6970 CF Overclocking Help

[dominick32]

Ok guys, RATTLE, DMAN, etc. etc. Maxi,
I have been out of the ATI game for ages, my last card was a 4870X2 at stock clocks. But I do have experience with overclocking, my last attempt at gpu overclocking was my old Viper John 8800 GTX with chilled sub zero water/antifreeze. lol

My new setup is: 2 X Radeon 6970's
Now, how do you recommend I overclock these? CCC?
I tried using CCC and overdrive, and any time I put the power control on 20%, and even put the cards on a minor 920/1400 OC, the cards will just shutdown windows and crash the PC. I have tried so many different things,
The only things that works currently is: 0% PC, 915/1375 - works

My GOAL: I am looking for the highest OC with both cards for a stable 24/7 daily overclock with NO NOISE from the fans. This would be a "set it once and forget it" OC

Thanks in advance guys!

Dom

UPDATE EVERYONE!
Couldnt wait until tomorrow. I have some good news. I took everyones recommendation and completely disabled CCC Overdrive and downloaded MSI Afterburner 2.0 from the MSI website. Immediately the card feels better and more stability and room. Right off the bat, I adjusted my fan line chart to idle at 38% below 45*C, and ramp up to 50% at above 58*C, 70% fan at 70*C, and 92% fan at 85*C or above. Already the card has blasted through 10 loops of Crysis Warhead Benchmark ambush, 8XAA, 1920 X 1200, Enthusiast averaging 78 FPS at 920 core / 1400 mem!! WHICH IS ALREADY HIGHER THAN I HAVE EVER BEEN WITHOUT CRASHING BEFORE. It definitely seemed to be a driver issue because with CCC Overdrive, sometimes the cards would crash before loading the game up just from the 2d to 3d switch. I am very happy right now. Going to try and max out the 950 core in a little while. Guys is there any way you can go higher than the frozen core/mem maximums in MSI Afterburner??

Thanks in advance!
Dom

WELL THERE WE GO! 3 LOOPS WARHEAD SAME SETTINGS 950 /1400 PASS!
60*C max temps with 45% fans at that temp.
Guys how we looking? Is there any way to increase the core beyone 950? Because it shows a max of 950 core.. Anyway to break that maximum?

And what about memory speed guys? I heard it is very difficult to clock after 1400 mem, should I just stick to 1400, or try to clock higher on the mem also?

Thanks guys,
Dom

 

[dominick32]

Anyone?

 

[sandyduff]

Use MSI Afterburner... it's by far the best and easiest program to use to OC those cards, that's what i use for my 5970 (i did manage 1GHz out of my 5970)... it also has some nice graphs for monitoring virtually everything on the card.. temps, clocks, usage etc...

 

[HousERaT]

I would bench both cards individually first. One (or both) of them might be a dud. I'm benching two 6950s flashed to 6970 and the first one is already past your crash clocks.

 

[dominick32]

Thanks guys. So downloading MSI Afterburner is a must? check
Houserat let me get this, you think one of my cards might crap out at stock clocks? That would be totally horrible. It seems that when in crossfire my system is on the verge of stability issues even at the stock 0%PC, 880/1375. Its weird, with my 4870 I was able to max out overdrive to max levels, now with the new 6970 CF, they really seem to not want to budge past stock at all. I am assuming maybe adding voltage will help as well? I know the power control doesnt add voltage, it just provides more overall power to the card IF NEED BE under load, so I am figuring just to default that on 20% right guys? Correct me if I am wrong? And than use msi afterburner to raise the voltage a tad on the two cards.
Thanks again for the responses. I am hoping to get at least a 10% overclock on core/mem with these, at a minimum.

Dom

 

[HousERaT]

Thanks guys. So downloading MSI Afterburner is a must? check
Houserat let me get this, you think one of my cards might crap out at stock clocks? That would be totally horrible. It seems that when in crossfire my system is on the verge of stability issues even at the stock 0%PC, 880/1375. Its weird, with my 4870 I was able to max out overdrive to max levels, now with the new 6970 CF, they really seem to not want to budge past stock at all. I am assuming maybe adding voltage will help as well? I know the power control doesnt add voltage, it just provides more overall power to the card IF NEED BE under load, so I am figuring just to default that on 20% right guys? Correct me if I am wrong? And than use msi afterburner to raise the voltage a tad on the two cards.
Thanks again for the responses. I am hoping to get at least a 10% overclock on core/mem with these, at a minimum.

Dom

To be honest I'm thinking you either have at least one bad card or some serious driver issues. I'm at 930/1420 stock volts on a 6950 flashed. I had a GTX 460 I had to rma because it was 20° hotter than my other card out the box. Changed the TIM and it didn't help. Kombuster had artifacts. It was just a dud card and the vender replaced it. I always test my cards individually first just to see if I have one stronger than the other.

Afterburner is your friend.

 

[Gunlance]

I'm having the same problem OC'ing 2 6870s. Afterburner will immediately freeze my comp and stability with CCC seems to be lacking. Interested in seeing how you solve your issue.

 

[dominick32]

I'm having the same problem OC'ing 2 6870s. Afterburner will immediately freeze my comp and stability with CCC seems to be lacking. Interested in seeing how you solve your issue.

Yeah same to you man. I will keep you posted if you keep me posted as well. I am going to try some things tomorrow since I am off from work with the ice storm so hopefully I will have some results for you tomorrow. As of right now, unfortunately I have the cards on stock 880/1375, power control on 0%. It really is unfortunate, especially now that I see my old buddy houserate spent a lot less money than me with a 6950 and has better performance than my 6970. lol We will get to the bottom of this.

