Hey,
Thought I would start a thread so people can get some straight answers on what is happening with this card.

This card is NOT voltage locked, you just need to use the latest Trixx which can handle it. I assume that other manufacturers programs will be updated to handle these types of cards as well. You need to run Trixx 4.4.0b, proof of other people adjusting voltage is here

http://www.sapphiretech.com/archive/drivers/TRIXX_installer_4.4.0b.exe_634854038404929144.zip

stock volts


1.1volts


Overclocking wise I was able to get this card up to 1200mhz clock, 1350mhz ram (due to high vrm temp) 1.22volts. Not a everyday clock but it was stable at about 70c with fan on full for benchmarking.

Raised two tickets with Sapphire about both issues.

So far they have replied to the over volting by saying to use ccc...... yeah thanks.

Some of the sapphire cards are voltage locked apparently. What model is yours?

Also what are your normal and boost speeds?

As soon as you overclock by 1MHz you are disabling the boost, so its no wonder your benchmarks are lower. Try giving it a worthwhile overclock before RMA ing, because I can pretty much guarantee you your RMA will be denied by Sapphire if this is your only 'problem'.

Try more testing at higher core speeds.

Thanks for posting the info, lets hope get some answers on this card!

psychodil said:

Some of the sapphire cards are voltage locked apparently. What model is yours?

Also what are your normal and boost speeds?

As soon as you overclock by 1MHz you are disabling the boost, so its no wonder your benchmarks are lower. Try giving it a worthwhile overclock before RMA ing, because I can pretty much guarantee you your RMA will be denied by Sapphire if this is your only 'problem'.

Try more testing at higher core speeds.

Click to expand...

11196-09-40G

normal is: 850mhz, 5000mhz
boost: 950mhz, 5000mhz

a increase on clock or ram of 1mhz on normal or boost, decreases performance by about 30%.
I've ran the test with stock settings normal and boost and then increased all the way up to 1100mhz without getting back to the original performance level. I've kept an eye on clock speeds whilst running the tests to make sure that they aren't boosting or decreasing unexpectidely.

I can still return for a refund, I just want to rule out that it's not something else causing the problem.

Just slap the core on 1000 and the memory on 1575.. worst thing it'll do is crash.

My Sapphire does 1075/1625 rock solid without me touching the volts at all. 1.056v fyi

I've worked out the performance drop when increasing the clock speed. I needed to increase the Power control settings in ccc since I can't adjust voltage. I don't know why just 1mhz would make the performance drop but upping the power to +20 I saw performance increase with each addition to the clock speed. I got up to 1070 with it being stable. 1100 made my benchmark program crash but I was in a rush so couldn't try much in-between.

What is power control doing btw, if not adjusting voltage?

I had this teething problem on my first day.

Power down, hold in the button for like 5 seconds, release and repress and boot with the button on. It should now show 950 core.
I did notice however, in MSi AB, my power limit moved from 0% to 15%, but it let me set it back to 0% and remain stable.
Mine runs 1075/1500 stable without any voltage changes.

Rik1254 said:

I had this teething problem on my first day.

Power down, hold in the button for like 5 seconds, release and repress and boot with the button on. It should now show 950 core.
I did notice however, in MSi AB, my power limit moved from 0% to 15%, but it let me set it back to 0% and remain stable.
Mine runs 1075/1500 stable without any voltage changes.

Click to expand...

I don't have a problem using the boost bios. It was just that adjusting my clock speed decreased performance. The fix was to increase the power control in ccc. Which I guess the boost bios is doing already. It's probably down to my inexperience of overclocking a graphics card. What is power control doing though if not adjusting voltage? Btw I have to have the power control increased otherwise a 1mhz increase in clock speed, reduces my performance. This is fine though, I just don't really understand why it's happening.

Deaths_Calling said:

What is power control doing btw, if not adjusting voltage?

Click to expand...

Overclocking consumes more power, the power control just raises the power limits of the card to allow this.
Raising it just allows more overclocking headroom.

edit; sorry should have added that this does not guarantee a good overclock is possible.

sorry to troll but so much for the 7950 being faster than a gtx670. :d

majnu said:

sorry to troll but so much for the 7950 being faster than a gtx670. :d

Click to expand...

