler only at 50% speed.
Click to expand...

It is odd, i'm wondering if anyone else has this issue.

The game will freeze and the monitor will shut off like the computer turned off. Only way I got out of that was I pressed the power button and it closed the game and gave me the force/cancel logoff screen.

I was extremely pissed when I saw this as this was a rather weak OC compared to what i've done in the past. Have a Gigabyte 6970 if anyone else has this and can/can't OC please post.

I tried booting up BFBC2 for giggles at 950/1450 with fan at 45% and +20% power control. Would load but as soon as you started a game it black screened on me but I could alt tab and go to windows and kill the program, very strange. Might me a memory thing not so much a core frequency, I'll try again.
Click to expand...
Guess i posted before reading but this is similar to my issue except it doesn't go back for quite a while it will just freeze for me. I can still hear/control my music and background programs with keyboard hotkeys so its just the video card or the game that is frozen it seems
 
I just popped a brand new Sapphire 6970 (upgrade from 4870 CF) in my machine and hit 980/1500 immediatley without any problem... Modded fan profile a bit to keep temps under 75c so it's a bit louder (around 50% under load) but I game with headphones. I used Sapphire Trixx to OC... can't wait to get volt mod support!

I was also able to softmod the latest 11.1a drivers to unlock physx hw acceleration on the old 8600gt I had laying around... 6970+physx=win (for benchmarks and the few games that support it).

I'll be getting another one of these cards for CF the next time I see a solid deal pop up (if I can figure out how to get a second one of these beasts to fit in my case).
 
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Using Afterburner I got my card to 1000/1450 @ 1.3V. Only tested with Heaven at length but so far its stable.

Is there any easy way to check for memory errors other than watch for low(er) performance? I miss the days when a too-high memory clock was simply a case of spotting missing textures.
 
Yep the beta release of AB will now handle voltage for the 6970. Get it from Guru3D.
 
ASUS HD6970 DirectCU2 here, and perhaps I am having a massive lack of luck, but even a 10MHz bump from the card's stock settings (890MHz, the DC2 comes factory overclocked 10MHz from 880MHz) will make the Lost Planet 2 Benchmark crash. Stock is fine.

All other games seem to work OK with up to 910MHz (including all Crysis iterations), but once the Lost Planet 2 benchmark crashes, I get artifacts in other games.

Strangely, overclocking the memory to 1500MHz, while having absolutely no impact on framerate, does not cause any problems.

Spain is a hot place, and voltage tweaking comes with two bad things: Having to use the horrendous SmartDoctor app from ASUS (MSI AB won't handle DC2 voltages) and increased heat.

Am I doing something terribly wrong here, or am I having terrible luck picking AMD cards?

You see, I was able to overclock my 8800GTS, 9800GTX+ and GTX295 just fine, yet I was unable to bump even 1MHz in my ASUS EAH4870 and got a ridiculously low OC of 20MHz out of an XFX HD5970 Black Edition.
 
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