HD 5870 lightning clocks like crap!!

[CaineWax]

Hey guys,

Just got my lightning today and it also clocks like crap! cant actually get past 940 on the gpu no matter what voltage or tweaker setting i use?!

i assume the card applys the voltake threw afterburner (1.5.1) because with voltage monitoring enabled i can see voltage bumping up. dont have a multi meter to test if voltage is really applyed.

What about the hint with the spacers?? seemd to work for some people?? or should i rather flash a newer bios on the card??

Was really hoping to get good 1000 on the gpu with smooth voltages. my old 5870 from XFX couldnt get past 975 unless i used extreme voltage. but then again temperature was holding me back.

Could really use some help!

Edit: im also having sort of an odd flickering on the display when i apply any other clock speeds then the default ones???

Edit 2: Tried to flash Massmanns (hwbot) bios. still no luck! card wont clock better at ALL!!! cant be true that those cards are such blenders?? only hope for me right now seem to be the spacers. can anyone in here give me an advice on how to do that?? never unmounted any of my graphics cards fans. How thick should the spacers aprox. be?? wich (thick/rather thin type of paste) & how much thermal paste should i apply when remounting the fan? In case i wanna send the card back within the first 7 days would it be a prob if i unmounted & reapplied the fan?

Edit 3: Ok after trying to flash different bioses (hwbot & the one from techpowerup) several times still no improvement. another strange thing is that when looking at the bios strings after flashing with atiflash they always have the same version numbers?? i mean either all bioses im flashing are actually the same (including the one that was on the card already) or atiflash is simply not applying the flash?? For the flickering issue i have now realized that it immediatly starts when i alter gpu clock & have a program running full screen that doesnt have a lot of gpu usage. for example the cpu & phys x tests from ventage. when running them the cards voltage falls back to 2d clocks resulting in odd flickering.

the chip on my lightning does 940@default (1,164) but everything above 940 is impossible to get stable. no matter which voltage i apply or bios i use. i assume something is holding the card back from performing the way it could but cant figure out what it is. msi hotline support is also wack. they cant even send me a beta bios. starting 2 go nuts here..

Any suggestions???

[BenchZowner]

Hello,

Could you please tell us the idle temperature of your card and the full load temperature ( use Furmark or MSI's Kombustor in Windowed mode for 10 minutes and monitor the temps with Afterburner ) ?

[CaineWax]

Hey,

Thx for the reply! Just tried running Kombustor in windowed mode as suggested and suddenly after 4 minutes of kombuster it crashed & the display driver reset itself.

temps were just going up to 88 degrees and suddenly it crashed.

dont know if i should try it again & it also makes me worry even more if the card can run kombuster on default clocks. (it suddenly showed those little coloured squares on top of the msi logo before it crashed)

idle temp is around 48 degrees with dual monitor setup!

Edit: Just tried Kombustor again. this time it took 7 minutes before the driver reset. temperatures again hit 88 degrees on the gpu just before the driver reset.

[BenchZowner]

Please do my a favor and try again with a single monitor display setup ( temporarily disable EF, and unplug the second monitor ).

[merkk1]

Need to check it with a volt meter just because the software siad it change it dose not mean it happen . That is what Techpower-up found out when testing
MSI 5830 video card.

[CaineWax]

ok tryed again with a single monitor. idle temps are between 35 - 37 degrees. load temperatures go up to 89 degrees and then the card crashes (default clocks & voltage).

will see if i can get a voltmeter to check if voltages are applyed correct, but actually dont wanna spend any cent on this card anymore.

[BenchZowner]

The same thing happens ( crash ) in gaming too with the default voltage & clocks ?
Is your system overclocked ( apart from the graphics card ) ?
Can you also give us your system specs ?

( I'm not treating you like a newbie, and of course do not mean to offend you in any way, even though if some of the questions might sound a bit silly, I just need to gather enough info to try and find a solution to your problem )

[CaineWax]

np

compared to you guys in this forum here i might actually b kind of a noob..

im running the card on a x38 maximus formula. cpu is a q9650 @ 4,05/4Gb corsair dominator/bequiet 650watt & 160gb postville.

my system 4shure is rock stable. my other 5870 from xfx performs just the way its supposed to.

didnt do a lot of gaming with it yet but as far as i can tell for now in games and apps like vantage this doesnt happen with the default clocks. happens only when heavily stressed with kombustor.

[ReverendMaynard]

isn't there a washer mod that is required to get the stock cooler to sit properly? Also, I have maybe 5 team members that bought these cards and they all clocked like garbage until they were hit with the LN2. These are made for extreme clocking, regular use they are a bit overkill.

[BenchZowner]

Try putting some spacers to make the heatsink mounting to apply more pressure and make better contact, and check the load temperatures again with Kombustor & Afterburner to see if you can get the load temps to go down.
It shouldn't crash at 89-90C, but let's make sure that this isn't one of those "crazy" cases.

I'll be waiting for your news ( hopefully they'll be good )

[CaineWax]

still have to thinking about doing that, cause i might actually still want to return the card and get my money back.

this might be a little hard after i have already unmounted the fan once.

or do you think it is possible to remount the fan in a way that nobody would realise that it was already taken off before??

edit: @ ReverendMaynard: Also according to tests from guru3d & some german site the card wont do well on air. but i mean it cant be that i cant get the card past 940. thats ridicolous. even the juniper chips can do that easily.

