Radeon HD 7950 Owner's Thread

[Fire&Blood]

Oh I see what case is that? My psu is on the bottom right so the cable route along the bottom of the HD area. What card you have in there? According to TomsHardware the gigabyte 7970 is 10.5 inches which is like the same size of the gigabyte 670 someone put in their challenger case.

It's a cheap, small atx case made in China by HEC. Initially this was supposed to be just a media PC so it was cheap and it had good reviews.

I have the same clearance as you, the card in there is the one from my sig. It is ~1/4" short of 11". This is a 7970 PCB and the shroud extends a little past it.
You should be able to fit an 11" (i know, i know, that's what she said) in there if you can angle the card enough to get past the drive bay.

Forget those reviews, they are all for the old board, sizes listed in those reviews are no longer current. When I was looking for dimensions, few pages ago, I found different results, ranging from 10.28" to 10.82", the latter being the accurate one. There are less than 10 video cards on this planet that won't fit your case, how unlucky would you have to be?

Would be funny if while worried about length you pick up the triple slot that can't fit

Whatever you do end up buying, take my advice and stack up on fans. To protect your investment, regardless if you want to do use the OC headroom or not, get 2 more 120mm's in the case. I never had the Challenger but you are in the same boat with me regarding cooling. The card running a conservative OC overwhelms small volume cases under full load within a minute. Nothing that 2-3 good fans won't fix though.

 

[RussianSensation]

Guys, I am asking Ryan to do a follow-up "Mini-HD7950 Round-Up" Article to revisit the $320-350 HD7950 offerings.

If you would like to see such a review, can you please post in this thread
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=33852305&posted=1#post33852305

If we have enough demand, maybe there is a very small chance that we'd get AT to write a 7950 round-up. I think it would be interesting to see how these cards stack up:

1) PowerColor PCS+ 7950
2) Gigabyte Windforce 7950
3) MSI TwinFrozr 3 7950
4) Sapphire Dual-X 950mhz 7950
5) HIS Turbo 7950
6) Asus DCUII 7950

 

[sze5003]

It's a cheap, small atx case made in China by HEC. Initially this was supposed to be just a media PC so it was cheap and it had good reviews.

I have the same clearance as you, the card in there is the one from my sig. It is ~1/4" short of 11". This is a 7970 PCB and the shroud extends a little past it.
You should be able to fit an 11" (i know, i know, that's what she said) in there if you can angle the card enough to get past the drive bay.

Forget those reviews, they are all for the old board, sizes listed in those reviews are no longer current. When I was looking for dimensions, few pages ago, I found different results, ranging from 10.28" to 10.82", the latter being the accurate one. There are less than 10 video cards on this planet that won't fit your case, how unlucky would you have to be?

Would be funny if while worried about length you pick up the triple slot that can't fit

Whatever you do end up buying, take my advice and stack up on fans. To protect your investment, regardless if you want to do use the OC headroom or not, get 2 more 120mm's in the case. I never had the Challenger but you are in the same boat with me regarding cooling. The card running a conservative OC overwhelms small volume cases under full load within a minute. Nothing that 2-3 good fans won't fix though.

Thanks I just checked out the Gigabyte 7970, the model with 3 fans, the newegg unboxing video measures it at 10.75 or so. Its basically the same size of the same model 670 which a board member here fit well in his case with barely 1/2 inch left.

I have 3 fans in that case total, I could add another later too. I should have gotten a HAF 912 or something like that. Now I'm just looking for deals this week and hopefully will be picking up something..either a 670 or 7970 if I can get a deal on one.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Thanks I just checked out the Gigabyte 7970, the model with 3 fans, the newegg unboxing video measures it at 10.75 or so. Its basically the same size of the same model 670 which a board member here fit well in his case with barely 1/2 inch left.

I have 3 fans in that case total, I could add another later too. I should have gotten a HAF 912 or something like that. Now I'm just looking for deals this week and hopefully will be picking up something..either a 670 or 7970 if I can get a deal on one.

Right on. Either choice you are looking at is fine depending on price.

That fan you plan on picking up later, get it now man or combine it with the GPU card to save on shipping. Most of the fans found in retail stores suck, I never even saw a Nexus or Noctua in actual retail stores. I looked at few Challenger reviews. Think you should get a second fan for the side panel as well.

 

[sze5003]

Right on. Either choice you are looking at is fine depending on price.

That fan you plan on picking up later, get it now man or combine it with the GPU card to save on shipping. Most of the fans found in retail stores suck, I never even saw a Nexus or Noctua in actual retail stores. I looked at few Challenger reviews. Think you should get a second fan for the side panel as well.

Yeh that would work too. But if you were to install a Hyper 212+ cooler in my case, that side fan would obstruct it. I'll look around and see what I find. I'm more focused on the gpu for now as I've been running intel hd since I sold my card and haven't touched a game since lol.

