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** ATI RADEON 7950 OVERCLOCKING & HEAVEN RESULTS!! **

OcUK Staff
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Where are the MSI TF3's at?

That stock fan looks like pure garbage, Sapphire are actually releasing a sweet custom design first this time.

Those sweet cards are in our pyramid. Look closely and you will see two different Sapphire cards, but you have to look hard at the pyramid pictures to spot the difference. :)
 
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Also to add to the list of Q's from Banksy, did the bios flash work on only the one card or did you test it on any others? Just trying to get an early feel for success rates :p
 
Soldato
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BIOS flashes are pretty safe if the two cards are based on the same GPU with the same memory clocks and timings. The only thing that BIOS flashing does to the HD7950 aside from increasing the clock speeds is to increase the PowerTune TDP limit and voltages to the HD7970s' level so it can overclock further. It won't unlock shaders.
 
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I've just put the figures in a little spreadsheet to make a quick comparison:

7950V7970.jpg
 
Soldato
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I've just put the figures in a little spreadsheet to make a quick comparison:

7950V7970.jpg

Shows the 7950 is a great value card. Unfortunately for £350 it's out of my price range. My max budget is £250 and even then it has be something quite special. On the plus side there aren't any games I can't play with CF 5850s so I'm kinda good to go for another year I'd say, by that time 7950's will be cheaper and I'll buy two
 
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:( i'm limited to a 9.5" card in my case.

Even the full tower cases (such as the 800D) looks small-ish inside once you consider a couple of these or 7970 at 11" so I can understand the annoyance if your limited to mATX/ATX.

For example, the massive 5970 at 12.2" leaves 2" between the GPU and the 90* Sata cables (that's without the plastic 800D HDD cover on!). Without 90* cables I'd be looking at the cables coming within only 2cm of the exhaust fans.

OhMightyGibbo: Why doesn't OcUK state GPU sizes in the specifications?
OcUK should be stating the size of the GPU (moreso for non-referrence design / with aftermarket coolers once they start arriving). Saves confusion for those who don't keep up-to-date with GPU from having to Google them or finding out through this forum as we've seen to date. Your information on products is just about right and to the point without confusing people therefor adding a single line at the end won't spoil this. Other than that everythings fine :)


...

My HD7970 overclocked to 1125/6600 pulls 58.8FPS at 1080p Ultra settings with 4xAA (deferred) applied in game.


The HD6970 is utterly crippled by deferred AA in BF3. At this setting my HD7970 is around 60-80% faster than my old HD6970.

Bar the massive buffer memory, this would be why I'd upgrade cos I love plenty of AA. I even have a dollop of AA on my toast in the morning!
 
Soldato
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Gibbo's original post :)

AMD 7950 Stock (810MHz Core / 5000MHz Memory) - 1680*1050




AMD 7950 Maxed on Overdrive (1025MHz Core / 6300MHz Memory)




AMD 7950 Maxed OC on Asus OC BIOS (1180MHz Core / 7200MHz Memory)


The card sampled reached 1180MHz on the core by flashing with an ASUS 7970 BIOS capable of greater voltage, and over 1000MHz with the stock 7950 BIOS. As with the 7970, this represents a huge overclock vs. the stock clock of 810MHz. Flashing the 7950 with a 7970 BIOS did not unlock any additional shaders.

Some odd Heaven results here:-

7950 @ 925MHz / 5500MHz = 1504 points
7950 on 7970 BIOS @ 925MHz / 5500MHz = 1545 points
7970 @ Stock (925/5500) = 1584 points

So even though according to GPU-Z the shaders are not unlocking, flashing to the Asus 7970 BIOS is definitely giving a performance boost, though its not quite at genuine 7970 performance levels, kind of like half way from the results.

So either some shaders are unlocking or the 7970 BIOS is making other improvements, maybe memory timings etc. which is giving the boost.

Still flashing the BIOS is so easy anyway and it would appear the 7970 BIOS is giving some performance enhancement even when clock speeds are identical.


AMD 7950 Maxed OC on Asus OC BIOS (1180MHz Core / 7200MHz Memory)




AMD 7970 Maxed OC on Asus OC BIOS (1225MHz Core / 7800MHz Memory)



NVIDIA GTX 580 3GB OC (902MHz Core / 4355MHz Memory)

 
Last edited:
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He has put the clock rates in.

I thought it was quite a bit of work he put in Scooby. The point was dave_beast posted them without giving credit as anyone new to the later posts wouldn't be any wiser. Thanks for changing that now dave_beast and giving credit :)

Best to avoid duplication when/if Gibbo could have changed the expired NDA-clocks to their correct amounts - not sure how long it's going to stay like that on initial page.

Btw, I was well aware of the poster on that forum pinching Gibbo's post soon after and he was rightly told in the next post where it originated from by another member. Not accusing you of pinching it like that whatsoever, simply needed OP credit at the top to avoid any confusion - just clearing that up :) Back to topic...
 
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