[BenchZowner]

You don't have to worry about that.
As long as you don't break the cooler ( something everybody has to try hard to accomplish ) it'll be fine.
Just don't f*ck the screws, use an appropriately sized screwdriver and work your magic.
If you want to return it, just remove the washers and re-mount the cooler

[CaineWax]

hey thx for your help mate! think i will give it a try.

but what exactly are "washers" ?? is it the thermal pads between the rams and the cooler?? what type of paste should i use when remounting the fan (thick or rather thin one)? where else do have to put the paste on (ram/vrms??)

Edit: only have arctic silver 5 here. think it will do the job??

[ReverendMaynard]

hey thx for your help mate! think i will give it a try.

but what exactly are "washers" ?? is it the thermal pads between the rams and the cooler?? what type of paste should i use when remounting the fan (thick or rather thin one)? where else do have to put the paste on (ram/vrms??)

Edit: only have arctic silver 5 here. think it will do the job??

AS5 is kosher, just keep it tidy because it is conductive. I use it all the time for cards.

[BenchZowner]

Arctic Silver 5 will be fine ( just apply some on the core [ GPU ] , let's say about the size of a regular piece of rice ).
No need to apply thermal paste to anything except the GPU core.

Washers are the round things ( rings ) that you normally place in between a board/component and a bolt.
Make sure you use plastic/non-electrically conductive washers.

You can see some metal ( don't use metal washers though ) washers on the upper portion of this image:



Check techpowerup.com review of the MSI 5870 Lightning for more details on the mod

[damha]

How is that PSU, can it handle the load?

[merkk1]

You need to read this and what happen when they took the cooler off http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/M...870_Lightning/ taking the cooler off the card screw up the way the memory was kooling
they had to put waster in to make the heat transfer plate for the memory work wright.

[CaineWax]

just unmounted the fan and put some plastic washers between the mounting screws & the pcb. also cleaned of the old paste from gpu & cooler as good as possible (gpu & cooler were 100% clean, just a lil bit paste remained around the edges of the gpu).

when i now start kombustor it crashes after a couple of seconds when using the default clocks/settings. (ventage is running with no probs at all though)

tried lowering clocks to 850 in order to find out how the gpu reacts. and it was runnning lil bit longer (maybe 4 minutes but when it hit 89 degrees it crashed again and the driver reset itself.

what went wrong?? any ideas?? in tech powerup review they wrote that they had to try several times to get it right.

i put the washers between all the screws of the heatsink. or should i have just put them between the outer five (not on the 4 main screws around the gpu??)

edit @ damha: was running a 4870 crossfire setup with that same psu before with no problems for more than a year... also tried putting my second 5870 in and crossfire actually also worked without any problems so i assume the psu is ok.

edit 2: temps in idle now also stay at aprox. 48 degrees. guess im gonna have to take the fan off again..

[Splave]

its obvious the card is getting too hot and crashing at 89C, is it in a stuffy case or something? Jack the fan up or get some better airflow. Sent back my 2nd lightning today, but both did 1000/1250 on stock volts fan %100

[CaineWax]

im using a coolermaster s. also put a lot of time into cable managment so i doubt that its the case or the airflow inside. i rather think the chip is damaged (cause whenever i alter the clocks i am experiencing sort of an odd flickering on my screen as well..)?!
i mean why does it immedeatly crash with default settings?? it is now going up to 62 degrees and then it suddenly crashes (and besides it also used to crash before unmounting the fan and puting washers in between)?? which part of the card is getting too hot?? vrms?? should i maybe use 2 washers per screw to even apply more pressure (heatsink still moves a tiny bit when i try pushing from different directions)??

[Splave]

nope you should return it, sorry to say man if it dies at stock its trash

[CaineWax]

just took the cooler off again applyed some extra paste & put a second washer between each one of the screws and suddenly i was able to run kombuster for more then 10 minutes without any crash (that wouldnt work the way they shipped the card to me). the odd flickering when altering clocks also suddenly seems to have disappeared + my temps are signifigcantly better right now ( after 10 min kombuster still only 76 degrees and the fans are also only running on 80%!! Before temps went over 89 degrees while fans were doing 100%)

looks like im starting to make some progress here, thanks to you guys

now lets see how far i can take the lil f***er

[merkk1]

Glad you were able to get the thing going . What it comes down to is this that MSI video card is made poorly . On paper you look at that thing and you say dam that looks nice . In real life the card just made bad . Wish you the best of luck with the card hope you got it tweak so the card can be all it can be.

[jedimindtriks]

just took the cooler off again applyed some extra paste & put a second washer between each one of the screws and suddenly i was able to run kombuster for more then 10 minutes without any crash (that wouldnt work the way they shipped the card to me). the odd flickering when altering clocks also suddenly seems to have disappeared + my temps are signifigcantly better right now ( after 10 min kombuster still only 76 degrees and the fans are also only running on 80%!! Before temps went over 89 degrees while fans were doing 100%)

looks like im starting to make some progress here, thanks to you guys

now lets see how far i can take the lil f***er

sounds like you forgot to apply thermal paste the first time you took the cooler off, from reading your other post

good you got it solved.

[CaineWax]

Hey guys,

short update about my issue. even with proper mounted cooler resulting in way better temps it was not possible to get the card stable/artifact free above 940.

i just sent the card back and the distributor charged me 20% for using it.

thx 4 your help guys but the card was total crap anywayz.. actually a DOA!!

definitly my last MSI product! will wait for ASUS Matrix to be available and give that one a shot.