Poor gaming performance 7970

[SlickShoes]

A friend of mine bought a PC here at the same time as me, he has just had it returned to him from an RMA which replaced the graphics card (hes on his third 7970 now) and motherboard. Most of the problems related to the motherboard seem to be fixed now.

However he is still having problems in games, in Far Cry 3 there is a slight stuttering like a skipped frame, this also happens in guild wars 2. In Tomb Raider the game plays fine but in the menu the textures flicker for no reason.

Also in Guild Wars this keeps happening:



Anyone had similar experience or offer any help? we have tried different drivers and reseating the card and so far it's made no difference.

If we can't get decent performance out of this third 7970 where do we stand replacement or refund wise?

In comparison my system has been flawless.

 

[mgsolidus]

Did you try the Catalyst 13.2 drivers?
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/amdcatalyst132betadriver.aspx
This was the difference between 10fps and 40 fps for me on Planetside 2. Your card is much better than mine, too.
Also, try enabling vsync.

 

[SlickShoes]

Cheers, we have tried the latest drivers, they seem to make no difference at all.

 

[Tom DWC]

That screenshot is a little worrying, looks like artifacting to me.

It would be very, very unlucky to have three cards fail in the lifetime of one PC but it is possible. It's difficult to draw too many conclusions without knowing the details of the other problems you mention.

I would give PCS a call, explain the problems so far and that this is the third card. Showing them the screenshot in the first post might help, this is thread 23891.

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

I get this in some games to and its when i use in game AA. Skyrim too, if i switch it off and use AA in the CCC it works perfect

Hope this is the same problem and that this helps.

 

[SlickShoes]

That screenshot is a little worrying, looks like artifacting to me.

It would be very, very unlucky to have three cards fail in the lifetime of one PC but it is possible. It's difficult to draw too many conclusions without knowing the details of the other problems you mention.

I would give PCS a call, explain the problems so far and that this is the third card. Showing them the screenshot in the first post might help, this is thread 23891.

Cheers. I will pass that info on, I think my mate is at the end of his tether with it to be honest with the money he spent on the machine and the amount of problems he had. I am not sure if PCS will give him a refund or just continue to replace the card but I have told him to contact them again.

Also thanks smoke I will pass that on!

 

[keynes]

I am not sure if PCS will give him a refund or just continue to replace the card but I have told him to contact them again.

He could try requesting a rebuild of the system if he experienced 3 RMAs so far. How old is his system?

 

[SlickShoes]

He could try requesting a rebuild of the system if he experienced 3 RMAs so far. How old is his system?

The system is 1 month old, first they sent a new graphics card, then they took it back for RMA and rebuilt the whole machine with a new mobo and gpu.

I have watched him playing games, his machine is the same spec as mine but with a larger HDD and 7970, so in Guild Wars he gets this horrible texture bug, he also get the split second lag that feels like a couple of dropped frames. The dropped frames thing happens in Far Cry 3 too, and in tomb raider some of the menu items lose there textures or flicker. I have none of the same problems as he does, so he is basically stuck and going to have to ask for a 4th GPU but at this point he just feels like nothing is going right and has no confidence in the system as a whole with the amount of problems he has had so far.

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

The system is 1 month old, first they sent a new graphics card, then they took it back for RMA and rebuilt the whole machine with a new mobo and gpu.

I have watched him playing games, his machine is the same spec as mine but with a larger HDD and 7970, so in Guild Wars he gets this horrible texture bug, he also get the split second lag that feels like a couple of dropped frames. The dropped frames thing happens in Far Cry 3 too, and in tomb raider some of the menu items lose there textures or flicker. I have none of the same problems as he does, so he is basically stuck and going to have to ask for a 4th GPU but at this point he just feels like nothing is going right and has no confidence in the system as a whole with the amount of problems he has had so far.

