If your 5x00 card tends to get stuck at 400/900 clocks, here's a workaround.

mkk · Feb 20, 2010, 01:28 AM

Edit 2: June 20th, 2010. Presently the problem seems to have been resolved one way or another. I had not looked back at this for a little while but after installing ATI driver 10.6 I set the MS H.264 codec acceleration back to default and the clocks have not locked for two days of testing. Hopefully it's a thing of the past. Don't know if the solution was by driver or MS update for Win7 x64.

Background: There's a pretty irritating problem that I've read some scattered reports about and encountered myself with 5700 and 5800 series of cards. For instance at home with a 5770 and a 5850 in two different machines running Windows 7 64bit. The problem is that sometimes when the card runs in video acceleration clock mode, an in-between state above the idle/2D clocks and below the 3D performance levels, the core and memory clocks get stuck at 400/900MHz. When that happens it neither clocks down to idle/2D to save power, nor is it able to raise the clock to 3D levels when playing a game afterwards, which is the real problem naturally.

Some others have had this happen after playing video with Windows Media Player. I don't use that much and haven't had any problems when playing hardware accelerated video in other programs, but almost every time I run Windows Media Center the clocks get stuck at 400/900 afterwards. Another almost surefire way to trigger this has been to run the Windows Experience Index routine(video encoding/decoding test). It's probably something between the driver and Windows 7's video encoding/decoding routines. Having a freshly installed system hasn't helped so I'd rule out third party codec/software problems. At worst there might a need for a video BIOS fix, but I'm betting that the drivers will eventually fix this.

Edit: New improved workaround
I found that closer to the source of the problem lies the Microsoft H264 Video Decoder MFT, in short the standard codec that Windows [Media Player / Media Center] uses for H264 content. Using a program named DXVA Checker it is possible to disable hardware acceleration for that perticular codec, effectively letting the card clocks remain at 2D levels instead of jumping up to the video acceleration 400/900 and getting stuck. Naturally the CPU will have to work a lot more instead since the graphics card is not offloading, but that usually not a problem on newer systems. If you play a lot of H264 video chances are that you are already either using a different player with built-in codecs like Media Player Classic Home Cinema, or perhaps playing video in Windows Media Player but with a different H264 codec installed.

The procedure is relatively easy and risk free. Download and unzip DXVA Checker from here: http://bluesky23.yu-nagi.com/en/index.html
The DXVAChecker.exe can be run from anywhere, start it up and press CTRL-F on your keyboard. Find the item as described in the picture and uncheck "Enable DXVA". Now you are set, just repeat the procedure if you want to restore DXVA(acceleration) to this codec in the future.

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Old Workaround: Download "AMD GPU Clock Tool" (v0.9.26 here) , install it and make a shortcut to the main executable "AMDGPUClockTool.exe" with the argument "-3dclock" at the end of the line. The end result should look like this:

Use that shortcut when you need to get out of the stuck 400/900 clock situation. What it does is briefly kicking the card into 3D clock mode and then the usual 2D/3D power management starts working like it should again. Use the ATI Overdrive tab in the Catalyst Control Center to verify. AMD GPU Clock Tool is a technical utility so be careful if you start fiddling with the program itself.

Edit: I just experienced a single moment where this maneuver was not enough to have the clocks unstuck. One can then use "-restore" instead of "-3dclock", with the possible downside that the Overdrive settings are then put back to default.

mkk · Feb 21, 2010, 11:43 PM

Updated with new workaround method.

stack314 · Jun 17, 2011, 05:54 PM

I know this thread has been inactive for a while, but I wanted to share my experiences. I have a powercolor pcs+ 5850 with a non-reference pcb. This causes the voltage to be locked at 1.15. If you flash a bios on this card that is over 1.15 volts, the core/mem clock will be locked to 400/900. By lowering the clock on the bios I created, I was able to eliminate the 400/900 issue. I would suggest finding out what the voltage for other cards with the same model as yours and undervolting it to match that number. It may resolve your issue.

Feb 21, 2010, 11:43 PM	Thread Starter #2
mkk Cthulhu/Dagon 2012 Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Gefle, Sweden Posts: 4,495 Rep Power: 132 System Specs	Re: If your 5x00 card tends to get stuck at 400/900 clocks, here's a workaround. Updated with new workaround method.

Jun 17, 2011, 05:54 PM	#3
stack314 HardwareHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jun 2011 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Re: If your 5x00 card tends to get stuck at 400/900 clocks, here's a workaround. I know this thread has been inactive for a while, but I wanted to share my experiences. I have a powercolor pcs+ 5850 with a non-reference pcb. This causes the voltage to be locked at 1.15. If you flash a bios on this card that is over 1.15 volts, the core/mem clock will be locked to 400/900. By lowering the clock on the bios I created, I was able to eliminate the 400/900 issue. I would suggest finding out what the voltage for other cards with the same model as yours and undervolting it to match that number. It may resolve your issue.