6950 clock speeds randomly dropping

[tianfeng]

I am using an xfx 6950 1gb with a gelid icy vision cooler. Temps idle at 34 and load at 47. I have been noticing random drops in my performance while playing games. I just installed ccc 11.10 but i was getting this on 11.9 as well. if I open up kombuster the gpu goes to 900 /1400 clocks but I get drops to 500/1300 about every 5-10 seconds. It drops and shoots back up to where it was before. this is that my afterburner looks like


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Is this normal?

[Arinoth]

Does this happen with every game or is it happening just in BF3 beta?

[tianfeng]

sorry, Trying to get the image to show up right. I am not even playing bf3 beta. I was just looking noticing it while playing any game.

[Supergrover]

Turn powertune to +20 in CCC. Fixed

Edit:
This will explain why.

AMD Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 Review

[tianfeng]

That was the first thing I did because I read that could be the problem. When I do that it sets my clocks back to stock but it is still doing the jumps.

[Eluder]

You sure this happens with games because I only have this problem with my high OC and furmark. Games don't seem to cause the TDP limit to kick in, even though I'm clocked at 975/1450.
If yours is happening on stock clocks I would say you have a weak PSU, or your video card may need an RMA.

[tianfeng]

My PSU is a tx850 so I don't think I am using more than that. I will try again after work and see if i am getting the same problem with gaming. I am hoping that it isn't an rma problem because I don't want to deal with xfx. I am not seeing any other major problems with it like artifacting. Is there a communication problem with afterburner and ccc? Should i use something else to overclock?

[Eluder]

Run it at stock and see if it happens, if it does, there's something wrong, if it doesn't, then your issue is your OC is too high for the TDP/Powertune limits.
I know there's an issue with unlocking the CCC limits via AB, but there's a registry hack out there that bypasses the CCC OC limits and then you can just use AB to overclock as needed.

[tianfeng]

I read about that this morning and I think I might give it a shot. I can also re-seat the gpu and see what happens. nothing ever just works. I am still dealing with the front two ram slots not working on an rma'ed crosshair v and i am waiting for bulldozer to see if it will fix it.

[Supergrover]

I had issues with getting my powertune settings to stick with AB installed, think it was Ari that asked if I had tried with AB uninstalled.
Uninstalled AB, rebooted, apply powertune in ccc, reboot, install AB, powertune setting stick.
Unfortunately AB doesnt like to change the corev's on my asus 6970's so for me now I use smartdr to adjust the clocks and voltage between ccc and AB.