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[Silfurdreki]

I recently upgraded my graphics card, to a Radeon HD 4890. Everything ran smooth, and even after installing windows 7 with dx11, it ran smooth. Until yesterday. Suddenly I get abysmally low framerates in basically every 3D application (even HL 1 can't hold a constant FPS). After restarting the computer, installing new video drivers, clearing the computer of dust and messing with clock speeds I've officially run out of ideas.

I have something of a clue from ATI tray tools, a very nifty program for overclocking and general monitoring of the graphics card. Apparently, the GPU core clock speed is a lot lower than the prescribed BIOS clock speed (Current: 240 MHz vs. BIOS: 870 MHz). Problem is that when raising the clock speed, the result is somewhat dodgy. I've succsessfully raised it to 870 once, by incrementing the increase, but when restarting the computer the clock speed reverted, and trying to push it up to 870 directly immediately crashes the computer. Now, this might not be the problem, but it seemed out of the ordinary, so I brought it up.

Any tech savvy people out there that have any idea what this might be? It's incredibly frustrating, even DF is slower than usual 

[Kebooo]

So it was working fine, then suddenly wasn't?  What did you do between that time period?  Any malware, viruses, trojans, etc. on your PC?  What about framerate in 2D programs?

Try running this program: http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm

The average G3D mark of your videocard is 1953, definitely a powerful card.  You can compare your rating to see if it's a system wide decline in performance.

Both of Newegg's 4890's are listed at 850 core clock speed.  240 is definitely wrong.  What do you mean by the result is "dodgy"?  Does it still not perform well even after being raised?  Try raising the core clock speed to 850 and running the benchmark and comparing the difference, and to the average value.  Also, when your computer crashes, is it simply shutting down?  That can be a sign of overheating.

[Nolor]

Spoiler: image (click to show/hide)

What does the ATI Overdrive section of your Catalyst Control Centre look like, exactly? That's mine, for comparison purposes. I have an older card (3870).

Mine's been overheating on occasion recently, so I stopped overclocking it. Chances are you did change something, though -- things rarely stop working for no reason, except in cases of hardware failure.

[Silfurdreki]

Try running this program: http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm

The average G3D mark of your videocard is 1953, definitely a powerful card.  You can compare your rating to see if it's a system wide decline in performance.

Running the test gave some strange results:

At first 1610 w. 240 MHz GPU clock
Then worse with 1155 at 500 MHz
Then a bit better with 1515 at 700 MHz

When I tried putting the clock at 850 the computer immediately crashed (black screen, graphics card fan at maximum).

Keep in mind that this changing of the clock speed was done in ATI tray tools which is a few years old, but has never failed me before, and has some really useful features. I uninstalled it, however, to see if that changed anything, and it didn't, but I cannot get the Catalyst Control Centre to actually change my clock speed (neither after uninstalling ATI tray tools or before)

I'm thinking something really strange is going on here, there's no reason to the test results. I'll do a full virus scan overnight, they tend to take a while.

Here's a screenshot of the ATI overdrive screen:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When I change the clock speed and press the apply button nothing happens.

As for what I did when al this happened, the only thing that stands out is that I reinstalled Left 4 Dead through steam, since it didn't work after formatting the system drive (I left the data partition alone when installing windows 7). It was also when playing that that I first discovered the lowered FPS.

[Calhoun]

I don't have a clue. However, You if you just recently purchased it, just have them replace it. It should still be under warranty.

[Kebooo]

So your benchmark is coming up with 1600 score, but is having trouble running half-life 1?

What were the scores for the following categories? (these are framerates)

Graphics 3D - Simple
Graphics 3D - Medium
Graphics 3D - Complex
Graphics 3D - DirectX 10

[Nolor]

Just a quick note about Catalyst Control Center.

The changes to your clock speed and such don't actually take effect until your actually doing something taxing on your graphics card. While it says your clock speed is 240mhz, is should jump up to 875 the moment you start up a game or run a test.

You should try doing the simple things -- reinstalling DirectX (outdated versions has been known to cause issues) and the like.

That's really the only thing I can think of, as your score is 1600 -- more than enough to play Source games maxed out. I can play them maxed out with my score of 1000.

[Silfurdreki]

It seems like things either have fixed themselves, or that I actually overreacted on the framerates. At any case I can again play Bad Company 2 decently, so the problem seems fixed, whatever I did.

Thanks for being helpful, everyone!