7970 slowdown

[KemoKa]

I was running Unigine Valley for kicks recently (because why not, it's nice to look at once in a while) and I noticed that the framerate had dropped, and it had dropped horribly, it was terrible.

I have a 7970, which on my pathetic 1050p monitor will easily max valley out with no issues, we're talking Ultra, 8x AA all the way to the top. Before, the between-scene stutter would push the low framerate to 24fps, and most of the test was at a buttery-smooth 50-90fps. Now, however, it is struggling to even reach 24fps on the highs. It's not just Valley, either, Heaven is suffering too, and even Minecraft, which ran at a constant 299fps is now running at around 120 (hur-hur, yes, I know, but you see why I'm concerned)

 

Does anyone know what's happening? is this a driver issue? did I press the wrong button at some point?

[PhantomTates]

What were the temps?

[KemoKa]

What were the temps?

temps were completely normal, it never got above 55.

[PhantomTates]

temps were completely normal, it never got above 55.

Of all components? Then I have no idea... recheck the settings of the benchmarking program and if it had any updates since the last run. Otherwise see what background programs you were running.

For the rest I can only recommend running again with MSI afterburner overlay to check on utilisation and temperature of both CPU and GPU.

[KemoKa]

I'm going to mark it solved for now. I did an extreme test, involving swapping in my laptop's SSD, and it got rid of the problem, so at least I know it's not a problem with the graphics card. looks like my laptop will be my torture guinea pig again as I scour the drive, muahahahahahaahhaa