Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 dipping performance and issues

[Teroxgt]

Hey guys, I just got a new system. Here are the specs
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE (Stock)
Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3
Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 1 gb (stock)
Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 8GB total (4 2 gb kits)
Corsair TX650W
WD Green 1 TB
CoolerMaster 430 elite black

The thing is after I had a clean install of Win 7 64 bit, I ran 3dmark06 and I got a score of 19740 and a Vantage score of around 16430. Is this normal for my rig? Then I ran Heaven Benchmark v2.1, was getting 35-40 ish fps in it, and after sometime in it, it crashed with a BSOD stating an error with atikmpag.sys. This was 'apparently' due to the fact that the card was on a grey slot with no switch card in the blue slot. Following the mobo manual, I placed the card in the blue slot with the switch card in the grey slot to get 'optimum' x16 speed for PCI-E 2.0. After that I fired up mark06 and i got a score of 18657. But the worse performance was in Vantage where I lost 3000 points (13000 points after the switch). The funny thing is Heaven's Benchmark ran fine without crashing and I kept it looping for a couple of hours. But again when I started benching in Heavens. my fps dropped a lot compared to what I was getting earlier ( getting 28 now ). I tested to see if my graphic card was faulty, so I ran Furmark, OCCT GPU test and it passed in both. I ran memtest86+(7 hours), Prime95( kept it for 9 hours) and windows memory diagnostic and it passed in all of them. So my memory is fine too, I think. I tried running OCCT Power supply test and 20-25 into it, it crashed with a BSOD and restarted. Then I re ran the test and this time it worked fine with no crashes! But since power supply test puts load on everything in the system, should I conclude that my psu is faulty? or is my motherboard faulty? Can you please help me on this..Its been only a few days since I purchased it.
Thanks...

Current status: I reinstalled Win 7 and ran the 3dmarks 06 and vantage. In 06, I got a score of 19870 and in Vantage I got 15653. Even though I got a bit higher score in 06, my Vantage score is still lower than what I got at first. Any headers to this. Also I have just noticed that I dont get any beeps from my motherboard on booting . But everything else seems to be fine. Does this indicate any problem?

 

[Peeved Kitten]

Does the 6870 have the power slide option in CCC? I honestly can't remember, if so you may need to max that. Otherwise if your running heaven on demo mode vs benching mode I do believe benching is much more intense.

 

[Teroxgt]

Well, I did a reinstall of Win 7 home 64, and I installed Heavens and this time around I got 1129 points in it with the average of 44.4 fps at 1360 x 768 with shader high and 4x anistropy and no AA. But I keep retrying vantage and it does not cross the 16000 mark, which this card is easily capable of. I mean I did a clean install and yet earlier when I first ran vantage, it easily crossed that. And no, I dont see a power slider in CCC. Any other suggestions.. thanks

 

[SCFAdamVcG]

It sounds like a PSU problem, just a guess.
Perhaps you could try checking if your PSU is getting hot?

 

[wingman99]

I would check to make sure it's not overheating.

 

[v1ks_]

Unless the PSU is faulty, it shouldn't be the cause for this problem. Especially if everything runs stock. Don't think it would actually draw any more than some 450W with everything spinning at 100% and the TX has plenty of Amps...

 

[Teroxgt]

I have checked the PSU and its just warm. Its definitely not overheating. And I reran OCCT power supply test a couple of times and it did not crash or report any errors. I even tested the RAM sticks individually to check if I have any bad sticks, but memtest reports them to be error free ( tested each stick for 2 hours ). Tested the graphic card as well in Furmark and OCCT GPU test, and they are error free.So all this points to a faulty mobo? I mean the heavens benchmark should run even if the graphic card is in either slot and it shouldn't matter. Only from one slot I'm getting this error. Plus my system freezes whenever I plug in any usb device on the front side usb ports.
Another thing is, is my RAM supported by the mobo/cpu? I ask this coz even though its there in the QVL of the mobo, I'm using 2 pairs of it (as opposed to only 1 as per the QVL). And also I'm running the ram sticks in the following arrangement: 1st pair of the sticks: A1|B1 and the next pair in A2|B2. I have been told that this is not the correct way to run it. Instead I have been told to run it like this: 1st Pair: A1|A2 2nd pair: B1|B2. But when I run like this my system refuses to boot. So any headers on that?