[Davros]

Oh it will, usually a few weeks after the driver is released, maybe they stagger it so the whole world doesnt autoupdate on the same day

[Grall]

Are you sure? I've never had my CAP autoupdate.

Also, if it waits a couple WEEKS with autoupdating it may just as well not bother at all.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

IIRC, CAPs are included in the drivers, just it's faster to download new ones rather than wait for new CAPs to arrive with newer drivers.

Updates in CCC only check once a month. Do you want it to check once a week, once a day, once an hour? If it's that important, you're checking yourself anyway.

[DeF]

Guys yesterday i got myself Sapphire 7870 and i am starting to regret it. With 12.8 or 12.9 beta i have severe core clocks fluctuations that cause lower than normal performance. Going back to 12.6 seems to resolve that issue but i am reading about many ppl complaing about random black screens while gaming on 7870 with 12.6 and lower. I did not have time to test gameing properly yet because i just did fresh install of win7
With 12.8 or up drivers my performance is about 15% lower than normal (at least in 3dm11). I am now doing a fresh install of BF3 for some testing. My main question is: should i return the card and go with GTX 660 or hope this is not actual hardware issue and wait for proper drivers?

[Alexko]

That's odd. Clock fluctuations could be due to PowerTune, but in theory it's hardware-based, and only a new BIOS can modify its behavior, not new drivers. So I'm not sure what's going on here.

I suppose you could try setting PowerTune to +20% and see if that helps.

[DeF]

Originally Posted by Alexko

That's odd. Clock fluctuations could be due to PowerTune, but in theory it's hardware-based, and only a new BIOS can modify its behavior, not new drivers. So I'm not sure what's going on here.

I suppose you could try setting PowerTune to +20% and see if that helps.

Here are some links with exact same problem i have right now.
Link 1
Link 2.

I played BF3 for about 1h and everything seems to be running fine. I am going to install 12.9 beta again and check your PT tip.

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by DeF

Here are some links with exact same problem i have right now.
Link 1
Link 2.

I played BF3 for about 1h and everything seems to be running fine. I am going to install 12.9 beta again and check your PT tip.

I guess if Cat 12.6 works fine, you might as well stick to that. If fiddling with the PT settings doesn't help, I suggest filing a bug report and hoping the next Catalyst version fixes it.

[Malo]

I was initially having problems with my MSI TF3 7870 and black screens on 12.6. I ended up disabling Afterburner and any overclocking then worked back from there. Now I'm running 12.8 and back to 1150 core clock and 1250 memory. I was running 1300 memory and maybe that was causing the black screens.

As far as core clock fluctuations, I have something similar but it presents itself differently. My thread at Rage 3d.

Basically my performance wasn't affected but my utilization would fluctuate wildly between 63% and 100% whereas with 12.6 the utilization would be solid 96-100%. Overclocking or power tune would have no effect on this.

[DeF]

Ok i did some quick tests and here are the results with 12.8 driver:
Setting PT to +20% - no luck
Updating BIOS (Asus P8Z77V PRO from BIOS 1015 to BIOS 1504) - no luck
Overclocking core from 1000 to 1005 - seems to be working! I dont see any drops in core clocks and my 3dm11 score is the same as with 12.6 (P6735).

Now im going back to BF3 and see if i can actually play the game without issues.

Bottom line is i still dont know if i should return the card or not. I dont feel like troubleshooting every driver release.
What would you do in my shoes?


EDIT: Just started playing BF3 and got blackscreen after like 2 mins. Awesome

EDIT2: It looks like clocks are stable but GPU-Z reports weird VCCD drops even during full load (i get stupid readings like -85.5V or 0.882V even with 100% gpu usage.

[swaaye]

Perhaps a defective card?

[DeF]

I returned the card. I will receive GB 7870 OC on monday. Fingers crossed it will work as advertised.

[DeF]

So i got this new and shiny GB 7870 OC. First of all this cards runs flawlessly unlike that Sapphire i returned. At stock clocks (1100/5000) it does P7048 in 3DM11. I am impressed i must say.
Cooling is very efficient and decently quiet. Be aware that this GB card is very long and may not fit into some shorter cases.

[Alexko]

Glad everything works. But there's still no clue as to what was wrong with the Sapphire card, is there?

[DeF]

Originally Posted by Alexko

Glad everything works. But there's still no clue as to what was wrong with the Sapphire card, is there?

I am guessing it was some kind of weird HW fault.
There are many stories of faulty sapphire cards from 7800 and 7900 series floating the web.

[I.S.T.]

I bought my sister a Sapphire 4650 once and it had visible PCB damage. Really more of an anecdote than anything.

[Grall]

Originally Posted by DeF

There are many stories of faulty sapphire cards from 7800 and 7900 series floating the web.

Sapphire is one of the major gfx card manufacturers, so it's to be expected. "Stories floating the web" is not exactly waterproof level of evidence...

I have four Sapphire cards and they've all worked fine for years. OK, five cards; one I had replaced under warranty because a bearing or both in the blower fan wore out and the bastard started rattling something fierce. Not really Sapphire's fault though I'd say.

[DeF]

Originally Posted by Grall

Sapphire is one of the major gfx card manufacturers, so it's to be expected. "Stories floating the web" is not exactly waterproof level of evidence...

I have four Sapphire cards and they've all worked fine for years. OK, five cards; one I had replaced under warranty because a bearing or both in the blower fan wore out and the bastard started rattling something fierce. Not really Sapphire's fault though I'd say.

Well i asked google about asus or gigabyte problems and got only individual cases. But if you search for sapphire 7800 or 7900 series problems you will get quite a few results. Many of them are very similar so i think there is something in it.

At first a went with sappire cards because i remember they were the "top" brand for ATI cards (my last sapphire card was X1950PRO).
I understand that this might look like anecdotal evidence but i was not willing to push my luck with another sappire card this gen.

[Grall]

It's not empirical evidence, just anecdotal.

Anyway, tried the (as of this writing) current 12.9 beta driver and it's a complete disaster, at least on my system. Explorer.exe crashed spontaneously three times (and automatically restarted) while playing some team fortress 2, no more than 10-15 mins or so. Not sure there's a pattern there; it hasn't crashed again after I quit the game.

Maybe it got cranky because I had to reboot my PC when the 12.6 beta driver I had been running up until then refused to uninstall properly. It sat for about half an hour and seemed to repeat the same step of uninstalling the display driver and wouldn't move on; couldn't cancel the uninstall either. So had to hit reset.

Oh well. The download of 12.8 is done now, so maybe I'll have better luck with this one.

*Edit:
12.8 doesn't seem to crash explorer.exe at least. Always a positive sign.

[karlotta]

I havent had the Explorer crash...7970, My current new OS install was with the 12.8, then the 12.9b over the top. Works great. I did have Explorer crashes with my 6970 and the 12.6s... Did a full format/new image build for the 7970. In my new image, i ONLY used the 4.5dotnet, Before i used all the sp/4.0.nets etc.. so i wouldnt have to be doing a long WinUpdate, always had some issues that way.. Love the new 48~mb 4.5.net!

[Psycho]

Seems the cause of the Sapphire 7870 problems are finally identified (by AMD, not Sapphire..) and fixed: http://www.behardware.com/news/12705...-solution.html

[DeF]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Seems the cause of the Sapphire 7870 problems are finally identified (by AMD, not Sapphire..) and fixed: http://www.behardware.com/news/12705...-solution.html

I am happy i returned my Sapphire 7870 and got Gigabyte version.