Radeon HD 7950 Owner's Thread

[psolord]

Well it is very strange that GB release so many new GHz bioses without mentioning about them. Yours is FW1 and there was a FX1. By the way what are the asics qualities of your cards - i'm just making statistics...

One card is 71% Asic quality and the second one is 55%. I'm using the 71% one as the primary card.

Very nice man!! To be only 10FPS away $900+ video cards for only $600. I say you are doing pretty good

I like to see it that way as well. If you deduct the value of the crossfire games bundle, it's easily 500 for both cards.

Btw, I managed to squeeze out a bit more performance by upping the memory to 1700Mhz and fan speed to 60%.

Now it's only 7fps away from my friend's GTX 680 SLI @1200Mhz!

Try 3D Mark Fire Strike.

Will do mate. Still having a lot of testing to do, but I'll put the Fire Strike in priority this afternoon, along with some more BIOSes flashing.

 

[psolord]

Oh I've got some questions for anyone that can help.

1) I noticed that if the overclock fails and the driver restarts, no matter what I do, I cannot overclock again until I reboot the system. I mean OK I can reset the clocks with MSI Afterburner, then overclock again let's say to 1100/1500, MSI Afterburner reports 1100/1500 for 3D load, gpuz also reports 1100/1500, but the performance is the same as stock clocks. Performance only comes to 1100/1500 levels only once once I reboot and reapply the overclock. Does this happen to you as well?

2) MSI Afterburner does not display the temperature, memory load and gpu load of the second card. I mean these options are not even available in the settings, although the rest of the settings are there alright. I uninstalled and deleted the folder of MSI Afterburner and then reinstalled but the same remains. Why is that?

3) GPUz only shows 25GB/sec memory bandwidth for the second card. Why is that?

I use all the latest versions of the software mentioned above and Catalyst 13.2 beta 7.

 

[Belkov]

About the 1st point - where the performance stays as the stock? If it is in unigine program, this is a software issue.

 

[lopri]

@psolord: Yes, that happens to me, too. When OC fails and driver restarts, my 7950's memory frequency halves and only way to fix it is reboot.

 

[psolord]

Cool thanks guys. Not a real problem, just got me curious.

Seems like I will have to sit at 1000/1500 for the time being. Don't really need anything more and I am not sure about the ram speed either. Maybe I'll just leave it at stock.

Crysis 3 runs at 60fps vsynced, with 2xSMAA, everything very high, except water and shadows at just high. Motion blur is also off because I don't like it. The gpu load is around 70% on both cards at stock. As I said before the game is silky smooth. No microstutter in sight. I am talking per pixel camera panning here. Very smooth. I honestly don't understand what these microstutter preachers are yuping about?! Turn on vsync and you are done. Jeez.

Also Crysis 1 benchmark, is 50% faster on the 7950 over the 570 at 1080P+8XAA. Don't know about you guys, but I still respect Crysis 1 for gpu benchmarking. Yeah it needs high levels of AA nowadays in order not to be cpu limited, lol.

 

[MTDEW]

Oh I've got some questions for anyone that can help.

1) I noticed that if the overclock fails and the driver restarts, no matter what I do, I cannot overclock again until I reboot the system. I mean OK I can reset the clocks with MSI Afterburner, then overclock again let's say to 1100/1500, MSI Afterburner reports 1100/1500 for 3D load, gpuz also reports 1100/1500, but the performance is the same as stock clocks. Performance only comes to 1100/1500 levels only once once I reboot and reapply the overclock. Does this happen to you as well?

2) MSI Afterburner does not display the temperature, memory load and gpu load of the second card. I mean these options are not even available in the settings, although the rest of the settings are there alright. I uninstalled and deleted the folder of MSI Afterburner and then reinstalled but the same remains. Why is that?

3) GPUz only shows 25GB/sec memory bandwidth for the second card. Why is that?

I use all the latest versions of the software mentioned above and Catalyst 13.2 beta 7.

Answer to #2(and #3) is because you have to disable ULPS.
With ULPS enabled, the 2nd card turns off completely when not in use, that is why Afterburner doesn't see it and doesn't have the settings available.

 

[Face2Face]

One card is 71% Asic quality and the second one is 55%. I'm using the 71% one as the primary card.





I like to see it that way as well. If you deduct the value of the crossfire games bundle, it's easily 500 for both cards.

Btw, I managed to squeeze out a bit more performance by upping the memory to 1700Mhz and fan speed to 60%.

Now it's only 7fps away from my friend's GTX 680 SLI @1200Mhz!



Will do mate. Still having a lot of testing to do, but I'll put the Fire Strike in priority this afternoon, along with some more BIOSes flashing.

Very nice score my friend!!

 

[Belkov]

One card is 71% Asic quality and the second one is 55%. I'm using the 71% one as the primary card.

What a difference...

 

[Eureka]

Here's how you should flash your BIOS, check post #6:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=373744

Never use the "easy flash" or anything running under Windows to flash your BIOS. Use the method in post #6 and enjoy!

Put the switch on position #1 or #2 it doesn't matter.

Well, I finally tried the BIOS flash, the F43 bios bricks the card. Luckily I had the BIOS backed up before I tried, and so I can confirm it flashes fine (right now both switch positions are still on BIOS FX0).

I got the F43 BIOS from here:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4121#bios

The model on my box is:
GV-R795WF3-3GD revision 2.0

I'm assuming it should work, but I've tried twice and it bricks my card. Am I using the right BIOS?