Just to get the obvious out of the way the Laptop is switched to High Performance in the power management, the game is being played with the mains supply connected and the Game has been set to run of the GPU in the CCC?

Another thing to try would be to set CCC to best performace and set all the settings in game to low, then see how it performs then start brining the settings up to see if anything specific settings would be causing this.

Do you know what kind of frame rates your getting?

 

[keynes]

Just to get the obvious out of the way the Laptop is switched to High Performance in the power management, the game is being played with the mains supply connected and the Game has been set to run of the GPU in the CCC?

Is not a PC?

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

Ugh what a moron. Sorry =(

Deletes profile in shame and embarrassment.

 

[NilSatis]

It is safe to say there is something wrong; either with the hardware or the drivers etc. I have a 7970 ghz edition, and it is an excellent card. I have those games and there is no such problems. Frame-rates are great and there is no micro-stutter in ANY game. I would definitely get the whole system back to PCS. Get them to look at another complete rebuild. Chances are that it is very unlikely that many graphics cards will be faulty, there is something else amiss here. Either that or the same card has been put back when other things have been assumed to have gone wrong. Get him to download something like Afterburner and monitor memory usage and temperatures while gaming with these problems. If there is nothing amiss, go through the process of uninstalling all drivers, clearing the pc and registry of AMD inputs, and then install the latest beta driver fresh. Try again. If no dice, then get it back to PCS asap although imo you need to do that anyway, more testing is up to you.

Alternatively download something like Msi Kombustor (which you can get with Afterburner) or some graphical benchmark programmes, and let the card run through a few of these...see if it fails and artifacts or comes up with "display driver has recovered" etc.

The latest Catalyst beta driver is the one he/you should be using. The last released drivers are great but certain games that run in Dx9 have slight flashing/ for maybe a millisecond. The latest beta has fixed this.

As for Skyrim however (Smoke) this does have some problems with distant textures flashing. That is the games graphical designers at fault; with the way they built up the textures. Under certain conditions you can get it to stop; but it will keep appearing. If you have strange artifacts when using aa something is wrong there too mate. Again, make sure you have updated to the latest beta driver. I know you have a laptop, but my gf has the same card, and you can use the same version of driver as I have. The latest beta. The architecture of the driver is the same and it will work just as the desktop driver will. You will find a big difference if you haven't upgraded for a while, and it will get rid of any flashing you see in direct x 9 games. Let us know what has gone on!

Btw from the screenshot it does look like graphical/texture corruption of some kind, but not the usual sort of artifacting I have seen. If this was a problem simply with the driver the "flashing" happens for a millisecond, enough to notice it but certainly not to take a picture of it, so this is something else I suspect. If the motherboard has not been fixed or there is a problem there with the sata ports or something else then it would cause constant problems with new cards etc. I can assure him that the 7970 is an awesome card, and is well worth getting working! If he has also not got the ghz edition which pushes the clocks up higher then this is the one to get. Alternatively, you can just overclock to those levels or flash the bios. The standard 7970 is great, as are all 7 series cards, and Nvidias 6 series cards too. Shouldn't be doing this mate. Good luck.

 

[SlickShoes]

Just to get the obvious out of the way the Laptop is switched to High Performance in the power management, the game is being played with the mains supply connected and the Game has been set to run of the GPU in the CCC?

Another thing to try would be to set CCC to best performace and set all the settings in game to low, then see how it performs then start brining the settings up to see if anything specific settings would be causing this.

Do you know what kind of frame rates your getting?

It's not a laptop its the same spec PC as my signature but with a 1TB HDD and AMD 7970 GPU.

We tried Metro 2033 and the stutter exists in that game on his PC but not on mine, we tried changing the settings to low everything and it made no difference really the game was still pretty sluggish.

 

[SlickShoes]

Ugh what a moron. Sorry =(

Deletes profile in shame and embarrassment.

haha don't worry its nice to just get some input so thanks for trying to help!

