(Hardware.fr) HD7970 temps

[3DVagabond]

I thought this important enough to have a separate thread from the reviews thread. I didn't want it to be lost in the pages of posts. I've been waiting for behardware.com to post their 7970 review. Well, for whatever reason, they haven't posted one yet. Their mother site hardware.fr has multiple reviews though and I decided to go and look there. The reason I was interested in their review is that they do thermal imaging of cards when they do their reviews. Info you don't get elsewhere. I decided to go and look rather than wait for the English review because I was reading some interesting posts in [H]OCP forum about crashes on O/C'd cards when GPU temps were not that high. Also reviewers needing 100% fan speeds to keep O/C's stable, again when GPU temps weren't really that high. My thought was that possibly something else on the card was overheating. Likely suspect the VRM's.

Anyway, here's thermal images of the card. Most interesting to me was the XFX DDE.

Reference card Idle:

Reference card load:

Reference card O/C'd:

No apparent issues that I can see with the reference card. Mid 80's are fine.



XFX DDE Idle:

XFX DDE Load:

XFX DDE O/C'd:

Not only are we seeing no benefit in GPU temperatures from the DDE cooler (actually a bit warmer), but the VRM's are actually running a lot hotter. 107 degrees (+22 degrees!) when O/C'd. They managed a much higher memory O/C with the XFX (1900 wow!), but it's only drawing 18W more, and likely some of that is the dual fans. Now, VRM's can run fine at 107 degrees. These results are with stock voltages (1.17v). I don't think dumping 1.3v with an O/C'ing utility would be a very good idea.

Seems like this card might have been rushed a bit and the cooler wasn't properly tested. This is just my opinion. Anyone else has a better reasoning for it though, feel free to post your opinion. Bottom line, this cooler is not doing a better job than the reference design cooling the card. I wouldn't be happy if I had paid extra to get a card, with what one would assume was a superior cooler, and see these results. Also, anyone who has this card might want to consider very carefully how much, if any, extra voltage they want to dump into it.

Now, I'm very positive about AMD cards. I'm sure most of the nVidia fanbois would consider me an AMD fanboi. Believe it or not though, even though I'm not without bias (who is?), I do consider myself fairly objective. For me, the XFX DDE does not have a very well engineered cooling solution. For those who have it, or plan on getting it, I would think pretty hard before dumping extra voltage into it. Maybe I'm over reacting, YMMV.

hardware.fr translated

Edit: Looks like there are problems with hardware.fr with the pics. Sorry they won't even come up for me now on the site. Hopefully they'll come back or have new links.

 

[UJ09]

Full cover 7970 waterblock is likely the best answer for this problem.

 

[Madcatatlas]

either your pictures are borked, or my google chrome is borked...


I dont see no images!

 

[AtenRa]

http://www.hardware.fr/focus/59/xfx-radeon-hd-7970-overclocking.html

 

[blastingcap]

This makes me want to avoid XFX for all future graphics card purchases. Didn't they TEST these cards via prototypes, first? Sheesh.

 

[notty22]

They don't allow hot linking pictures, so you have to transfer them to places like photobucket.
I believe this the custom XFX when o/c

vs stock when o/c

 

[NumericalMethods]

Didn't they TEST these cards via prototypes, first? Sheesh.

I think this is definitely a good question, especially when considering that they are the only AIB to have a custom cooler for the launch. I can imagine their time with the card before approving their cooler design was short. Even so, seems like an extremely large oversight to not measure VRM temps as well as core temps for a new cooler. At least those are the cards that come with XFX lifetime warranty, aren't they?

 

[notty22]

I googled to see what the xfx looked like under the hood.
It looks good.
The thin white thermal pad opposite the VRM's on the right is what transfer's heat up to the aluminum heat sinks.
Is there any chance the 2 fans spin at different rpm's on that model ?

 

[bigi]

either your pictures are borked, or my google chrome is borked...


I dont see no images!

No. Your browser is fine. I see something else is not right.

 

[MrTeal]

I googled to see what the xfx looked like under the hood.
It looks good.
The thin white thermal pad opposite the VRM's on the right is what transfer's heat up to the aluminum heat sinks.
Is there any chance the 2 fans spin at different rpm's on that model ?

How is the aluminum crossbar that the TIM is applied to connected to the heatsink? It doesn't appear to be connected to the actual finned heatsink other than by running the entire length of the bar to the edge of the card, if it's attached there at all. Possibly there are small fins on the bar itself like you can see on the far right side of the cooler. If that's the case though, it would be a huge issue.

If you look at the first screw hole to the right of the PCIe card edge, you can see the row of drill holes they used to hold excess PCB material while they route the board panel. That lines up pretty well with the left side of the fan hub. Look at the picture of the board again, and you can see the VRMs just to the right of those holes. So, the center VRMs are sitting right under the hub of the fan where airflow is going to be poor.

No wonder they get hot under load.

 

[ViRGE]

IMHO the AnandTech conclusion sums up the card nicely. They point out the value in the card is that it's quieter, not that it's cooler or a better overclocker. Anyone buying the XFX card expecting better overclocking is going to come away disappointed, and not because of the heat but because the limiting factor is going to be the AMD PCB.

 

[blackened23]

Ugh. This reinforced my opinion that MSI lilghtning or gigabyte SOC are the way to go for pre-installed aftermarket cooling.

Of course I couldn't resist temptation and got reference boards from sapphire.

 

[Skurge]

Ugh. This reinforced my opinion that MSI lilghtning or gigabyte SOC are the way to go for pre-installed aftermarket cooling.

