can PCI E freq. affect GPU OC ability? - got a problem

[Rich'[ard]]

hi all,
i've got a 4850 which has been dodgy for me. the story is, i can't run my card at 700/1000 anymore. everytime i run a modern game (cod4, crysis, prostreet, undercover etc. ) my screen would freeze for one second, then come back to normal, then repeat itself over and over. i would ctrl alt delete, then in the task bar, there was an Event Viewer which stated my display has just recovered from an error or something. (i can upload screenshots if you need)

thinking back, the changes relating to my 4850 i've made is updating drivers and changing the PCI E frequency in BIOS. 700/1000 ran fine on 8.10 drviers, and i believe my PCI E freq. was set at 110mhz (didn't realise it). when i did realise this, i set it back to 100mhz. since then, my card has been sitting at a sad 650/950 - stock.

just wondering if the PCI-E freq. setting can make that much of a diff, or is it the drivers, even though drivers are meant to ADVANCE the performance of a gpu.

i'm just a bit confused atm, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
thankss!

 

[Automata]

I'm sure that changing the bus speed will not affect overclockability.

There may be an anomaly out there where something might be wrong with the BIOS, but in general, it should not.

 

[Rich'[ard]]

hmmm...it shuoldn't be drivers either. so i dunno what's wrong! lol
another thing could be my card is degrading? but doesn't that only happen when too much voltage has been put through the chip? i haven't modded my card or anything. nor has it ever gone passed 100 degrees C.

 

[Automata]

hmmm...it shuoldn't be drivers either. so i dunno what's wrong! lol

Drivers can affect overclockability. Are you using the same ones?

another thing could be my card is degrading? but doesn't that only happen when too much voltage has been put through the chip? i haven't modded my card or anything. nor has it ever gone passed 100 degrees C.

It is possible it is degrading, but usually it is a slow process where it starts to become unstable later down the line.

 

[Rich'[ard]]

hmm, i'm using 8.12 atm. 700/1000 was with 8.10

i hope it's not degrading. i've only had it for like 3 months. and i've done no mods whatsoever to it. this sucks lol. i'm going to switch back to my original PCI E freq. to see what happens. 110mhz won't screw my gpu up or anything would it?

 

[mdamda]

The "general" idea is that you shouldn't go over 115.

Going at anything higher than 100 hasn't been thoroughly tested over time though - the tangible gain simply isn't significant (or proven to be real).

 

[Rich'[ard]]

i've also altered the SB voltages. SB 1.5 was changed from Auto to 1.5v and SB was changed from Auto to the lowest voltage allowed.

i have since changed them back to Auto yet i still get the warnings. it must be the drivers then. i'm going to download 8.10 and see what happens.

 

[xtkxhom3r]

the pci freq could have been the problem i had a nvidia card that only liked 111 anything lower and i would bsod... did you try a little higher than 110? have you oc'd your cpu lately?

 

[Rich'[ard]]

yo, nah not really. it's been at 3.4ghz for quite a long time now. before i changed from a 7600GT to my 4850. could it be that the new 8.12 drivers don't like my card as much as the 8.10 did? - just my card lol. every other ATi seems to be running good as with the new 8.12 drivers.
every other BIOS setting i've changed since using 8.10 has been changed back, but i still can't reach 700/1000. it's not the memory that can't reach that speed, becuase i can run it at 680/1000 now. just wanna know where that 20mhz for the core went to

EDIT: the drivers seem to be the only variable left. is this possible?