Thinking about 7970. What are 'driver issues'?

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mhenley

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 21, 2001
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I've been treading water in the mid-range video cards for many years now and am tempted to make the jump to enthusiast. Obviously my choices right now are either the 580 or the 7970, and the biggest reason why I haven't pulled the trigger on a 7970 is because I hear stories about AMD's driver issues. All I can find online are crossfire issues, but are there any major issues with running single-card?

Also, I remember when I had an unlocked 6950 I had to set Powertune to +20% ([H] review explained why) and the Overdrive configuration overrided my Afterburner custom fan profile. Do you have to set +20% on the 7970s?

Thanks
 
Other than the obligatory installation issues, single 7970s have few problems

The new architecture isn't integrated into the unified drivers yet, most likely will be on cat 12.3

Powertune still must be set to +20 (increase the TDP cutoff) if you wish to overclock and not have the GPU throttle.

There will always be issues with CCC and Afterburner/Trixx/Whatever. Just the nature of the beast, but there are workarounds...

There are also reg hacks to increase the max sliders in CCC, however, there is no way to increase Vcore in CCC, so AB will still be necessary to some extent.
 
Single card single monitor, no issues. There are issues with tearing on Eyefinity because they dont have a card that has 3x 1 adapter (they should have made it with 3x display port and it would have been fine).

But as a single card on a single monitor, or with a multi monitor setup where you are only playing games on ONE screen, yeah it's an amazing card in every way. I love mine. They will continue to release drivers that fix framerate issues and settings in certain games, but I've been playing everything maxed out beautifully with no issues.
 
Have AMD cards given you problems in the past? If you owned lets say a 5770, the only difference you would notice by getting a 7970 is more performance. Way more.

I am only talking about stock settings on one monitor. I have no experience with eyefinity or overclocking.
 
Fantastic info, thanks all! I do plan on doing single card single monitor. The Mac, I remember reg hacks when I had a 6950, but never could get a satisfactory workaround to use my AB fan profile. What type of workarounds do you know of?
 
I'm getting artifacts on my 120hz monitor in games (edges of characters and models turn green when turning the camera/character, very slight and mildly bothersome, not big chunky artifacts or anything).

My 7970 display driver crashes quite a lot as well.

Worth it? I guess, I don't mind too much because I know it will be resolved in the future. For the performance, IMO it's worth it.
 
Ohmycaptain said:
I'm getting artifacts on my 120hz monitor in games (edges of characters and models turn green when turning the camera/character, very slight and mildly bothersome, not big chunky artifacts or anything).

My 7970 display driver crashes quite a lot as well.

Worth it? I guess, I don't mind too much because I know it will be resolved in the future. For the performance, IMO it's worth it.
Click to expand...

That sounds like a defective card...
 
I have no driver issues at all at the moment. Mainly play BF3 and SWTOR. Well, SWTOR occasionally drops to 0% GPU usage but that could be game related. Only happens in heavy pvp.
 
Ohmycaptain said:
I'm getting artifacts on my 120hz monitor in games (edges of characters and models turn green when turning the camera/character, very slight and mildly bothersome, not big chunky artifacts or anything).

My 7970 display driver crashes quite a lot as well.

Worth it? I guess, I don't mind too much because I know it will be resolved in the future. For the performance, IMO it's worth it.
Click to expand...

Yeah if I were you I'd RMA it because I have none of those issues with my 120hz monitor.
 
I've had very few problems with my 7970s. Single card has zero issue. My only beef with crossfire is getting AMD Overdrive to work well on the second card. I'm using Asus GPU Tweak for that. Otherwise these cards are awesome. Fairly cool with tons of OC room.
 
mhenley said:
Fantastic info, thanks all! I do plan on doing single card single monitor. The Mac, I remember reg hacks when I had a 6950, but never could get a satisfactory workaround to use my AB fan profile. What type of workarounds do you know of?
Click to expand...

fan profiles in the new AB beta 11 work fine, even with CCC installed..

As long as you set CCC to manual fan, and AB to auto with a profile....

I just set CCC to manual @50%, that way there is no doubt when my custom profile isnt loaded.

trixx and most of the other OC utilities now have custom fan profiles as well, so you have lots of options if you dont like AB...
 
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@ The Mac

I did do something similiar when I had a 6950. I would set CCC to a higher manual fan and then set a custom curve with AB (which I like, btw) but I would have to manually open AB for that profile to work, otherwise it defaulted to CCC values. I'm looking for the ability to set-it-and-forget-it so that all I have to do is turn my computer on and then launch a game, not turn it on, open AB to launch the fan profile, minimize AB, then launch game. Is what I'm wanting possible?
 
Opening this up. Does anybody know if it is possible to configure CCC and AB in such a way so that you don't have to manually activate the profile every time you boot?
 
Do your self and the all of us a favor and just be patient and forget about buying a HD7XXX series card till the prices come down or a better deal in the 28nm flavor appears.

As stated all over the internet the drivers are not up to speed at this point in time so waiting a little longer will hopefully show AMD and retailers that the planned market wants lower prices and better drivers. Something has got to give and if you aren't spending money you are not losing anything. AMD has to step up or they will lose.
 
SonDa5 can you please do everyone a favor and stay away from the "AMD Flavor" section of the board.

It's pretty clear you have nothing constructive to add here.
 
DrRetina said:
SonDa5 can you please do everyone a favor and stay away from the "AMD Flavor" section of the board.

It's pretty clear you have nothing constructive to add here.
Click to expand...

Just being honest about the driver situation and of course preaching about the high pricing. We all know the price is high right now.
 
SonDa5, except my question has nothing to do with drivers or performance of the card; it's about the known incompatibility of fan profiles between CCC's Overdrive (which has to be enabled for Powertune, which has to be increased to +20% to allow overclocking) and any 3rd party overclocking utility that allows you to create a custom fan curve.

So, unless you have something constructive to add to my question, please stop posting in my thread.
 
Ohmycaptain said:
I'm getting artifacts on my 120hz monitor in games (edges of characters and models turn green when turning the camera/character, very slight and mildly bothersome, not big chunky artifacts or anything).

My 7970 display driver crashes quite a lot as well.

Worth it? I guess, I don't mind too much because I know it will be resolved in the future. For the performance, IMO it's worth it.
Click to expand...

I recently updated to the new (non 7970) drivers on my 5970... So far I'm having the green edges you describe and have had a BSOD. I'll be reverting back to the previous version when I have the chance.
 
I drop frames in anything DX9. Plus random stutters in random things.
 
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Yup, just got turned off to 7970. I think I'll start looking at a 580 3GB, but I'm going to wait till I find the right one, with the right cooler, at the right price.
 
mhenley said:
@ The Mac

I did do something similiar when I had a 6950. I would set CCC to a higher manual fan and then set a custom curve with AB (which I like, btw) but I would have to manually open AB for that profile to work, otherwise it defaulted to CCC values. I'm looking for the ability to set-it-and-forget-it so that all I have to do is turn my computer on and then launch a game, not turn it on, open AB to launch the fan profile, minimize AB, then launch game. Is what I'm wanting possible?
Click to expand...

the beta 11 works fine with CCC...the OC/Fan profiles in AB load correctly...

i havent tried beta 12 yet..
 
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