Radeon HD 7950 Owner's Thread

[Rikard]

I would like to underclock my memory and undervolt my memory voltage.

My card does not allow me to go below (core clock - 150 MHz). After googling I found that a year ago someone hacked drivers that allowed this if used with MSI AB, but I would rather use something more recent to allow me to keep the nice performance increase later drivers inferred. Any ideas?

Regarding the undervolting memory there is a modded Trixx 4.4 that would allow it but nothing for 4.6 as far as I can tell (and 4.6 shows the core voltage correctly which earlier versions did not). If not using Trixx, how else could I do it?

 

[Dice144]

Finally got sick of waiting on 8000 series. Just ordered the 7950. Debating keeping my 6950 under water for 24/7 miner or putting 7950 under water before even testing sapphires stock cooler.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Got a VaporX 7950 in today. Looking forward to testing it out, and then sending it into the 3930K machine to start mining!

 

[futurefields]

How's 7950 crossfire support in games?

Thinking this time next year I might get a new motherboard and crossfire 7950's (current mobo is single gpu only).

 

[WaTaGuMp]

How's 7950 crossfire support in games?

Thinking this time next year I might get a new motherboard and crossfire 7950's (current mobo is single gpu only).

Next year? In a year it would be a totally different story on how xfire did. So how it works today is kinda meaningless.

 

[futurefields]

What? No.

This is a simple question for 7950 owners - how's crossfire performing in games?

Thanks,

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Next year replace it with the 8950 and battlefield 4 bundle.

 

[DooKey]

What? No.

This is a simple question for 7950 owners - how's crossfire performing in games?

Thanks,

A stuttering mess until AMD gets their crap together. I say this as a prior 7970 crossfire owner and it hasn't improved yet.

 

[Riceninja]

i have the sapphire 2L 7950, which i believe is a boost edition: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006

stock: 925/1250

i just used afterburner to drag the sliders over to 1100/1400 and tried playing some crysis on it, worked well, but the fps didnt improve as much as i had hoped. the cpu temp was at 60 degs/70% fan speed, on stock speeds it was 55 max/60% fan speed.

could i up it to 1150/1500 without damaging my card? will i even see much improvement in games or are these speeds for obsessed number crunchers? i am new to overclocking, my old gtx 275 can hit up to 75degs but i dont want to put this new one through that.

also regarding the kombustor stability test, what settings should i run it in?

thanks!

 

[Xarick]

You can.. but honestly.. it is like 2fps and while I would normally say sure go ahead.. your fan speed strikes me as LOUD.

 

[zaydq]

i have the sapphire 2L 7950, which i believe is a boost edition: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006

stock: 925/1250

i just used afterburner to drag the sliders over to 1100/1400 and tried playing some crysis on it, worked well, but the fps didnt improve as much as i had hoped. the cpu temp was at 60 degs/70% fan speed, on stock speeds it was 55 max/60% fan speed.

could i up it to 1150/1500 without damaging my card? will i even see much improvement in games or are these speeds for obsessed number crunchers? i am new to overclocking, my old gtx 275 can hit up to 75degs but i dont want to put this new one through that.

also regarding the kombustor stability test, what settings should i run it in?

thanks!

Can't speak for Kombuster. I'd stay at 1100 and go with that. What CPU do you have?? I wouldn't be surprised if its a bit older that you're more so cpu bottlenecked than gpu bottlenecked. Ofcourse, Crysis 3 is a burden on modern systems.

Anything 85 degrees and under is a-ok for the 7950.

 

[raghu78]

i have the sapphire 2L 7950, which i believe is a boost edition: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006

stock: 925/1250

i just used afterburner to drag the sliders over to 1100/1400 and tried playing some crysis on it, worked well, but the fps didnt improve as much as i had hoped. the cpu temp was at 60 degs/70% fan speed, on stock speeds it was 55 max/60% fan speed.

could i up it to 1150/1500 without damaging my card? will i even see much improvement in games or are these speeds for obsessed number crunchers? i am new to overclocking, my old gtx 275 can hit up to 75degs but i dont want to put this new one through that.

also regarding the kombustor stability test, what settings should i run it in?

thanks!

you should see a significant performance improvement. have you maxed out power control to +20%. if you haven't do that. because your clocks will throttle if your power control is not maxed. test heaven 4.0 and 3d mark 2013 at stock 925 mhz and 1100 mhz. there should be atleast a 15% performance improvement.

 

[Riceninja]

Can't speak for Kombuster. I'd stay at 1100 and go with that. What CPU do you have?? I wouldn't be surprised if its a bit older that you're more so cpu bottlenecked than gpu bottlenecked. Ofcourse, Crysis 3 is a burden on modern systems.

Anything 85 degrees and under is a-ok for the 7950.

i have an i7-920 overclocked to 3.2ghz, 6gb ram, 750w psu. is this going to hold me back from now on? i was hoping to get another year out of it because none of the new i7s really wow me. perhaps im still used to huge leaps instead of incremental upgrades.

you should see a significant performance improvement. have you maxed out power control to +20%. if you haven't do that. because your clocks will throttle if your power control is not maxed. test heaven 4.0 and 3d mark 2013 at stock 925 mhz and 1100 mhz. there should be atleast a 15% performance improvement.

where do i adjust the power control? i only see it in CCC, but i have the overdrive option disabled because i wasnt sure if it will conflict with afterburner. i use afterburner mostly because of the fan profiles.

ill give those benchmarks a download, thanks.