 

[SlickShoes]

It is safe to say there is something wrong; either with the hardware or the drivers etc. I have a 7970 ghz edition, and it is an excellent card. I have those games and there is no such problems. Frame-rates are great and there is no micro-stutter in ANY game. I would definitely get the whole system back to PCS. Get them to look at another complete rebuild. Chances are that it is very unlikely that many graphics cards will be faulty, there is something else amiss here. Either that or the same card has been put back when other things have been assumed to have gone wrong. Get him to download something like Afterburner and monitor memory usage and temperatures while gaming with these problems. If there is nothing amiss, go through the process of uninstalling all drivers, clearing the pc and registry of AMD inputs, and then install the latest beta driver fresh. Try again. If no dice, then get it back to PCS asap although imo you need to do that anyway, more testing is up to you.

Alternatively download something like Msi Kombustor (which you can get with Afterburner) or some graphical benchmark programmes, and let the card run through a few of these...see if it fails and artifacts or comes up with "display driver has recovered" etc.

The latest Catalyst beta driver is the one he/you should be using. The last released drivers are great but certain games that run in Dx9 have slight flashing/ for maybe a millisecond. The latest beta has fixed this.

As for Skyrim however (Smoke) this does have some problems with distant textures flashing. That is the games graphical designers at fault; with the way they built up the textures. Under certain conditions you can get it to stop; but it will keep appearing. If you have strange artifacts when using aa something is wrong there too mate. Again, make sure you have updated to the latest beta driver. I know you have a laptop, but my gf has the same card, and you can use the same version of driver as I have. The latest beta. The architecture of the driver is the same and it will work just as the desktop driver will. You will find a big difference if you haven't upgraded for a while, and it will get rid of any flashing you see in direct x 9 games. Let us know what has gone on!

Btw from the screenshot it does look like graphical/texture corruption of some kind, but not the usual sort of artifacting I have seen. If this was a problem simply with the driver the "flashing" happens for a millisecond, enough to notice it but certainly not to take a picture of it, so this is something else I suspect. If the motherboard has not been fixed or there is a problem there with the sata ports or something else then it would cause constant problems with new cards etc. I can assure him that the 7970 is an awesome card, and is well worth getting working! If he has also not got the ghz edition which pushes the clocks up higher then this is the one to get. Alternatively, you can just overclock to those levels or flash the bios. The standard 7970 is great, as are all 7 series cards, and Nvidias 6 series cards too. Shouldn't be doing this mate. Good luck.

Thanks very much, I will get all this info to him and get him to run these tests over the weekend, very much appreciated!

 

[SlickShoes]

Couple of more links here if anyone has any more ideas before we contact PCS again over the phone or messaging system:

Now we have the latest Tomb Raider game: http://youtu.be/hzq8JHQ8mxA

Frame skipping in GW2: http://youtu.be/oulSOPla8XE

Like I said I have the same spec but a lesser GPU and get none of these issues. GPU temp seems fine, was tested with MSI afterburner. We are on the latest drivers from AMD.

 

[SlickShoes]

OK, I wanted to update this post with all the most recent information.

The first day the computer arrived there was an obvious problem, a new GPU was sent out, this solved nothing. The PC then went back for an RMA like everyone in this thread suggested.

My friend asked for a refund here and was told "we can't refund as we need a chance to fix it first". There was also an entire week where the PCS e-mail system was wonky and would not deliver any mail to us so that first 7 day return period passed without them knowing they were not sending us anything.

This is where things start to go even worse.

The computer got a new motherboard and GPU and was apparently FIXED and working on the test bench. My friend got the computer back and once again the problems while gaming persist.

By this point we wanted a refund but PCS stated that "we deserve another chance to fix it" so the computer goes back via RMA AGAIN.