Of course I couldn't resist temptation and got reference boards from sapphire.

The Asus Matrix cards are also very good. I think they are on par with The lightning cards. Then come the SOC and Toxic/Atomic cards.

 

[peonyu]

Thanks for the warning, I have a Ref 7970 on the way luckily...If there is one thing I know about the "newer" cards [480Gtx and up] is that they are delicate little flowers that if not pampered will die on you. Almost all the time its the VRMs that will pop...I had 2x Nvidia cards die that way [0 AMD, so im biased now].

I have a 7970 ordered and it should arrive today, its a stock model and overclocking it for me ill wait and see..

 

[thilanliyan]

How is the aluminum crossbar that the TIM is applied to connected to the heatsink? It doesn't appear to be connected to the actual finned heatsink other than by running the entire length of the bar to the edge of the card, if it's attached there at all. Possibly there are small fins on the bar itself like you can see on the far right side of the cooler. If that's the case though, it would be a huge issue.

It's not attached to the aluminum heatsink I think. The 4870 and 6950 reference cards I had both had that style VRM cooler and it was just a strip that formed part of the "baseplate".

 

[blastingcap]

I think this is definitely a good question, especially when considering that they are the only AIB to have a custom cooler for the launch. I can imagine their time with the card before approving their cooler design was short. Even so, seems like an extremely large oversight to not measure VRM temps as well as core temps for a new cooler. At least those are the cards that come with XFX lifetime warranty, aren't they?

Does not matter if they have the actual chip or not, how hard could it be to wire together a mockup and run a few tests with an IR camera in a simulation?

I used to care a lot about the XFX warranty, until they started charging a hefty premium for it over others that made it less attractive. Free insurance is nice, but $20 insurance on a $180 board is meh.

 

[superjim]

I used to think that the reference cooler on all GPUs was mediocre at best but then I realized they most likely get the most amount of testing time being from the manufacturer (AMD and NV).

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

XFX has been very unimpressive lately. Of course its all hearsay on my part. Some things I've heard are: cards with cheaper components, recently they went with 2 yr warranties as opposed to lifetime (black editions still have lifetime) and they still charge a slight premium, and lastly I've heard they have shoddy Rma service.

 

[Lonyo]

Did anyone else notice the CPU reading 70c and 76c in their tests?

I think there's more than just the GPU running hot, maybe something like they have a terrible testbed setup.

Not to say they don't/won't run quite hot, but maybe they don't run quite as hot in most people's cases? (or the fans don't run quite so hard).

 

[Panopticon]

I'm sort of confused about this thread are you talking about why the xfx 7970's don't overclock as well or are you making an assertion that the vrm's in all reference cards are getting too hot. I have seen several people on this forum complain already about their XFX 7970 not overclocking well but most everyone else isn't having any issues.

 

[Madcatatlas]

I'm sort of confused about this thread are you talking about why the xfx 7970's don't overclock as well or are you making an assertion that the vrm's in all reference cards are getting too hot. I have seen several people on this forum complain already about their XFX 7970 not overclocking well but most everyone else isn't having any issues.

Seems pretty obvious to me what he is saying.

he is saying that "it seems the XFX DD card was rushed out without proper testing."

He backs it up with some images showing DD cards getting alot hotter VRMS than the referance cooler ones, ergo, bad stuff from XFX.

Personally, i`ve never cared much for XFX, they have never been quality. More just alot of noise and bang. If you want quality, you go ASUS, MSI, Sapphire, Gigabyte or Evga

 

[Silverforce11]

107C is not too high for VRMs. Its like this in cards that have custom coolers which sit above the board with no heatsink contact on VRMs, relying on fan air to cool it only. They run within specs as long as it doesn't get above 115C it won't have detrimental effects.

107C, not a problem. GTX590 had much higher than that.

 

[badb0y]

This is why I am going to slap a Shaman on mine the day it gets here lol

VRM temperatures on my 6950 were spectacular despite overvolting it. We are talking about 60 degrees Celsius here .

 

[3DVagabond]

I'm sort of confused about this thread are you talking about why the xfx 7970's don't overclock as well or are you making an assertion that the vrm's in all reference cards are getting too hot. I have seen several people on this forum complain already about their XFX 7970 not overclocking well but most everyone else isn't having any issues.

No problem with reference VRM's they run ~ same temp as the gpu. The XFX DD card though runs 107 degrees O/C'd with stock volts. There have been a number of posts I've read around the web where the XFX cards are crashing while GPU temps are still acceptable and adding voltage doesn't help. One possibility is the VRM's are over heating, rather than the GPU. Also reports of crashing with Furmark with the powertune set to +20%.

Sorry for the issues with the pics. I can't even get them to come up on the site. Notty22 reposted them. Thanks, Notty

 

[3DVagabond]

107C is not too high for VRMs. Its like this in cards that have custom coolers which sit above the board with no heatsink contact on VRMs, relying on fan air to cool it only. They run within specs as long as it doesn't get above 115C it won't have detrimental effects.

107C, not a problem. GTX590 had much higher than that.

I agree and said so. Now, though, what happens when you up the voltage? Are they still going to run under 115C? Even though 107C is within tolerance of the component, why pay extra for a card with a custom cooler that is obviously doing an inferior job cooling the card than the reference cooler? I wouldn't do it. Which is why I'm posting and letting others know. Someone else thinks it's fine, at least they were shown the info.

This is in no way referenced to the 590. Besides, I don't think the VRM's were fine in the 590 either.