Radeon HD 7950 Owner's Thread

[psolord]

I did some more testing and gaming on Crysis 3 yesterday, on my 7950 CFX system, with 1000/1500 clocks. 1080P, very high, no motion blur, 2x smaa.

I mainly wanted to see how the temperatures of the cards fair. Luckily the delta is smaller than I expected. The monitoring was set to gather data every 5 sec.

Still I forgot to get a shot of the fan speed, because the top card could easily have a higher fan speed than the low card. Overall the system was silent though and I didn't notice any significant noise build up. If you turn the sound down and listen for it, yeap it is there, but for normal use you don't notice it. I am using a HAF 932 for this PC's case.

Also it's quite noteworthy, that the framerate was constantly pretty smooth, being locked at 60fps for the vast majority of time, with only a few little drops here and there.

I have the feeling that Crytek must have implemented some sort of adaptive vsync in their code, because with vsync enabled, the game does not exceed 60fps, but when the system's resources are not enough to keep a steady 60fps, it can happily run at 55fps or 50fps and in between values. Normally vsync drops to 45fps and then to 30fps, depending on the buffering.

It does need a hefty overclock on my 2500k in order to keep the cards properly fed though.

 

[Face2Face]

You could try and tweak the voltage to make it as efficient as possible, but you'd be OCD to bother.

I honestly think i could ho higher than 1200 on mine, but the TF3 cooling aperture is already at it's end's wits keeping mine stable at 1.168v. Might have to replace the TIM and see where it takes me.

Honestly, at 1.25v you're at the standard voltage the card was designed to run at, and i wouldn't bother with the hassle of tweaking it, you won't save much in heat or power, but you'll definitely gain in frustration as the card artifacts or hard locks



Oh! And as a side note, thank you all for keeping this thread going!! 1100+ replies and 85000+ views is amazing! And nearly everybody has achieved some amazing overclocks making 7970ghz/680 speeds pretty much a near definite for the majority of 7950s(atleast as far as the tf3 and wf3 unlocked voltage cards go)

Not going to get all OCD about it Thanks for Starting this thread, it's well and alive.

I am starting to think the TF3 V2 cards (8+6 pin) run hotter than the V1 (6+6) cards. My card @ 1.093(Stock Voltage) with a small overclock of 1025/1500 ran low to mid 70's. Replacing the TIM didn't do a whole lot either. You have the new TF3's running (6+6) And they come with 1.25v stock and don't get nearly as hot and still overclock pretty dang well. 1.25v on my card with the stock cooler would put my card into the 90's under load. I assume this had to do with ASIC quality? Most V2 cards would be 80% + and the newer V1 cards are usually lower than 80%. Not sure, this is what I have seen so far- Maybe someone can add to it and clarify?

SPINEJAM has owned a fair amount of 7950's - Any input?

 

[hjalti8]

I am starting to think the TF3 V2 cards (8+6 pin) run hotter than the V1 (6+6) cards. My card @ 1.093(Stock Voltage) with a small overclock of 1025/1500 ran low to mid 70's. Replacing the TIM didn't do a whole lot either. You have the new TF3's running (6+6) And they come with 1.25v stock and don't get nearly as hot and still overclock pretty dang well. 1.25v on my card with the stock cooler would put my card into the 90's under load. I assume this had to do with ASIC quality? Most V2 cards would be 80% + and the newer V1 cards are usually lower than 80%. Not sure, this is what I have seen so far- Maybe someone can add to it and clarify?

yeah there is no way my 8+6pin card could do 1.25V on stock tf3 heatsink without reaching dangerous temps. 1150mV was about as far as I could go with the tf3 heatsink. Asic quality is 88,9% and my card does not respond well to extra voltage. The only way for me to reach higher clocks is to lower temps.

 

[spinejam]

The four best clocking MSI 7950 TFIII's that I had (3 on 7970_PCB and one 2x6pin) all had high ASIC % (91.7, 91.5, 85.4, and 85.5). They didn't respond well the high voltages -- iirc 1175mV and up to 1200mV were the max. juice these cards tolerated.

Here's a sample:



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MSI 7970 Lightning (low ASIC = loves juice)



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[Face2Face]

yeah there is no way my 8+6pin card could do 1.25V on stock tf3 heatsink without reaching dangerous temps. 1150mV was about as far as I could go with the tf3 heatsink. Asic quality is 88,9% and my card does not respond well to extra voltage. The only way for me to reach higher clocks is to lower temps.

Sounds just like my card. If you want to achieve higher clocks look into the Arctic Accelero Xtreme 7970.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...FQWxnQodKVAADg

They used to be pretty expensive and now they have down to a more reasonable price point. Chances are your card will hit high clocks with low voltage. I hit 1250core with 1.175v.

