AMD GPU not downclocking itself on IDLE

[TetraSky]

Edit : Well, I feel stupid now... Damn it. Why is this even a thing.

 

Alright, so my google-fu is failing me right now and I've exhausted all I could think of to fix this myself. I need help on this.

I have a Gigabyte Radeon 7970 Ghz, all was well until recently where I've noticed my GPU fans ramping up for some reason on IDLE(quite audible), after a bit of investigating, I believe the reason is due to the Memory Clock being capped at the maximum 1500 MHz at all time for some reason. The Core Clock though does seems to go down while idling, from 1100 MHz to 500 MHz (Though I believe it should go down to 300MHz but doesn't exactly because of the high memory clock, which I tested by manually downclocking the memory clock in Afterburner and the core clock went down to 300MHz)

 

Here's what I've tried so far:
-Uninstalled the entire driver, at least 5 times, in safe mode using Display Driver Uninstaller. (in between some of the followings)

-Installed the entire package of the latest Radeon setting/driver.

-Installed the latest driver, by itself, without the Radeon Setting, Vulkan, HDMI audio or anything else.
-Let windows update the driver.

-Tried to find a possible culprit app that prevented the GPU from going IDLE... Haven't found anything.

 

System specs is exactly as in my signature. Am I just crazy and this is a normal behavior that I just never noticed before or what...

IDLE:

 

Stress testing:

 

Back to idling:

 

Memory clock hasn't moved at all. (The slight dips there is me manually downclocking it in afterburner)

[Mr.Meerkat]

how many monitors?

[TetraSky]

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

how many monitors?

Two monitor, one plugged via HDMI, the other via DVI.

[Mr.Meerkat]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

Two monitor, one plugged via HDMI, the other via DVI.

You've answered it yourself , when there's more than two monitors the memory stays at max clock constantly  

[Skiiwee29]

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

You've answered it yourself , when there's more than two monitors the memory stays at max clock constantly  

Yea, with 2 on my GTX760 instead of ramping down to 300mhz it sits around 800 keeping my temps at about 39-41c instead of 27-30c with single monitor. 

[Skiiwee29]

2 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Two monitor, one plugged via HDMI, the other via DVI.

 

[TetraSky]

2 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

You've answered it yourself , when there's more than two monitors the memory stays at max clock constantly  

oh my god... Are you serious? God damn it... All that time wasted trying to find a solution... Just closed my second monitor, memory clock dropped to 150 MHz.

I hate whoever thought this was a good idea.

[Mr.Meerkat]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

oh my god... Are you serious? God damn it... All that time wasted trying to find a solution... Just closed my second monitor, memory clock dropped to 150 MHz.

I hate whoever thought this was a good idea.

Hee hee hee...are you willing to repaste your GPU? from the 4 7950s I've recently bought, all their thermal pastes were completely dried up and temps went down 10c on average with fan speeds going down 10% as well after a repaste on all of em  

[W-L]

2 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

oh my god... Are you serious? God damn it... All that time wasted trying to find a solution... Just closed my second monitor, memory clock dropped to 150 MHz.

I hate whoever thought this was a good idea.

It's been a thing for a long time all the way back to the HD series of cards but it needs to keep it's clock and memory speed up or your going to get screen tearing or bars appear caused by the idling going to o far. 

[TetraSky]

3 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Hee hee hee...are you willing to repaste your GPU? from the 4 7950s I've recently bought, all their thermal pastes were completely dried up and temps went down 10c on average with fan speeds going down 10% as well after a repaste on all of em  

Eeehhh, while it probably wouldn't hurt, my tube of MX3 is pretty much 5 years old by now, I doubt it's still good. I already had to change one of the fans that died, should've done that at the same time, damn it...

 

2 minutes ago, W-L said:

It's been a thing for a long time all the way back to the HD series of cards but it needs to keep it's clock and memory speed up or your going to get screen tearing or bars appear caused by the idling going to o far. 

Single monitor idling, 300MHz core clock, 150MHz memory clock... Add a second monitor, 500MHz core clock, 1500 MHz memory clock. 

I can understand the core clock going to 500MHz, but I don't understand why the memory clock has to be capped at 1500MHz for that. You'd think someone would find a way to scale it properly with multiple monitors... At this point I'm just considering getting a single 30+inch high resolution(1600p/4k?) monitor and only use that instead of having two monitors. (900p and 1200p)

[Mr.Meerkat]

16 minutes ago, W-L said:

It's been a thing for a long time all the way back to the HD series of cards but it needs to keep it's clock and memory speed up or your going to get screen tearing or bars appear caused by the idling going to o far. 

Well to be fair, he is using a HD series card so...yah know but it is indeed true.

[W-L]

10 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

-SNIP-

AMD used to be able to let you modify and setup profiles a while back but not anymore from my understanding, other than modify the system files themselves there isn't really a way to change them. I remember before where it would be worst and constantly give screen tearing due to the lowered idle speeds until it raised itself up to a reasonable level. 

[Skiiwee29]

10 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Eeehhh, while it probably wouldn't hurt, my tube of MX3 is pretty much 5 years old by now, I doubt it's still good. I already had to change one of the fans that died, should've done that at the same time, damn it...

 

Single monitor idling, 300MHz core clock, 150MHz memory clock... Add a second monitor, 500MHz core clock, 1500 MHz memory clock. 

I can understand the core clock going to 500MHz, but I don't understand why the memory clock has to be capped at 1500MHz for that. You'd think someone would find a way to scale it properly with multiple monitors... At this point I'm just considering getting a single 30+inch high resolution(1600p/4k?) monitor and only use that instead of having two monitors. (900p and 1200p)

so I just learned something new on this myself tonight that might help you with the dual monitors. I had mine with 1 Dual link DVI and 1 HDMI, I changed my HDMI to Dual link on both to test a new cable and my GPU downclocked like it was running a single monitor. If you have an HDMI cable, try using a DVI cable for that monitor and see if this helps. 

[TetraSky]

1 hour ago, legacy99 said:

so I just learned something new on this myself tonight that might help you with the dual monitors. I had mine with 1 Dual link DVI and 1 HDMI, I changed my HDMI to Dual link on both to test a new cable and my GPU downclocked like it was running a single monitor. If you have an HDMI cable, try using a DVI cable for that monitor and see if this helps. 

Oh? That's helpful.
Too bad my second "monitor" is actually some cheap 19" TV that my mother won in a giveaway at her job a couple years ago and since she didn't need it, just gave it to me... Thus, no DVI, only HDMI, component and VGA.

I guess I could use a DVI to HDMI cable since no conversion is needed... hmmm... Worth a try.