Radeon HD 7950 Owner's Thread

[Eureka]

I think the MSI TF3 is voltage unlocked. A couple guys got some newer ones and they reaches 1200mhz. MSI TF3 from the beginning tended to be a stellar OCer, especially the 6+8 pin / 7970 PCB versions!

Here is a review of both of them head-to-head. I am guessing that's the one you looked at
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...rce-msi-hd-7950-twin-frozr-iii-review-18.html

Yes, but that review now seems to be outdated, with the newer versions of TF3s and the newer Windforces.

I'm still torn in between which one to get? The MSI seems to be rarer even though the GB is supposed to have a better cooler? For the TF3, Newegg and SuperBiiz are out of stock, Amazon and TD are selling them for a good amount more than the others (330+ vs 300-), and so I'm left with US NCIX, which is quite unfortunate. On the other hand, the Gigabyte I can get from Amazon Prime for $300 flat.

 

[zaydq]

Yes, but that review now seems to be outdated, with the newer versions of TF3s and the newer Windforces.

I'm still torn in between which one to get? The MSI seems to be rarer even though the GB is supposed to have a better cooler? For the TF3, Newegg and SuperBiiz are out of stock, Amazon and TD are selling them for a good amount more than the others (330+ vs 300-), and so I'm left with US NCIX, which is quite unfortunate. On the other hand, the Gigabyte I can get from Amazon Prime for $300 flat.

They are both great 7950s. The WF3 is a capable overclocker and for the price and availability it'd be difficult to argue forbthe TF3. But, the TF3 has a stellar oc track record(this thread being proof!) and tends to hit higher frequencies with lower voltages than the WF3.

If i were you, just get a WF3 and call it a day. I ran my TF3 at 1200/1800 until the fan noise got annoying so i dropped it down to 1100/1500, easily gotten by a WF3.

 

[Tfist]

Hey all. I just got my Powercolor PCS Boost State today.

I'm really happy with it! It handily clocked to 1080 on the GPU with core temp at approx 50 degrees and the vrms in the mid 50's. The fans were at 50% speed for these temps, and it was whisper quiet. I didn't change the memory clock.

I was concerned about going with Powercolor, and there was one minor problem. The tabs on the back end of the exhaust plate were bent a little bit outwards, which meant I had to bend them back to get the thing into place on the mobo. Other than that, awesome.

 

[Eureka]

They are both great 7950s. The WF3 is a capable overclocker and for the price and availability it'd be difficult to argue forbthe TF3. But, the TF3 has a stellar oc track record(this thread being proof!) and tends to hit higher frequencies with lower voltages than the WF3.

If i were you, just get a WF3 and call it a day. I ran my TF3 at 1200/1800 until the fan noise got annoying so i dropped it down to 1100/1500, easily gotten by a WF3.

Thanks.

I got the WF3. Availability and bigger cooler won it over for me, and the additional card bracing is a nice touch available on the GB.

Hopefully I'll get one of the ones with the unlocked voltage BIOS, and we'll see how fast these things really overclock.

 

[zaydq]

Keep us posted!!

As for the powercolor, id be interested to ser what more you could get out of it... I havent heard much in terms of ocing finesse but they do have a pretty good cooler.

 

[Interitus]

Kind of an update for mine...

I'm blind first off... it's 1.018 not 1.18v stock. I don't know how I convinced myself that was true, especially after reading it in 3 different monitoring programs.

Anyways, played with undervolting a little.. didn't seem to help much. Temps maybe dropped 1*C at the TF3's "stock" clocks. Fan profile stayed the same, spins up to 65% a lot on auto.

I think I may have some counter productive airflow going on in my case. First card I've had in a while that didn't have a blower style HSF. Got some eye candy accessories coming in a week or so, will try to figure out the airflow during that teardown.

FWIW, it passed Kombuster for 15 mins with no ill effects at stock clocks and .905v (915mv) in AB before I gave up trying to remedy the fan noise. Didn't long term test, but still. Really impressed with the card save for the cooler noise. Not gonna give up on it yet though, wanna rule out crappy airflow as the reason for high temps first.

Been awhile, but I finally got the time to dig into this a bit.

I definitely had some counter-productive airflow going on. Playing with a probe, there was a heat cloud (for lack of better description) hovering right under the GPU. Swapped some fan directions and got it remedied.

The TF3 now runs at 31 idle, around 65 load, maxed out right at 50% fan. Before it was in the 40's idle, mid to high 70's load, and fan was constantly in the 65-70% area.

Lots happier.

 

[Rhezuss]

Damn, just did 1150core/1600mem at 1.23v on the core and 1.6v on the memory.
Ran Valley 1.0 4 times with these clocks and it's stable.

Temps are 67C on the core and 72C/73C on the VRMs.

Pretty cool I say!

