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DUH! News of the Day: Overheating ATI GPU causes downclocking

@ 2009/11/25

“With the core at 875MHz, the average frame rate was sitting at a fairly constant 115FPS. However after just 40 seconds temperatures exceeded 100 degrees and shortly after this the Radeon HD 5970 overclocking problem presented itself,” wrote the reviewer.

The frequency of both cores dropped to just 550MHz, which was a 24% decrease from the stock clock, and the average frame was also reduced to 90FPS, seeing a 22% drop in performance.

Comment from jmke @ 2009/11/27

there is a reason they pulled their overvoltage tool

Comment from Kougar @ 2009/11/26

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmke

not incredible at all; it works without issue at stock clocks

the moment you go beyond default, you are on your own

Out of all the previous GPUs, the 5970 is the most aggressively marketed for overclocking by ATI...

If light overclocking + games is enough to overheat the VRM's, I expect they will be the point of failure pretty early in the card's lifespan.

Comment from jmke @ 2009/11/26

not incredible at all; it works without issue at stock clocks

the moment you go beyond default, you are on your own

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2009/11/26

yeah that was what I meant, with a double GPU a drop in performance due to thermal throttling, Asus issue was bad GPU cooling , this is VRM's... incredible this

Comment from Kougar @ 2009/11/26

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeghoofd

Asus MARS cards revisited ?

No, this is the 5970, apparently the OCing issues are from the VRM's throttling the core back even with the fan at 100%.

If you look at Anandtech's breakdown on the topic, seems that one bank of VRM's isn't being cooled by anything other than a strip of metal. Anyone wanting to take advantage of ATI's overclocking claims will need to find a way to cool the VRM's...

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2009/11/25

Asus MARS cards revisited ?

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