 

[zaydq]

Don't want to revitalize a dying thread but amidst all the 7950 vs 660ti vs 670 topics and threads i was curious if any other purchasers of ANY 7950 got some pretty comparable overclocks to what i've got?

 

[RussianSensation]

We need an HD7950 OCing Thread / Round-UP since AT isn't going to do a Mini-GPU Roundup. Thus far MSI TF3 7950 is a proven OCer. Vapor-X and Sapphire Dual-X 950mhz are sold out on Newegg. It seems people are catching on to how awesome the 7950 overclocks

It would be interesting to see how those 2 cards stack up against the venerable TF3.

 

[SickBeast]

From what I've been reading, the TF3 is inferior to the Asus and Gigabyte coolers, among others.

 

[toyota]

We need an HD7950 OCing Thread / Round-UP since AT isn't going to do a Mini-GPU Roundup. Thus far MSI TF3 7950 is a proven OCer. Vapor-X and Sapphire Dual-X 950mhz are sold out on Newegg. It seems people are catching on to how awesome the 7950 overclocks

It would be interesting to see how those 2 cards stack up against the venerable TF3.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1039071247#post1039071247

"For the record, I had three MSI TF3 7950s. The first one OC'd to 1050MHz, second to 1100MHz, and the third one 1125MHz. If 1200MHz is average, I sure as hell didn't see it."

 

[zaydq]

From what I've been reading, the TF3 is inferior to the Asus and Gigabyte coolers, among others.

:thumbsup: true

 

[thujone]

i'd say 1100 is probably average. maybe more like 1050. i certainly can't hit 1200 on my card.

 

[Fire&Blood]

From what I've been reading, the TF3 is inferior to the Asus and Gigabyte coolers, among others.

The Sapphire cards have better cooling as well.
I'm happy with my TF3 but if they all were the same price, I would prefer a Sapphire or Asus one. I bet there are some golden sample Sapphire and Asus cards out there. If there is a out of the box cooler out there that can control 1.2GHz, it probably has the Sapphire name on it.

 

[Attic]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1039071247#post1039071247

"For the record, I had three MSI TF3 7950s. The first one OC'd to 1050MHz, second to 1100MHz, and the third one 1125MHz. If 1200MHz is average, I sure as hell didn't see it."

Interested when he got those cards and if it is the version that has been being sold for the past 1-2 months built on a 7970 pcb w/ 6+8 pin power. From what i've seen that makes a big difference on the clocks folks were seeing, the newer cards now on shelves being the oc'ing monsters.

The recent TF3's have been monsters from what ive seen. I own 3, each hit 1100mhz on the core with under stock volts in 2 of the three cards.

Edit: NM, misread post

 

[Mistwalker]

Got lucky with mine, 7970 PCB, 91.3% ASIC rating, 0.993V stock voltage.

Without touching voltage I tried a quick run at 1000/1350 and just broke P8000 in 3DMark, it ran two loops fine there but did have the occasional visual hiccup in Heaven. Virtually silent the whole run, which was fantastic.

I imagine a tiny bump to 1.03V (or higher) would unleash the power of the card, but I'm enjoying it quiet, low power, running at 950/1300. If I ever need the extra FPS I know it's waiting.

 

[RussianSensation]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1039071247#post1039071247

"For the record, I had three MSI TF3 7950s. The first one OC'd to 1050MHz, second to 1100MHz, and the third one 1125MHz. If 1200MHz is average, I sure as hell didn't see it."

I have no idea about whether he kept them at stock volts, if he got them 3-4 months ago, did he get the new 6+8 pin / 7970 PCB versions, did he increase the voltage up? etc. On our forum, in the HD7950 TF3 thread, no one I saw got less than 1100mhz on stock Tahiti voltage of 1.175V. Some guys get 1050-1100mhz at ~1.0-1.07V I believe on the TF3. So think about how binned it is. 1125mhz @ 1.175V is pretty much a 90% chance I'd say. Even at 1125mhz, 7950 will smoke a 660Ti OCed where it counts - with MSAA, Skyrim with mods, and keep up with it in BF3. I really don't see any point to the GTX660Ti for overclockers unless it's $275 or a person just wants NV specific features. In HardOCP's review the 660Ti does very poorly with MSAA in certain games, same at Xbitlabs, same at Computerbase, same at Tom's Hardware. Borderlands 2 is the best part about the 660Ti deal. As an actual SKU, the 660Ti looks a class below the 7950 since it's a real cut down GK104. If you look at the benchmarks at HardOCP and Guru 3D, HD7950 OC ~ GTX670 OC more or less supports this.

BrentJ should be testing HD7870 vs. 660Ti soon. It'll be interesting to see if the 660Ti can even justify the $70 price difference against an OCed 7870 once MSAA is used.