The four best clocking MSI 7950 TFIII's that I had (3 on 7970_PCB and one 2x6pin) all had high ASIC % (91.7, 91.5, 85.4, and 85.5). They didn't respond well the high voltages -- iirc 1175mV and up to 1200mV were the max. juice these cards tolerated.

Thanks SpineJam for the info. It's looks like all of these cards run pretty cool in comparison. This may debunk my theory...

 

[Shmee]

mine came earlier today, I am going to install it now, and will let everyone know how it goes

 

[Face2Face]

mine came earlier today, I am going to install it now, and will let everyone know how it goes

Did you get a TF3 or WF3? Please do keep us in the loop

 

[Belkov]

Well, i hope he got TF3. I'm realy disapointed by GB and their voltage locked cards and lower asics quality. With this awsome cooler i would be able to achieve very high clocks if my stock voltage was lower...

 

[Shmee]

Actually, I got the sapphire Dual X. Just installed it.

 

[GrantMeThePower]

I'm all bummed about having the gigabyte wf3 But i'm worried about returning it because of the never settle reloaded bundle...I used the crysis code...

 

[spinejam]

Actually, I got the sapphire Dual X. Just installed it.

Congrat's on the new card -- Time to crank it up!

Use the modded Trixx software to overvolt the card -- works better than AB on this particular card. :thumbsup:

Here: http://www.overclock.net/attachments/8046

 

[Shmee]

hmm no permissions to DL :C thanks for the tip though, Ill have to look for it.

 

[Belkov]

I'm all bummed about having the gigabyte wf3 But i'm worried about returning it because of the never settle reloaded bundle...I used the crysis code...

Don't worry - you still got a good performer. 7950 on stock is still very powerful VGA and you can increase the performance even more. And after all it has 1000mhz stock core clock wich is a nice bonus. For the moment there are only one, may be two games max wich you can't play at max settings so don't bother...

 

[Vesku]

It is a shame to hear that Gigabyte is pairing their excellent cooler with locked down less vetted chips. My WF3 cooler has good acoustics even up to ~80% fan speed and keeps an OCed card quite cool. Plus I imagine there will be people who buy it based on recommendations of older models.

 

[Eureka]

Sounds just like my card. If you want to achieve higher clocks look into the Arctic Accelero Xtreme 7970.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...FQWxnQodKVAADg

They used to be pretty expensive and now they have down to a more reasonable price point. Chances are your card will hit high clocks with low voltage. I hit 1250core with 1.175v.




Thanks SpineJam for the info. It's looks like all of these cards run pretty cool in comparison. This may debunk my theory...

I don't understand the difference between a TF3 and a WF3 which would make a TF3 unable to handle 1.25V, if the WF3 does it stock? Unless this is really unsafe with the WF3.

 

[zaydq]

I don't understand the difference between a TF3 and a WF3 which would make a TF3 unable to handle 1.25V, if the WF3 does it stock? Unless this is really unsafe with the WF3.

The pcb and tahiti chip can handle 1.25v. But not necessarily the voltage controller that either manufacturer decides to use, among other components.

 

[Zxian]

I really don't understand how the green crowd says that nVidia's drivers are so stable and AMD drivers are crap.

I got a EVGA 680 from my boss a little while ago, and finally got around to installing it in my system last night. Got around to playing HotS tonight, and ran into nothing but crash after crash after crash. Apparently nVidia "tweaked" the latest drivers for SC2 but caused instability in the process.

I replaced my trusty Sapphire 7950 in this system, installed Catalyst 13.2 Beta 7's and haven't had a single issue in over an hour.

 

[Shmee]

How is HotS? I look forward to getting that eventually

 

[Zxian]

Aside from the driver related crashes, pretty good so far. I haven't had too much time with the campaign, and sadly it's time for sleep now. That whole "work in the morning" thing...

 

[Plimogz]

^ Damned sleep. Always getting in the way of playing around with the PC...

Has anyone else noticed that the 7950s out on the market right now seem to exhibit a marked decrease in quality when compared to what was out there 6-12 months ago?

It seems like it is harder and harder to get a voltage unlocked part, and that the reported ASIC quality in the thread has been steadily getting lower as time progresses.

I wonder if this is a reaction to people frying the cards that they bought last year and unscrupulously RMAing them to the point that the manufacturers had to act, or if the card makers are just digging deeper and deeper into the pile of rejected 7970 chips.

 

[Shmee]

How do I tell what my ASIC quality is? Neither GPUz or Trixx seem to tell.

 

[Plimogz]

right click in the title bar (for lack of a better term) of the GPU-Z window. The option is down the contextual list which pops up.

 

[Shmee]

Ok thanks. Mine is 64.8% :C

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Don't feel bad, mine is 61.7 :\


Get out the solder gun and water blocks >.<

 

[Shmee]

Hmm, so far OC goes pretty well. Currently at 1100 core, stock VDDC of 1250mV, and 1300 memory