Only because it's the vapor x being voltage locked. Deaths calling knew it was going to be a gamble before buying this card

Deaths_Calling said:

I don't have a problem using the boost bios. It was just that adjusting my clock speed decreased performance. The fix was to increase the power control in ccc. Which I guess the boost bios is doing already. It's probably down to my inexperience of overclocking a graphics card. What is power control doing though if not adjusting voltage? Btw I have to have the power control increased otherwise a 1mhz increase in clock speed, reduces my performance. This is fine though, I just don't really understand why it's happening.

Click to expand...

Nooo you misunderstand what I was getting to.
If you get the boost BIOS working 100%, you can then alter everything there without any issues and have the power settings at stock while overclocking nicely.

I had exactly the same issue until I got the boost BIOS working properly.

Also, use MSi Afterburner and MSi kombuster (when both are installed, they interlink) it gives you real time records of you performance.

Ill be able to explain better when I get home, when I'm on the computer.

Rik1254, i'll try that tomorrow when I have time. From my quick tests yesterday, with boost bios changing the clock by 1mhz dropped performance as well. I understand this all a bit more now though so it might have been a mistake by me.

I'm also going to run benches on bios:

850 - unchanged
950 (boost bios) - unchanged
850 at a clock of 950
850 at usable max clock
950 (boost bios) at max usable clock - unchanged power setting
950 (boost bios) at max usable clock - +20 power setting

I'll post the results here. This should give a clear picture of what is happening. It will be tomorrow evening before I get to try this.

Sapphire have told me to try Trixx 4.4.0b http://www.sapphiretech.com/archive/drivers/TRIXX_installer_4.4.0b.exe_634854038404929144.zip
for adjusting the voltage. Again, I can't try this till tomorrow but if anyone else get's the chance then reply here with your results.

I'll update my first post with my benching results and any progress made on voltage.

majnu said:

sorry to troll but so much for the 7950 being faster than a gtx670. :d

Click to expand...

Does the extra £50 for a 670 gain anywhere near a similar percentage performance gain. I think it is fair to say that the 670 sits somewhere between the 7950 and 7970 wihen all three are overclocked.

From what I can see, AMD lockout the mid to high for performance/£ with their 7850's, 7950's and even 7970's. NVidia's only dominance is at the ultra high-end (excluding ultra high resoultions) with their GTX 680.

I own an EVGA 680 and several AMD cards, so trying to be impartial.

Just tried the new version of trixx I linked to above and it seems to work. Could only very quickly check as im busy. I was using the none noost profile and the latest 12.8 drivers. Voltage definitely moved when I changed it in trixx but there was a bit of vdroop so it didn't match my set volts, which I guess is normal.

Hopefully someone else can test this.

Earlier sapphire 7950s had the bios switch which you had to use to allow more overclocking potential.

So I look forward to you conclusion Death

Tested again quickly this morning and i'm definitely able to adjust voltage. I've posted proof below. I'm also able to adjust voltage in the boost bios but it jumps about a lot more because of the weird behaviour of boost. I notice that I have about a .04v droop but I guess that's normal?

Should get a chance to test everything properly later so I'll do a full update then. As a quick gage of potential performance increased. I crashed at a clock of 1100mhz on stock volts, being able to up my volts to 1.1 let me go above 1150mhz before crashing. (quick tests, playing with settings whilst heaven was running)




Results from a quick heaven run: (3570k at 4.4, 8gb samsung green at 2400mhz) GPU clock at 1100mhz, ram at 1500mhz and vddc at 1.1

Powered by Unigine Engine

Heaven Benchmark v3.0 Basic

FPS:
110.2
Scores:
2776
Min FPS:
67.3
Max FPS:
204.4
Hardware

Binary:
Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system:
Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
CPU flags:
3417MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model:
AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series 8.982.0.0 3072Mb
Settings

Render:
direct3d11
Mode:
1920x1200 fullscreen
Shaders:
high
Textures:
high
Filter:
trilinear
Anisotropy:
4x
Occlusion:
enabled
Refraction:
enabled
Volumetric:
enabled
Tessellation: disabled

If you are only hitting 57 degrees at full load you have a fair bit of headroom left with your voltage. Im pretty sure you could reach 1200MHz on your core if you are willing to give it some more voltage, which would give you overclocked 670 performance.

Try 1.2v and see if you can bench at 1150MHz, and take a note of your max temperature. Also put tesselation on normal for heaven please, it allows us to compare scores more directly to other people. Thanks.