 

[twjr]

At the moment the HIS IceQ is $300 on Amazon (also the Gigabyte WF3 and MSI TF3 are both $330). Does anyone have any experience with overclocking the HIS card? I know the Gigabyte and MSI are known quantities but $300 for an aftermarket 7950 is crazy good value in my books. I don't mind the blower design as I currently use a reference design GTX 670 and don't find it obnoxiously loud. I'm pretty satisfied with the 670 but it's not much of an overclocker for me.

 

[RussianSensation]

Amazon has the TF3 for $310 after rebate. I don't know how well that 800mhz HIS overclocks. We need a large enough sample size to have an idea if they are actually good. So far no one in this thread seems to have gotten a TF3 with an ASIC below 80%. Not sure what that HIS has. If you already have a 670, I wouldn't side-grade to the 7950. No point!

 

[twjr]

The rebate is of no value to me as I wouldn't be able to claim it (live in Australia). I wouldn't call it entirely a side-grade. Both overclocked a 7950 will outperform a 670, especially my reference design. There is a significant mark-up on 600 series cards here and I could probably still sell mine without losing much/any money. Also I have noticed that when running a number of high texture mods in Skyrim I am regularly exceeding 2000MB of VRAM usage so the extra ram could help if I decide to run more mods.

 

[RussianSensation]

I'd wait a week or so to see if prices fall even more and those AMD cards get added Sleeping Dogs coupon. If you get a poor overclocking 7950, you'll have a slower card than the 670. There is a risk involved. At least let's see if more people buy 7950s from other brands and we may get some idea of how other 7950 cards perform. The problem is there isn't an HD7950 overclocking thread in the main page. So we'd need some kind of a 7950 Overclocking thread where all the results can be collected. Or maybe this thread title can change to Overclocking HD7950 Thread (MSI TF3, Gigabyte Windforce 3x, Sapphire Dual-X/Vapor-X, HIS ICE-Q, etc.).

 

[twjr]

Given I already have a card I could wait. I definitely think that a 7950 overclocking thread would be of value. Or even a GFX card overclocking sub-forum. I would be interested to see how other version of my card overclock too for instance.

 

[djsb]

Got lucky with mine, 7970 PCB, 91.3% ASIC rating, 0.993V stock voltage.

Without touching voltage I tried a quick run at 1000/1350 and just broke P8000 in 3DMark, it ran two loops fine there but did have the occasional visual hiccup in Heaven. Virtually silent the whole run, which was fantastic.

I imagine a tiny bump to 1.03V (or higher) would unleash the power of the card, but I'm enjoying it quiet, low power, running at 950/1300. If I ever need the extra FPS I know it's waiting.

I have basically the same GPU as you. The highest I could go its stock voltage was 1050. To hit 1100 I needed 1.05v, and to hit 1150 I needed 1.065ish (not sure as I'm not at my home desktop at the moment). If you value the silence, though, I would not raise the voltage enough to make the card approach 74C, as that seems to be when the fans kick into annoying-mode.

I haven't pushed memory too much because I use 2 monitors, and as a result the memory never downclocks. Raising from 1250 to 1350 added 2-3C idle temps, so... not going any further until winter.

 

[railven]

My ~60% ASIC Sapph HD 7970 did full CCC clocks (1125/1525) on stock clocks with temps hovering in the ~60-70C.

I upgraded the fan and same clocks/volts and it never gets over 50C. Hardest I ran it was 1265/1625 at around 1.25v temps still never broke 65C.

 

[joe_H]

Did a quick test at 1100/1575 yesterday. Didn't change stock voltage. Ran Heaven without issue at 2560x1440. Temps topped out at about 77C. (~26C ambient room). 89.8 ASIC.

MSI Twin Frozr, 7970 PCB, changed the tim out last week.

 

[Silverforce11]

Did a quick test at 1100/1575 yesterday. Didn't change stock voltage. Ran Heaven without issue at 2560x1440. Temps topped out at about 77C. (~26C ambient room). 89.8 ASIC.

MSI Twin Frozr, 7970 PCB, changed the tim out last week.

That's pretty damn good for stock volts. I think your sample should hit 1.3ghz with around 1.225 to 1.25 vcore. Sadly the TF fan gets loud at high speed.

 

[joe_H]

That's pretty damn good for stock volts. I think your sample should hit 1.3ghz with around 1.225 to 1.25 vcore. Sadly the TF fan gets loud at high speed.

I probably won't try to go any higher. Come 9/25, I'll be mostly playing WOW anyway, which runs pegged at stock speeds. Towards the end of the Heaven test, the fans were up around 75% which was a bit on the noisy side already. I may try to go higher during the winter time as I live in the desert SW, and I don't want to push the card over 80C if I don't have to.

Edit...I thought all these cards ran at the same stock voltage...does it differ from card to card? A quick google search shows results of reported stock voltages all the way from .993v to 1.175v.

Anyway stock voltage in afterburner for my card is listed at 1.093v. I can get all the way down to 1.047v at 1100/1575 without lockups, however, the Heaven benchmark starts to get some "skipping" and waves in the graphics.