Vista - low speeds on ATI 3870

and well low everything i checked by putting my older 2600 xt back in and found that it ran most of my games faster. annoying doesn't quite describe it!!

i tried every benchmark programme i could get my hands on and the all show the clock speeds at lower than 500mhz and my memoery speeds at less than 700mhz now bearing in mind all tests said that yes i did try to use the catalyst software to change it don't know of any other way to change the speeds but that sits at 300mhz core and 800mhz memory

is it just me or am i doing something wrong it's cooled plenty and using a 600w psu to power it so it's not those things.

is it a driver issue do i need the new one that ATi haven't released yet to clear up these issue's or is there something else i can do or have missed.

thanks in advance to anyone who can give me tips

note to all: telling me i should have gone with nvidia does not count as a tip !!

I can tell you what the trouble is. Your 3870 is expierencing the fan and powerplay issue where the fan speed would vary as well as the 3D speed, that early 3870 cards including the 3870X2, as the first batches of the cards were Buit By ATI cards, and were not built by their respective manufacturers such as Sapphire and Visiontek to name two companies.

You need to contact the manufacturer of your 3870, tell them of the Fan and Power issue that you are having and request the latest bios for your card. If your card is a Visiontek card, I can easily tell you where to download the bios of it.

My Visiontek Radeon 3870X2 had this issue, until I udpated the bios for each videochip, as each videochip on my card has it's own bios.

righto my bad should have been more specific i'm using the sapphire except i have no powerplay options at all to choose from ?!

there's a plug at the end of the card for power .did you plug it in?
i have the same card and get (769mhz) clock and (1125) memory.
also the latest drivers are (4/16/08) and can be downloaded at

Drivers & Software

if all else fails return the cand for a new one.

scrooge

hehe yeah i plugged in the power lead, i did have cooling issues before but they have also been resolved by me adding extra fans.

ok a bit more info my core speed on idle is 300mhz
during crysis it goes to the dizzy hieghts of around 500mhz low for the card

the memory clock sits at 1126mhz on idle then drops off to 700mhz
when playing the same game

the results are strange and vary slightly when playing different games
the only time it seams to work is when i am rendering in 3d studio i get the full whack and some of these renders have near 100% utilisation for several hours with no trouble

something is wrong very wrong

it's cool i flashed the bios like the guy up top sugested and it works fine now.
thanks all very much

Powerplay is the powersaving feature of the graphics chip and that is automatic.

You're welcome and it's nice to see your card working for you now.

it's weird though i was having this problem when i first got the card but not one game would stay on for more than a few minutes then i reinstalled the drivers and nothing changed but a few days later and having done nothing or installed no new software or updates of any kind anywhere on my sytem it just started working and then the clock speed thing i think their are some serious unresloved issues with these cards.

I've run in to some issues with OpenGL games like Neverwinter Nights 2 slowing down and freezing during cut scenes, and Quake 4 freezing hard when run in 1680 by 1050 resolution. I reported the bugs to ATI, along with another bug that causes Loki: Heroes Of Mythology to crash when you alt tab out of the game.

Some of these issues are driver bugs. Catalyst 8.4 is good, but the 3870 drivers do have some room for improvement.

Some of these issues are driver bugs. Catalyst 8.4 is good, but the 3870 drivers do have some room for improvement.[/quote]

just a little room considering what it should be capable of (on paper mind you) it should be able to go a hell of alot faster but then maybe it will after some driver revision and a few updates well here's hoping at least