You can.. but honestly.. it is like 2fps and while I would normally say sure go ahead.. your fan speed strikes me as LOUD.

to be honest, fan speed sound is the least of my worries because i game with headphones on. besides, the jet engine know as my storm sniper case wouldnt let me hear a gpu fan either way

 

[MTDEW]

where do i adjust the power control? i only see it in CCC, but i have the overdrive option disabled because i wasnt sure if it will conflict with afterburner. i use afterburner mostly because of the fan profiles.

In afterburner it's listed as Power Limit (%), just set it at +20.

 

[raghu78]

where do i adjust the power control? i only see it in CCC, but i have the overdrive option disabled because i wasnt sure if it will conflict with afterburner. i use afterburner mostly because of the fan profiles.

to be honest, fan speed sound is the least of my worries because i game with headphones on. besides, the jet engine know as my storm sniper case wouldnt let me hear a gpu fan either way

there is a setting called power limit %. max it to +20% . use the latest msi afterburner.

if you keep temps around 70c you can even overclock to 1150 - 1200 mhz with a bit of voltage tweaking.

 

[Burpy]

Has anyone who received their free game postcard have the unique code already displayed on the back?

It also sucks that newegg was supposed to send me Crysis 3 & Bioshock, but only sent Bioshock.

I'm running my card on stock at the moment. 925/1250

 

[zaydq]

i have an i7-920 overclocked to 3.2ghz, 6gb ram, 750w psu. is this going to hold me back from now on? i was hoping to get another year out of it because none of the new i7s really wow me. perhaps im still used to huge leaps instead of incremental upgrades.



where do i adjust the power control? i only see it in CCC, but i have the overdrive option disabled because i wasnt sure if it will conflict with afterburner. i use afterburner mostly because of the fan profiles.

ill give those benchmarks a download, thanks.





to be honest, fan speed sound is the least of my worries because i game with headphones on. besides, the jet engine know as my storm sniper case wouldnt let me hear a gpu fan either way

Your system is definitely holding you back in crysis 3. Your apecs are still viable for a while, but you need to understand that Crysis 3 is brutal on even modern PCs. Its really just thw one off, but as games come out, you'll notice where and when your cpu bottlenecks you.

 

[Riceninja]

In afterburner it's listed as Power Limit (%), just set it at +20.

goddamn, i had a random afterburner skin on and it didnt have the power limit bar. i feel like a total noob

Your system is definitely holding you back in crysis 3. Your apecs are still viable for a while, but you need to understand that Crysis 3 is brutal on even modern PCs. Its really just thw one off, but as games come out, you'll notice where and when your cpu bottlenecks you.

if i were to switch processors it would require new mobo/ram, and spending $500+ on the current gen is not a great value proposition for me. doesnt look like haswell is a huge performance upgrade over 3770k either. id rather spend half of that on another 7950 in a few months...if the july catalyst drivers deliver. this will probably give me more performance % increase per dollar than a cpu upgrade right?

 

[zaydq]

goddamn, i had a random afterburner skin on and it didnt have the power limit bar. i feel like a total noob




if i were to switch processors it would require new mobo/ram, and spending $500+ on the current gen is not a great value proposition for me. doesnt look like haswell is a huge performance upgrade over 3770k either. id rather spend half of that on another 7950 in a few months...if the july catalyst drivers deliver. this will probably give me more performance % increase per dollar than a cpu upgrade right?

I wasn't trying to convince you to upgrade. I was just saying that your cpu is holding you back in Crysis. Even today's cpus are just cutting it for that game. You'd see more gain upgrading to Haswell then you would a 2nd 7950. That cpu will be your limiter before your gpu will be.

 

[psolord]

What? No.

This is a simple question for 7950 owners - how's crossfire performing in games?

Thanks,

Being a vsync enabled fan, Crossfire works fine for me. Here's an example.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34854717&postcount=21

So far I've played Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider, from start to finish with CFX. They worked fine but strangely, for Tomb Raider I had to enable MSI Afterburner framerate limiter, otherwise I could notice some stuttering. With the limiter it went away. I cannot explain it really, since vsync is a limiter by itself, but anyway it was a single case. Everything else I have tested (but not played from start to finish), appears to work fine with vsync.

Before jumping on the 7950 CFX solution, I did a thorough test on all my games, to see how crossfire fairs and I saw gpu activity on all heavy games out there, so crossfire works. Never really had a serious support problem on my 5850 cfx system either anyway.

Also, personally I couldn't care less about this stuttering mess people are talking about, since I limit my framerate. Don't see the point to do otherwise, since my games stutter even in single gpu mode (that includes my nvidia system), if I don't enable vsync.

Still, if you are aiming for a next year around this time upgrade, the 8000 series should be out, bringing some considerable improvements, thanks to its 20nm fab process. Since on paper you can get around 50% space savings, I guess the 8950 should be close to 7950 cfx anyway.

 

[Belkov]

Well, i understand that the 8950 won't give so much improvement... personally, i would wait for the next gen.

 

[Face2Face]

Does anyone know why the MSI TF3 7950 V2 (7970 PCB) has an extra vrm module vs. standard reference 7970 PCB?

MSI 7950 TF3 V2 PCB


AMD 7970 reference PCB

 

[chimaxi83]

Does anyone know why the MSI TF3 7950 V2 (7970 PCB) has an extra vrm module vs. standard reference 7970 PCB?

MSI 7950 TF3 V2 PCB


AMD 7970 reference PCB

They build their custom cards beefier than reference. In this case it's only slightly.

 

[tigersty1e]

what is the benefit for more phases?

able to lower vcore at a certain speed compared to cards with less phases?

or able to hit a higher clock? if so, how is this done?

on motherboards, more phases doesn't really add much unless you start going ln2.


Posted from Anandtech.com App for Android

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Cleaner power (more stable voltage, less voltage for same clocks), less chance to pop.