ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 with weird clocks

[_JP_]

Hi all,

I'm a new user at this forum, even though I know the site for a long time now...
For starters, I would like to Thank all of the TPU cast for the excellent site & Forum, that has provided me with a lot of very useful info (trough reviews and posts) and, of course, W1zzard for his excellent GPU-Z app that I have been using since the early versions (It's just that good!).

Ok now, getting on to business. I have a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 on a Toshiba Satellite A300 notebook. I must say when I bought this, I was very pleased with the performance of the system, being a HD x470 class, but when the driver updates started, things got a little confusing.
When the laptop was new, it came with the Catalyst 8.6 driver installed. 6 months or so later, a updated was issued, so i did the usual procedure of the driver removal (ATI & Driversweeper), and installed the new driver (Catalyst 8.8). By then my Graphics performance had decreased drastically, Test Drive jammed a lot, TrackMania used to run at 50 FPS and was now running at 40 FPS (with the same graphics config) and Fallout 3 just started to dislike the landscapes...
To make matters worse, when I ran GPU-Z to check if something was changed, I got the wonderful information that my GPU clocks where at half. Meanwhile I have been able to run games albeit slower. Last month Toshiba issued another driver update, this time Catalyst 9.5. Same procedure, installation went fine...same results, same clocks, same performance. Weird thing was Everest used to state the same clocks that GPU-Z had, but now there is just no agreement.
The clocks are by default: Core @ 680MHz; RAM @ 500MHz (or so GPU-Z, Wiki, ATI, and other sites state)

So...to sum it up, it looks like this:
Catalyst 8.6 : GPU-Z showed 680/500
Catalyst 8.8 : GPU-Z showed 337/247
Catalyst 9.5 : GPU-Z shows 337/247; Everest shows 110/396

What I'm asking here is: At what clocks is my GPU running with??!

If it helps (I know it doesn't), I can't extract the VGA BIOS with GPU-Z and ATItools, nor can ATItools run due to an error when the program starts.
And my system spec are in the drop down menu.

 

[mlee49]

Are those just the 2D clocks? Try flipping to the Sensor tab and run a benchmark like FurMark for a minute, after it's done check the gpu core clock under the sensor tab and see what it looks like. If it's staggered, meaning it looks like stairs, then your computer is just going between 2D and 3D clocks and thats completely common.

 

[_JP_]

Thank you for your answer in such short notice!

Forgot to mention those are supposed to be the 3D clocks. Anyway, I did the test and the results ensure the expected. I think it really is the 3D clocks.

 

[_JP_]

Nop, no matter which game/benchmark/test I launch, the clocks stay the same. Odd thing is that although the clocks are cut in half, I notice a 5 to 10% cut in game performance. I guess that's not too much.
Calling Toshiba doesn't help...the only straight answer I got was to reinstall the drivers and/or install the latest ones.:shadedshu
Any one got any ideas? Any one with the same laptop??

 

[angelkiller]

Is the laptop plugged in?

This may be the driver cutting GPU performance when the laptop is on battery to save power.

 

[_JP_]

Yes, the laptop is plugged in. It has been running plugged for some months now, I haven't had the need to use it's "potable side" in a while.

I've updated the BIOS of the laptop to a newer version but nothing has changed in the GPU department, I hoped that it would be a problem with the GPU power supply by the BIOS and it's annoying power saving options...but i guess not.

I'll keep on google answers and/or similar problem's, but people with the same graphics don't have this particular issue. Also the brand is different, Asus, Acer (uses the MXM type, I think), etc...

I am aware of ATI recently releasing drivers to support the Mobility Radeon, but the site clearly states that Toshibas should get their drivers from the manufacturer support site. I didn't ran for the ATI original drivers thinking it would be a waste of time, since the card wouldn't be properly recognized. I also know of the Mobility Modder. Does this last one really work, or is it only with certain types of GPUs?

Ugh, I wished this would be a BSOD or Fatal error type of problem, it would be a lot easier to solve.

 

[_JP_]

OK. I think I got this...

After more fiddling with the options and resorting to RBE to get the darn BIOS that GPU-Z and ATITool weren't being able to extract, I finally have the clocks I wanted, sort of.
I had to turn off PowerPlay one more time and burn the GPU with tests so I could see some results.
Turns out the graphics card IS with the right clocks (-5MHz), but for some reason, GPU-Z does not show them.
With PowerPlay on, Everst was showing the 2D clocks (110/400) constantly (figured this out after extracting the BIOS, before I had no idea what the 2D clocks were), maybe because the program doesn't refresh the data while I was testing.
But with PowerPlay off, Everst shows the the correct clocks (675/495), also constantly because this time, as PP is off the clocks don't shift, I think, and stay on the maximum reachable.
Now for some reason, GPU-Z is still reading the same clocks it was before. I will now report this on the respective sub-forum.



Thank you mlee49 and angelkiller for your help in sorting this out!

 

[peros]

hi JP could you tell me how you solve the matter with weird clock on the mobility radeon 3470.I will apreciate that i am on searching a weak now and nothing found i check with rbe and the clock there is fine,i stress the gpu with games,3dmark with poer play on and off and the clock stil in 337/247.if you can help me i will be much thankfull.I forget to tell you my laptop is asus f5sl and i try to change my vbios with success but nothing happend still 337/247.I use to monitor the frequency AIDA64 and GPUZ

 

[_JP_]

Ugh, nostalgia has just hit me in the face...real hard.
This thread...

Well, to be honest, I didn't "solve" it...well, anymore than what was already concluded here. Because 4 years later...

...and nothing has changed.​

I concluded (quite some time ago) that as good as tools like these are for identifying hardware, there's a 1~2% chance of having a particular product that will not be fully recognized/interpreted. And you just have to live with it.
Still, you can fully verify if the card is running at full power or not by picking between the powerplay options and watching if there is a difference in performance (that matches the respective powerplay mode, obviously).

I'm going to change mine with a HD 3650, which was the highest compatible model for my laptop, but meanwhile I ditched the toshiba driver and used the standard ones, with the help of the mobility modder.
Functionality-wise, there were no improvements (that I noticed), but there was a slight increase in performance with some games.​

 

[de.das.dude]

i read the first post and was like JP is new to this forum... then looked at the date and ....
yes, gpuz doesnt work on my laptop for some reason. shit happens.