For Belkov, my card is at 76.6%, but even at stock voltage of 1.25V, it won't be stable past 1100/1500 or so in Crysis 3. It will run Heaven at 1175/1575, however.

 

[psolord]

Answer to #2(and #3) is because you have to disable ULPS.
With ULPS enabled, the 2nd card turns off completely when not in use, that is why Afterburner doesn't see it and doesn't have the settings available.

Cool thanks man.

Still for no2 it was a bad setting on MSI Afterburner. I had enabled kenrel mode while it needed user mode. For no3 you are most probably right. I will try to put the card in load and see what it reports.

Very nice score my friend!!

Yeap so far so good!

What a difference...

I was surprised as well, the cards being from the same batch and all. Oh well.

Well, I finally tried the BIOS flash, the F43 bios bricks the card. Luckily I had the BIOS backed up before I tried, and so I can confirm it flashes fine (right now both switch positions are still on BIOS FX0).

I got the F43 BIOS from here:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4121#bios

The model on my box is:
GV-R795WF3-3GD revision 2.0

I'm assuming it should work, but I've tried twice and it bricks my card. Am I using the right BIOS?

For Belkov, my card is at 76.6%, but even at stock voltage of 1.25V, it won't be stable past 1100/1500 or so in Crysis 3. It will run Heaven at 1175/1575, however.

Could you please upload your FX0 bios so I can try it on my FW0 card?

Thanks.

 

[psolord]

@all

I gladly found out that my system has dropped from 185W idle, to 140W idle (it has a lot of hardware inside). I previously had two 570s and now two 7950s. I didn't expect the difference to be this great. :thumbsup:

 

[Belkov]

Check that thread in overclock.net. I found and attached FZ1 bios for you.

 

[Face2Face]

Just came in today. Very excited to try her out. Won't be able to do so until this Friday or Saturday I hate waiting...

 

[Dravonic]

Looking to buy one of these myself. The reference cooler is just too loud, period. If you overclock it you're beyond screwed. Aftermarket coolers are pretty much a necessity.

 

[Belkov]

Well i'm pretty satisfied with my WF3 cooler.

 

[Face2Face]

Looking to buy one of these myself. The reference cooler is just too loud, period. If you overclock it you're beyond screwed. Aftermarket coolers are pretty much a necessity.

They are only $69 US Dollars now. Not too bad considering they were over $100.

 

[Dravonic]

Yeah, but I live abroad. I'll probably still be paying close to $100 because shipping =/

 

[MBrown]

Can you change somehow the voltage? Try to lower it...

I think I figured out what my issues were. I was using the catalyst software to overclock. Since I have been using MSI afterburner, I have been able to OC higher and more stable so far. My current clocks are at 1150/1425. Playing through some games to try and break it right now.

 

[Eureka]

Well, I can't seem to flash my BIOS at all, actually. I don't know if I did it wrong with atiflash, I followed the guide on guru3D and I placed DOS on my USB drive, and flashed it with:

atiflash.exe -f -p 0 bios.FX0

bios.FX0 is what I named my backup. However, my position 2 switch seems to be bricked completely (this was the one I tried to flash to F43). Position 1 works fine, I tried to backup the bios from position 1 and flash it to position 2 but I can't seem to find a way to do it. I am starting the computer in switch 1 position, while it's running I move the switch to position 2 and then do the flash.

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

EDIT: NVM, I found the way to properly unbrick the card... I have to backup the BIOS using ATIFlash in DOS, and then reflash the switch using that BIOS. I can't use the backup from GPU-Z.

But in any case, it seems like no other BIOS is working with the card.

 

[MBrown]

OK now I am having an issue. For hours I was playing with my card at 1150/1425 with no issues. Now all of a sudden my card throttles down to 800mhz all the time. I have the power to +20% so that is not the issue. I wasn't experiencing any artifacts or anything and my temps were at 68 degrees under load. My core voltage was at 1.250 and memory voltage was at 1.675. What could be the issue here?

 

[Belkov]

Don't mess with memory voltage - if it is 1.6 leave it like this. May be for a quick bench it will be allright, but for gaming - it is an issue. You will make short the live of the memory.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

OK now I am having an issue. For hours I was playing with my card at 1150/1425 with no issues. Now all of a sudden my card throttles down to 800mhz all the time. I have the power to +20% so that is not the issue. I wasn't experiencing any artifacts or anything and my temps were at 68 degrees under load. My core voltage was at 1.250 and memory voltage was at 1.675. What could be the issue here?

I am a bit rusty, but don't all cards throttle down under 2D applications? Or is it doing it gaming? Or am I just having a huge brain fart?

 

[hyrule4927]

Temps on my 7950 TF3 are decent, but I'm thinking about changing the thermal paste before summer to see if I can bring them down a bit more. I have some Cooler Master Thermal Fusion 400 sitting around . . . should that work alright for a GPU, or would anything else be significantly better?

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Temps on my 7950 TF3 are decent, but I'm thinking about changing the thermal paste before summer to see if I can bring them down a bit more. I have some Cooler Master Thermal Fusion 400 sitting around . . . should that work alright for a GPU, or would anything else be significantly better?

I swapped paste on my 6850 back in the day, it didn't do anything for the temps.

 

[MBrown]

I am a bit rusty, but don't all cards throttle down under 2D applications? Or is it doing it gaming? Or am I just having a huge brain fart?

Its throttling down while gaming.