ASUS 7970 DirectCU II TOP Voltage adjustment

Chrisoldinho · 31 Jul 2012 at 19:36

Hi,

I have read that the Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II card is voltage locked in the BIOS.

Is the same true of the TOP version of the card, I have read conflicting posts regarding this, some saying a BIOS update allows voltage control on the TOP version, others saying it's locked exactly the same as the none TOP version.

Regards,
Chris.

Ciff1 · 31 Jul 2012 at 20:22

Top version has voltage control, early non top version use to be flashed to allow control. Newer non top cards have locked vrms i believe now. I'm sure there have been posts on this.

Chrisoldinho · 31 Jul 2012 at 21:36

Ciff1 said:
Top version has voltage control, early non top version use to be flashed to allow control. Newer non top cards have locked vrms i believe now. I'm sure there have been posts on this.

Thanks, I tried searching but couldn't find any other posts, using the wrong search terms I guess.

I am pleased the TOP version has voltage control.

Thanks

Ciff1 · 31 Jul 2012 at 21:48

Found it,
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18419087

Hope this helps.

SirCanealot · 1 Aug 2012 at 11:23

Ciff1 said:
Top version has voltage control, early non top version use to be flashed to allow control. Newer non top cards have locked vrms i believe now. I'm sure there have been posts on this.

Why one earth is Asus doing this on a high-end card like the 7970? As far as I can think, this is the first high end card Asus has removed voltage control from? Direct CUII cooler is great, but it's pretty pointless with no voltage control...

Rusty0611 · 1 Aug 2012 at 11:26

SirCanealot said:
Why one earth is Asus doing this on a high-end card like the 7970? As far as I can think, this is the first high end card Asus has removed voltage control from? Direct CUII cooler is great, but it's pretty pointless with no voltage control...

The same reason MSI don't put a DL DVI connector on the MSI Lightning 7970.... stupidity.

tommybhoy · 1 Aug 2012 at 11:31

Rusty0611 said:
The same reason MSI don't put a DL DVI connector on the MSI Lightning 7970.... stupidity.

+1,

Lightning wasn't an option for me at all as I need DL DVI for 3D, definite lost sales with AMD 3D users.

Imo, an awfull lot of DCU II's must have been returned under DSR because of the voltage lock.

8 Pack · 1 Aug 2012 at 11:35

On the locked ASUS card use Sapphire Trix to overclock. You get upto 1.5v on core then

Just dont use more than 1.3 without good water cooling and no more than 1.4 without sub zero!!

drunkenmaster · 1 Aug 2012 at 11:55

SirCanealot said:
Why one earth is Asus doing this on a high-end card like the 7970? As far as I can think, this is the first high end card Asus has removed voltage control from? Direct CUII cooler is great, but it's pretty pointless with no voltage control...

It's actually not a great cooler, its almost a great cooler but I think the older version on last gen cards was thicker. This gen there is a pretty huge gap between bottom of the fan and the heatsink, meaning the heatsink is actually very thin for a "top end" heatsink. I found it was great at stock speeds(and the default overclock and voltage of the overclocked version), but as you bump voltage and clock speed it quickly became loud as it went with thin/fast fans and a thin heatsink, which is just stupid.

Thick heatsink, thin fans and as you bump up the voltage the bigger surface area allows you to keep fan speed down, good temps and low noise. Thin heatsink and thick fans allows lower fan speed, more airflow and lower noise and temps. thin fan and thin heatsink just means it runs out of cooling power too soon. I found it got very loud with minimal increase in voltage and minimal clock speed bump.

If it was a slim dual slot cooler that is one thing, but they've put a huge shroud, a big price, a huge triple slot but left a crapload of dead space in it.

There are better value, better cooled and better overclocking versions of this card, Asus have made this gen significantly worse than last gen AND they've introduced methods to make it harder or impossible to over volt compare to their own previous gens and everyone else's 7970/50's. Avoid Asus this gen.

psychodil · 1 Aug 2012 at 12:04

I agree with Drunkenmaster. I have seen a directcu 7950 and the heatsink is nowhere near the colossus that was on my directCU 570. I guess copper prices have gone up since they made them

Chrisoldinho · 1 Aug 2012 at 12:44

Thanks for the input all.

The primary reason I chose this, was because coil whine / inductor buzz is practically none existent reading many forum posts, for me this was a key purchasing factor. It was driving me insane with my VTX3D, every time I put any strain on the card it was like having a bee inside my case.

I'll have to wait and see what the overclocking / noise is like, but it's already running a healthy clock speed to begin with.