 

[Grooveriding]

My 7950 TF3 does 1200/1350 on 1.25V. Memory may go higher, I just turned the memory up 100mhz and played with the core speed.

 

[Rhezuss]

My 7950 TF3 does 1200/1350 on 1.25V. Memory may go higher, I just turned the memory up 100mhz and played with the core speed.

Yeah mine doesn't like 1200 on the core so i'm leaving it at 1150...even thinking about lowering it to 1100 since it is plenty for now.

EDIT: 1150/1500 (1.237v/1.6v) seems to be my card sweet spot. I'll leave it at that and play games on it. Only games that seem to crash are Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 after 10-15 minutes. Not always but sometimes I get the vertical lines crash...

 

[zaydq]

Yeah mine doesn't like 1200 on the core so i'm leaving it at 1150...even thinking about lowering it to 1100 since it is plenty for now.

EDIT: 1150/1500 (1.237v/1.6v) seems to be my card sweet spot. I'll leave it at that and play games on it. Only games that seem to crash are Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 after 10-15 minutes. Not always but sometimes I get the vertical lines crash...

Thats unstable... Tweak the ram frequency and see how that does.

 

[zaydq]

My 7950 TF3 does 1200/1350 on 1.25V. Memory may go higher, I just turned the memory up 100mhz and played with the core speed.

You could do 1200 on less voltage probably... I hit 1200 at 1168mV.

 

[Rhezuss]

Thats unstable... Tweak the ram frequency and see how that does.

Lol that's not "instable" you're just luckier than me and got a more tolerant card.

 

[Accord99]

My Gigabyte that shipped with the FZ1 bios (locked 1.25v, 1000MHz on the core),

Is it always locked to 1.25V (other than for idle) or can you manually undervolt it any way?

 

[Rhezuss]

Is it always locked to 1.25V (other than for idle) or can you manually undervolt it any way?

The FZ1 bios locked the voltage at 1.25v under load. You can't adjust that voltage anyway you'd want.

I flashed the position #1 on the switch with the latest F43 bios and now with Afterburner I can adjust the voltage the way I want it.

Some cards are locked, others are not.

 

[psolord]

So, what kind of clocks am I looking for, in order to get 7970 GE performance out of a 7950 WF3?

 

[Rhezuss]

So, what kind of clocks am I looking for, in order to get 7970 GE performance out of a 7950 WF3?

1100core/1400-1500mem would do the trick.
To get to 1100 on the core you would need to bump your voltage a bit...mine did it at 1.2v but i'm sure I could get it at a lower value.

I got mine at 1150/1500 (1.237v/1.6v) and temps are damn fine (66C on the core and +/-70C on the VRMs under load). This WF3 cooler is awesome, silent and efficient.

 

[psolord]

1100core/1400-1500mem would do the trick.
To get to 1100 on the core you would need to bump your voltage a bit...mine did it at 1.2v but i'm sure I could get it at a lower value.

I got mine at 1150/1500 (1.237v/1.6v) and temps are damn fine (66C on the core and +/-70C on the VRMs under load). This WF3 cooler is awesome, silent and efficient.

That's great, thanks.

So I am guessing 1200Mhz at 1.25V should be higher limit for OC right?

Do you really have to OC the memory as well, when overclocking tahitis? I mean their 384bit bus shouldn't cause any kind of memory bottleneck, correct?

 

[Rikard]

That's great, thanks.

So I am guessing 1200Mhz at 1.25V should be higher limit for OC right?

Do you really have to OC the memory as well, when overclocking tahitis? I mean their 384bit bus shouldn't cause any kind of memory bottleneck, correct?

You do gain some performance. It is up to you to decide if this gain is worth it. I do not OC memory on my 24/7 setup.

 

[psolord]

1500 seems to be a nice speed for the memory then. Since the 7970 is running at 1375 anyway, 125Mhz more shouldn't be much of a problem.

Are the 7970 and 7950 using the same chips?

Btw, I was checking my 5850 Crossfire system for the past few days. I noticed that in both 13.2/5 and 13.2/6, my second 5850 jumps to high 2D/low 3D clocks (300/900) when MSI Afterburner is started. When MSI Afterburner is closed the clocks drop to 157/300 as they should.

Also I noticed that while the problem manifests, if I start up gpuz, the problem goes away.

Obviously this is not a problem of the driver per se, but I was wondering if anyone has noticed the same on 7950 CFX.

Also will Overvoltage work as it does on my 5850 system? By just enabling the appropriate settings? I am getting two Gigabyte 7950 WF3s, the 900Mhz models.

 

[Zargon]

thanks to PS2 I have ordered a second

windforce this time

 

[GrantMeThePower]

1100core/1400-1500mem would do the trick.
To get to 1100 on the core you would need to bump your voltage a bit...mine did it at 1.2v but i'm sure I could get it at a lower value.

