7950 overclocking guide/tips?

[Techhog]

By the way, I did an hour of BF3 at 1050/1300 and 1.25V

Max Temps
Core: 71C
VRM1: 70C
VRM2: 74C

Is that something to worry about enough that it's worth buying those heatsinks and disassembling the card for?

 

[R0H1T]

By the way, I did an hour of BF3 at 1050/1300 and 1.25V

Max Temps
Core: 71C
VRM1: 70C
VRM2: 74C

Is that something to worry about enough that it's worth buying those heatsinks and disassembling the card for?

What are your ambient temps? That'll decide if you really need an after market solution & whether you can crank the card further up.

 

[Techhog]

What are your ambient temps? That'll decide if you really need an after market solution & whether you can crank the card further up.

Oh right. I actually do need to buy a thermometer. >_>; Okay, I'm dropping this whole issue for now I guess. Would a standard thermometer work, or do I have to buy one of those infrared sensors? What range would be considered "good" at those temps, and what range would I "need" to go through that hassle? I'm not doing it either way because I'm SOL if I mess something up, but I might consider saving up a bit of money and selling the card for a new one if this is really such a huge issue.

If this is the crap I have to go through, then I'm not sure if I want to bother with high-level PC gaming after this. Low-end cards with the best cooler available from now on!

 

[Fastx]

Those temps are perfectly fine @ 1050 if that is the max core temp during actual game play and vrms temps are fine too.

That card does not have vrm cooling. It sounds like in your previuos post you think you have to replace (heatsinks) there is no heatsink cooling so nothing to replace but yes you could cooling to the vrm's but at those temps and oc it isn't necessary. By having no vrm cooling it will limit the amount of oc'ing clocking you do to a degree due to vrm temps. At the oc your at and your posted actual game play temps your fine not even hot if you stay at that oc so don't worry.

Just don't use occt to test just use UH 4.0 Extreme BM and play games for monitoring temps if no problem in either of these you are fine.

 

[Techhog]

Those temps are perfectly fine @ 1050 if that is the max core temp during actual game play and vrms temps are fine too.

That card does not have vrm cooling. It sounds like in your previuos post you think you have to replace (heatsinks) there is no heatsink cooling so nothing to replace. By having no vrm cooling it will limit the amount of oc'ing clocking you do to a degree due to vrm temps. At the oc your and your posted game play temps your fine not even hot if you stay at that oc so don't worry.

Just don't use occt to test just use UH 4.0 Extreme and play games for monitoring temps if no problem in either of these you are fine.

Yeah, but I'd have to remove the GPU heatsink to install those. That's what I meant.

 

[Fastx]

Yeah, but I'd have to remove the GPU heatsink to install those. That's what I meant.

Ok I thought you though there was vrm cooling but wasn't good enough. The card is fine at that overclock no need to worry about it at those temps.

 

[Techhog]

Running Heaven Extreme with clocks at 1100/1300 and everything seems to be staying below 80C even with my case fans on low (5V). Still good I guess? It's been running for about 10 minutes. I'd love to be able to keep these clocks.

 

[IEC]

If your VRMs are staying under 90C they are fine. VRMs are generally designed to be fine up to 120C +/-

If you are paranoid, you can add a small undervolted fan blowing at them to drop temps.

If you go liquid cooling, you will likely need to add thermal pad + heatsinks and active cool the VRMs to get acceptable temps.

Example from my OC trials with a Powercolor 7950 reference PCB:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2317696&p=35648205

 

[Fastx]

I just run it for about ten minutes max to test the oc first then game with it and if no problems at oc in either its usually good to go at set oc imo.

Techhog run this benchmark if you want and post your score and max temps @ 1050 (watch for your max temp on screen during the BM) make sure to also check full screen box before you run the BM.

Hit F12 to save/take screen shot score.


http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2341362&highlight=

 

[Techhog]

If your VRMs are staying under 90C they are fine. VRMs are generally designed to be fine up to 120C +/-

If you are paranoid, you can add a small undervolted fan blowing at them to drop temps.

If you go liquid cooling, you will likely need to add thermal pad + heatsinks and active cool the VRMs to get acceptable temps.

Example from my OC trials with a Powercolor 7950 reference PCB:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2317696&p=35648205

Hm... okay, I'll keep things as they are now and keep an eye on everything, perhaps only using the OC for intense benchmarks and games...