Without disclosing the competitor, I was able to pick this up for £339.99, which I believe is a good price for a completely custom PCB with high end components, and a decent cooler at stock speeds, if nothing else.

Regards,
Chris.

Chrisoldinho · 2 Aug 2012 at 08:51

Ok, well the card arrived yesterday, fitted it no issues, it's big. Good job I have a CM Storm trooper case

Anyway, everything works well and it's quiet & zero coil whine which is good. Temps are pretty amazing really, played a session on BF3 and GPU never went above 52 degrees, it idles at 29. To put that into context both of my VTX3D's would idle at 34 and hit 67 under load, so a huge improvement for me.

It's V1 version as it doesn't have the VRAM cut out on the back plate, my understanding was though that it was possible to adjust voltage on the TOP edition, and certainly the V1 edition, but after installing the ASUS GPU Tweak it's not possible to increase the voltage. No BIOS update is available either according to GPU Tweak.

How did other TOP users go about enabling voltage modification? I can see there is a test bios on techpowerup but when I attempt to read my BIOS in RBE it fails, I know I could probably use atiflash / atiwinflash and force the BIOS on but is this method other TOP users used?

Cheers,
Chris.

Chrisoldinho · 2 Aug 2012 at 09:14

Sorted it

Will need to re-install drivers afterwards.

atiwinflash -unlockrom 0
atiwinflash -f -p 0 bios.bin

Where bios.bin is the name of the ROM.

Diagro · 2 Aug 2012 at 10:06

What bios did u flash

Chrisoldinho · 2 Aug 2012 at 10:36

Diagro said:
What bios did u flash

Haven't actually done it, was posting the method to do it according to forum posts. Will be doing it tonight.

The BIOS is here:- http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/113309/Asus.HD7970.3072.120104.html

Apparently it only allows voltage adjustment on the TOP cards though.

Will find out soon enough

SirCanealot · 2 Aug 2012 at 11:49

drunkenmaster said:
It's actually not a great cooler, its almost a great cooler but I think the older version on last gen cards was thicker. This gen there is a pretty huge gap between bottom of the fan and the heatsink, meaning the heatsink is actually very thin for a "top end" heatsink. I found it was great at stock speeds(and the default overclock and voltage of the overclocked version), but as you bump voltage and clock speed it quickly became loud as it went with thin/fast fans and a thin heatsink, which is just stupid.

Ah, this is very true, actually!

I am used to the 570/580 and 6970 Direct CU coolers

I have an Asus 580 Matrix Plat and I release my brick every day at how awesome the cooler is!

Thanks for the correction

Chrisoldinho · 3 Aug 2012 at 08:56

Got to run the card properly last night, can't explain how or why but I get 10 fps more on heaven than my previous VTX3D, and I haven't even overclocked this card yet.

Voltage control isn't available in ASUS GPU Tweak, so I was going to flash the test BIOS, however noticed that MSI Afterburner does allow voltage adjustment. Haven't done this yet, but it's handy to know for the future, and means I don't need to flash the BIOS.

Card is very quiet, even under full load. Overall I am very impressed, the quality seems far better than my VTX3D.

PorkPieCat · 3 Aug 2012 at 11:22

if you get more fps it might be because the vtx3d has high voltage ram and yet has no ram cooling. when ram goes too far apparently your fps drops, and maybe you had bad ram. i have a vtx right now and i'm quite confident either the ram is overheating at stock/defective >.>

Chrisoldinho · 3 Aug 2012 at 11:51

PorkPieCat said:
if you get more fps it might be because the vtx3d has high voltage ram and yet has no ram cooling. when ram goes too far apparently your fps drops, and maybe you had bad ram. i have a vtx right now and i'm quite confident either the ram is overheating at stock/defective >.>

You learn something new every day, thanks for letting me know.

I guess the only way to measure this would be to benchmark and compare?

Chris.

PorkPieCat · 4 Aug 2012 at 00:26

was a guess

. i just read very recently that ram instability could manifest as fps drops without showing artefacts. and i just know the vtx has no ram cooling which is contrary to every other 7970 out there, though it's supposed to be a good card according to reviews anyway.

could just as easily be catalyst version and ccc settings, though i assumed you were using the same version on both cards. if you weren't, according to reviews cat 12.6 to 12.7b is an amazing increase in fps for a driver update. according to what i read it seems like amd makes nice hardware, but it takes an age for good drivers to come out. i've personally had enough of the 7970 but promising signs anway. also perhaps from one card to another there are different default settings, like "amd optimized tesselation" and such... just plucking at straws.