I got mine at 1150/1500 (1.237v/1.6v) and temps are damn fine (66C on the core and +/-70C on the VRMs under load). This WF3 cooler is awesome, silent and efficient.

Do you have a link that explains how to do this? i just ordered this card and have never overclocked anything.

 

[Marco St]

Hello everybody,

I don't have the expertise/knowledge to follow your conversations. So, I just want to ask you a simple, or maybe not, question.

I'm going to buy a "SAPPHIRE ATI Radeon HD 7950 Vapor-X Boost 3GB GDDR5" the next week. See here:
http://www.ar-hard.com.ar/home/plac...re-ati-radeon-hd-7950-vapor-x-boost-3gb-gddr5

Do you have any advise that could be useful to me before I actually buy this? I mean like "for that card you need at least 500w...", "I would avoid that driver if I were you..." kind of...

I'm not planing to do overclock or anything (i dont take any chances... money-wise).

My pc is:

Windows 7 64bits
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H - ATX Motherboard de 1600/1333/1066MHz (Socket 1155)
Intel - Core™ i5-3570K Procesador
520 series SSD Intel 180gb Serial ATA
16gb RAM (Kingston - HyperX KHX1600C9D3K2/8G Módulo de memoria DDR3 SDRAM de 8GB)x2
Performance KC-CFA 780W with cooler

English is not my mother language so, I apologize for any grammar spelling.

Thank you very much!

 

[Rhezuss]

Here's a post I made over on Guru3D and some links on how to do all this.

FIRST: Here's how to flash the bios on your card if you don't have version F43 (015.026.000.000.000907). Check post #6 on this link: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=373744

Now how to unlock MSI Afterburner to overclock and adjust voltage:
If you have bios F43 (015.026.000.000.000907), keep it. It's the best bios the Gigabyte can have at the moment.

You have some steps to take in order to unlock the voltage in Afterburner.
Here's what I did yesterday:

1) Clean install of the latest AMD drivers. I installed 13.2 Beta 6.
- Uninstalled / reboot in safe mode / clean with Driver Sweeper / reboot / Manually clean the registry removing all AMD/ATI folders under Local Machine/Softwares / install drivers / reboot.

- DO NOT enable AMD Overdrive in CCC.

2) Install MSI Afterburner.
- After the installation is comlpete, start Afterburner. It'll prompt you to reboot, do it.
- After the reboot is complete, right click on the application icon on your desktop and go in Properties. In the Target box, add at the end /xcl just after the ". It should look like "xxxxxxx.exe" /xcl. Click Apply/Ok.
- Start Afterburner. A window will pop saying something like "You enabled high overclock". Click ok/close this window.
- After you got the message, go back in Properties and remove the /xcl in the Target box and click Apply/Ok.
- Reboot your PC.

3) Once rebooted go in Afterburner Settings and click "Enable voltage unlock" and "Enable voltage monitoring". You should enable "Start with Windows" and "Start minimized".

From there you should be good to go!

Here's the link where I found this method: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18431335

If you have any questions don't hesitate.

 

[Eureka]

Hello everybody,

I don't have the expertise/knowledge to follow your conversations. So, I just want to ask you a simple, or maybe not, question.

I'm going to buy a "SAPPHIRE ATI Radeon HD 7950 Vapor-X Boost 3GB GDDR5" the next week. See here:
http://www.ar-hard.com.ar/home/plac...re-ati-radeon-hd-7950-vapor-x-boost-3gb-gddr5

Do you have any advise that could be useful to me before I actually buy this? I mean like "for that card you need at least 500w...", "I would avoid that driver if I were you..." kind of...

I'm not planing to do overclock or anything (i dont take any chances... money-wise). My pc is:

Spoiler

Win 7
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H - ATX Motherboard de 1600/1333/1066MHz (Socket 1155)
Intel - Core™ i5-3570K Procesador
520 series SSD Intel 180gb Serial ATA
16gb RAM (Kingston - HyperX KHX1600C9D3K2/8G Módulo de memoria DDR3 SDRAM de 8GB)x2
Performance KC-CFA 780W with cooler

English is not my mother language so, I apologize for any grammar spelling.

Thank you very much!

Looks good to me. Make sure your motherboard BIOS is up to date, those older Gigabyte BIOS can be very finicky. Get the latest driver from AMD, either 13.1 WHQL or 13.2 beta 6. The WHQL is the "stable" driver, but the 13.2 drivers is the ones which are supposed to fix everything.

 

[Marco St]

Thank you Eureka!

I have no experience with Overclocking.

The SAPPHIRE ATI Radeon HD 7950 Vapor-X Boost 3GB GDDR5, Is it only worthy if i do the OC? Can i have OC running all night? Dangerous? :hmm: