Radeon 5850 / Catalyst 11.x random 2D slowdowns

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Sabrewulf165

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I've tried everything I can think of to duplicate this issue, but it just appears to happen at random... I'll be surfing the web, using photoshop, SSHing into a webserver, or just anything, and suddenly, performance drops to the point were zooming, scrolling, or even just moving icons around on the desktop becomes slow and jerky. I've tried four different 11.x driver revisions and the problem still comes up randomly. GPU load when this happens still shoes zero or very little activity. I've tried disabling browser and flash HW accel, but that doesn't matter.

Anyone else experience anything like this - or more importantly, have a solution for it?
 
I'm not ruling anything out, but do you have a reason to suggest that? I have a 2600K, even if it weren't ramping up it shouldn't be having any trouble doing these simple activities smoothly. That said, it seems like the slowdowns relate only to things that are GPU-accelerated.
 
Well, the desktop itself isn't really GPU-related, which is why I ask. How does the system run with just the default windows driver installed instead of a catalyst one?
 
The entire Windows Vista/7 GUI is GPU-accelerated - at least when Aero is enabled - so it is indeed GPU-related, so to speak.
 
Well it could be, but anything can lag the desktop. You got anything hardware accelerated?
 
After much googling, experimenting, and swapping of parts/drivers, I have come to the conclusion that this is a Radeon 5xxx issue with 120Hz displays with too-low idle GPU clocks being the culprit. As such, I'm planning on creating a CCC profile tonight to raise my idle clocks. I will post back with my results.
 
The solution suggested in my previous post did not work, nor have a variety of other things I've tried since then. I've now been able to duplicate this issue on two different 120hz monitors with two different video cards (the 5850 and a GTX 560 Ti). Starting to run out of ideas, but I suppose I'll give ATI's 11.10 newest drivers a shot with a fresh install just for kicks:

"Random flashing is no longer experienced when playing back SD/BD content on a 120Hz monitor."
Click to expand...

Not even sure what exactly that means, but maybe I'll get lucky. Doubtful, but worth a shot. About at my wit's end with this issue.

It's worth noting that when this problem occurs, it also affects any windowed games I happen to be playing, but the effect is not measurable via framerate - the game and fraps both still report the same FPS even though a simple panning/zooming eye test show the "real" performance to be far less smooth.
 
No luck. I've now tried two diff video cards, dozens of diff driver versions, and two different 120hz monitors. What's left? Mobo/RAM/CPU? None of these seem capable of consistently generating such a bizarre condition, but I'm open to suggestions...
 
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