This time while back for RMA PCS offer a switch of graphics card from a 7970 to a GTX 670, this is a downgrade, they state that the configuration of PC we have has been known to have problems in the past and they can't say for sure problems won't occur again. The 7970 is the card we want though, and why would they sell problematic computer configurations? We ask again for a refund but are denied because the computer is "working on the test bench". Reluctantly we agree for them to send this "working" PC out.

Two days ago that PC arrived, there was no foam packing in the inside like we requested, then when we go to turn the computer on and it does not function. The computer will not boot at all. So from working on the test bench to being a complete dud took 1 day. Again we ask for a refund and now we are told "we cannot issue a refund at this point". I don't even know what that means, they have been given numerous chances to fix the machine.

So it's now 3 months since this computer was purchased and each time it arrives from the courier it is broken in a different way. We are now told that "we can't issue a refund unless there is a diagnosed hardware fault" so what were all the problems over the last 3 months? Imaginary?

All we are left with now is begging for a refund, PCS want another chance to fix it, but really how many chances do they want? Would you have any faith in a product that has arrived broken 3 or 4 times?

I am only posting this to let people know everything is NOT perfect. My own computer has been mostly fine apart from the PSU developing a problem.

 

[SlickShoes]

A slew of problems from day 1, what now?

The first day the computer arrived there was an obvious problem, a new GPU was sent out, this solved nothing. The PC then went back for an RMA like everyone in this thread suggested.

My friend asked for a refund here and was told "we can't refund as we need a chance to fix it first". There was also an entire week where the PCS e-mail system was wonky and would not deliver any mail to us so that first 7 day return period passed without them knowing they were not sending us anything.

This is where things start to go even worse.

The computer got a new motherboard and GPU and was apparently FIXED and working on the test bench. My friend got the computer back and once again the problems while gaming persist.

By this point we wanted a refund but PCS stated that "we deserve another chance to fix it" so the computer goes back via RMA AGAIN.

This time while back for RMA PCS offer a switch of graphics card from a 7970 to a GTX 670, this is a downgrade, they state that the configuration of PC we have has been known to have problems in the past and they can't say for sure problems won't occur again. The 7970 is the card we want though, and why would they sell problematic computer configurations? We ask again for a refund but are denied because the computer is "working on the test bench". Reluctantly we agree for them to send this "working" PC out.

Two days ago that PC arrived, there was no foam packing in the inside like we requested, then when we go to turn the computer on and it does not function. The computer will not boot at all. So from working on the test bench to being a complete dud took 1 day. Again we ask for a refund and now we are told "we cannot issue a refund at this point". I don't even know what that means, they have been given numerous chances to fix the machine.

So it's now 3 months since this computer was purchased and each time it arrives from the courier it is broken in a different way. We are now told that "we can't issue a refund unless there is a diagnosed hardware fault" so what were all the problems over the last 3 months? Imaginary?

All we are left with now is begging for a refund, PCS want another chance to fix it, but really how many chances do they want? Would you have any faith in a product that has arrived broken 3 or 4 times?

I am only posting this to let people know everything is NOT perfect. My own computer has been mostly fine apart from the PSU developing a problem.

 

[steaky360]

That is sick news although I must admit, I've heard of many issues with the 7970s (and AMD cards in general) with performance related problems etc. So I'm not overly surprised that was the case, it doesn't necessarily mean its a hardware issue. I would guess that is their position with regards to the 'diagnosed hardware fault' although I don't presume to speak for PCS in any way.

Although, the PC not switching on at all, something is clearly wrong there.

Only thing to suggest is to continue with your requests to PCS to get things sorted (and I appreciate that isn't much of a suggestion)

I do hope you get everything sorted to your (and/or your friends) satisfaction soon.

 

[SlickShoes]

It's going back for its 4th RMA now, I don't really understand how broken the computer has to be for them to issue a refund.

The problem now is, how can he have any confidence at all that the computer is built to any sort of decent standard when he's not really been able to use it for 3 months?

Will his warranty be extended to make up for all the time he hasn't even had a computer he paid £1200 for?