Dom

 

[dominick32]

To be honest I'm thinking you either have at least one bad card or some serious driver issues. I'm at 930/1420 stock volts on a 6950 flashed. I had a GTX 460 I had to rma because it was 20° hotter than my other card out the box. Changed the TIM and it didn't help. Kombuster had artifacts. It was just a dud card and the vender replaced it. I always test my cards individually first just to see if I have one stronger than the other.

Afterburner is your friend.

First off, good to hear from you brotha! Its been a long time.
Second, I have a few questions for you.
At 930/1420 stock voltage:
1- Is that your daily 24/7 setting?
2- What is your daily 24/7 fan speed set at? Manual? Or Auto?
3- What is your daily 24/7 power control set at? -20. -10, 0, +10, or +20?

Thanks bro!

Dom

 

[deathman20]

Welcome back to the club man!

Yeah definitely MSI Afterburner. Get it, love it. As for overdrive in CCC turn it off disable it, make sure its not running period. For MSI Afterburner, you can set in the config file to unlock the OC limit to really bring that speed up.

With the cards you should be doing higher clocks NO PROBLEMS
With my 6950 unlocked 1.1V I get 900/1400 no problems, haven't tried for more but just with that shows you the potential of the cards, 930-950 should be easy for a default 6970 24/7.

As for my fan speed I have it on a ramp up phase. Though under gaming conditions it sits between 42-43% or roughly 60-65C. Its the sweet spot before it gets too warm IMO.

Power control... I control that Though since I don't use CCC its set to 0% and I control all it via the voltages in MSI now. So if your not using CCC you will not be worrying about this at all. What that control does though if its a TDP setting via the driver or if it increases voltages.

 

[dominick32]

UPDATE EVERYONE!
Couldnt wait until tomorrow. I have some good news. I took everyones recommendation and completely disabled CCC Overdrive and downloaded MSI Afterburner 2.0 from the MSI website. Immediately the card feels better and more stability and room. Right off the bat, I adjusted my fan line chart to idle at 38% below 45*C, and ramp up to 50% at above 58*C, 70% fan at 70*C, and 92% fan at 85*C or above. Already the card has blasted through 10 loops of Crysis Warhead Benchmark ambush, 8XAA, 1920 X 1200, Enthusiast averaging 78 FPS at 920 core / 1400 mem!! WHICH IS ALREADY HIGHER THAN I HAVE EVER BEEN WITHOUT CRASHING BEFORE. It definitely seemed to be a driver issue because with CCC Overdrive, sometimes the cards would crash before loading the game up just from the 2d to 3d switch. I am very happy right now. Going to try and max out the 950 core in a little while. Guys is there any way you can go higher than the frozen core/mem maximums in MSI Afterburner??

Most impressive is the max 58*C temps of the cards while loading Enthusiast crysis. I am very impressed with these babies. lol
Thanks in advance!
Dom

 

[dominick32]

WELL THERE WE GO! 3 LOOPS WARHEAD SAME SETTINGS 950 core /1400 mem PASS!
60*C max temps with 45% fans at that temp.
Guys how we looking? Is there any way to increase the core beyone 950? Because it shows a max of 950 core.. Anyway to break that maximum?

And what about memory speed guys? I heard it is very difficult to clock after 1400 mem, should I just stick to 1400, or try to clock higher on the mem also?

Thanks guys,
Dom

 

[kayson]

Just curious: Do you have voltage control in afterburner? My 6950 flashed to 6970 doesn't have any options in afterburner, but CCC overdrive gives me the +20%...

 

[tool_462]

Just curious: Do you have voltage control in afterburner? My 6950 flashed to 6970 doesn't have any options in afterburner, but CCC overdrive gives me the +20%...

You have to edit the CFG file to get control on flashed 6950's. I can only access this forum at work but there are a couple threads on Xtremesystems about it. One guy made a little utility that you run and it unlocks Afterburner's limitations for those cards, my 6950's run 990/1400 no problem

 

[sandyduff]

I would leave the memory as is... i saw a negligible difference clocking my memory up from 1200MHz to 1300MHz... something like 1fps if that...

 

[kayson]

You have to edit the CFG file to get control on flashed 6950's. I can only access this forum at work but there are a couple threads on Xtremesystems about it. One guy made a little utility that you run and it unlocks Afterburner's limitations for those cards, my 6950's run 990/1400 no problem

Did you use the 6970 bios or the modded 6950 bios?

 

[dominick32]

Guys i followed instructions on a msi hack and went into msiafterfurber.cfg to edit the file. As soon as I edited "allowunauthorizedoverclocking" or whatever from 0 to 1. The program crashed my computer, BSOD memory dump after I restarted afterburner.. Now what? I actually had to go into safe mode because every time the PC would boot up with that cfg file setup on 1 for unauthorized ati overclocking it would BSOD immediately on MSI afterburner program start. So I had to boot in safe mode and put the 1 back to a 0. I am assuming now I cannot use voltage control or go any higher than 950 core? Fill me in guys! MSi afterburner noob here.

Dom

 

[deathman20]

Hope you ment "EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 1"

But that should work. Not sure why it wouldn't. Im new to Afterburner as well but its a great piece of software that MSI has put out that is for sure.

 

[dominick32]

Hope you ment "EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 1"

But that should work. Not sure why it wouldn't. Im new to Afterburner as well but its a great piece of software that MSI has put out that is for sure.

LOL yes thats what i meant. unofficial, unauthorized, same deal. lol
But, I cannot use afterburner with that option on 1. It will BSOD everytime I start up afterburner. it is very strange man. this sucks

 

[deathman20]

Did you try it with just 1 card by chance?