Also, my cursor randomly turned into a weird line while running heaven. I really hope that's not some weird form of artifacting. ._.;

 

[Techhog]

So, it seems like the card is stable at 1100MHz on the core in some games, while others won't run unless I dial down to 1050. Should I try using different profiles, or is it safer to just keep it at 1050? Also, I'm getting terrible performance in Batman AC, but I think I know why and how to fix it.

 

[Techhog]

And I found a game that crashed at 1050/1300... Do some games just not like any overclocks, or is my chip really really bad?

 

[Techhog]

Anyone? :/

 

[KingFatty]

So what is the voltage and temps you are looking at here?

Maybe could try that, just increase the voltage to like 1.25, and crank up the fan to 100%. Then set the card to 1200 core, leave the memory stock, and run Unigine Heaven or Valley while you keep an eye on the temps and looking for artifacts - let it loop maybe twice too see if the temperature levels off.

 

[Techhog]

So what is the voltage and temps you are looking at here?

Maybe could try that, just increase the voltage to like 1.25, and crank up the fan to 100%. Then set the card to 1200 core, leave the memory stock, and run Unigine Heaven or Valley while you keep an eye on the temps and looking for artifacts - let it loop maybe twice too see if the temperature levels off.

I've already done all of that. It's just that a couple of games won't start up when overclocked. One is a pretty lazy console port though, so that one being picky doesn't surprise me in the least.

 

[Techhog]

Based on the fact that nobody's saying anything, I'm going to assume that this is NOT normal behavior, my chip can't overclock, and I should keep it at stock. Disappointing. :/ Thanks anyway guys.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

When you installed the card did you remove all old drivers and run a driver sweeper?

 

[Techhog]

When you installed the card did you remove all old drivers and run a driver sweeper?

It's a brand new build. The only previously installed drivers were the default windows ones.

 

[KingFatty]

Have you isolated the core overclocking and the memory overclocking?

Just browsing the post history, I can't tell, but maybe try overclocking *only* the core, and see when you hit instability.

If you always overclock both the core and memory, you can't tell where the limit is for either one. Also, perhaps you can achieve a higher core overclock if you don't overclock the memory (or use a lower memory overclock), where it may be better performance overall, depending how the game responds to memory speed vs. core speed.

 

[Shmee]

I would try something simple like 1025 on the core for a while, and see how it goes. It will still be a decent OC if stable, keep in mind most OCs on 7950s arent much higher than 1100 MHz unless they have really good cooling or chips.

People getting the 1300 MHz range are usually using the best air cooled cards, or water or better, afaik.

 

[Face2Face]

By the way, I did an hour of BF3 at 1050/1300 and 1.25V

Max Temps
Core: 71C
VRM1: 70C
VRM2: 74C

Is that something to worry about enough that it's worth buying those heatsinks and disassembling the card for?

These temps are not bad. If you are suffering from instability @ 1050Mhz, then I would suggest dropping it 10Mz to 1040Mhz and then down from there if it's still not stable. Sounds like you got a worse than "AVG" overclocking card. Even so, a 7950 @ 1025/1300 should perform like a 7970 non Ghz edition at stock speeds. I don't think jumping up to 1.3v will bode well for your GPU and vrms temps..

 

[Techhog]

What I don't understand is why does it only affect certain games while things like BF3 and Heaven run flawlessly (though Valley doesn't like it when I run it, change the clocks, then run it again without restarting the computer).

Edit: Wait, my problem is with a console port, so maybe... the overclock doesn't work well with DX9? I'll have to test the Valve games I own to see what's what. Not home right now though, so I'll test that later.

 

[Face2Face]

Because there isn't one program that can accurately test a "fully" stable OC. The best thing I could find was playing Crysis 3 for an hour or more. You could be stable with 3DMark, Heaven, BF3 and more with 1050Mhz -- the second you load up tomb raider you could crash from an unstable OC. It's just the nature of the beast as of right now.

 

[Techhog]

Because there isn't one program that can accurately test a "fully" stable OC. The best thing I could find was playing Crysis 3 for an hour or more. You could be stable with 3DMark, Heaven, BF3 and more with 1050Mhz -- the second you load up tomb raider you could crash from an unstable OC. It's just the nature of the beast as of right now.

So, if it's stable for all games except one, I have to keep it at the lower level for all of the games? If that's the case, this hardly seems worth it. What the point of saving OC profiles then? Just to account for ambient temperature? :/

 

[StinkyMojo]

Are you using the latest Beta 8 drivers?