Calling on 7850, 7870, 7950 and 7970 owners

Spenty · 26 Sep 2012 at 00:25

PowerPie5000 said:
Pretty much everything runs better on my 7950, although Battlefield 3 seems to fly on her 660 Ti (I wouldn't be surprised if it matches or outperforms my 7950 with this game ).

Battlefield 3 will always run better on nvidia cards.

Load up sleeping dogs and use extreme AA, then laugh as the 660ti slideshows.

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 00:26

Spenty said:
Battlefield 3 will always run better on nvidia cards.

Load up sleeping dogs and use extreme AA, then laugh as the 660ti slideshows.

That said, a 7950 max overclocked should still beat a 660Ti max overclocked in BF3- the overclocking headroom on these cards is ridiculous.

PowerPie5000 · 26 Sep 2012 at 00:31

Nuclear Fusion said:
Yeah, 1.25v for 925 MHz is far too much, I use stock voltage (0.993v) at 1000 MHz for 24/7 use, and I can bench 3DM11 at 1200/1650 on 1.137v (haven't tried anything else, I just ran it to get the highest scoring 7950 ) It seems to be that the lower ASIC 7950's have a stock voltage of 1.093v, whereas the higher ASIC 7950's use 0.993v at stock.

I can lower the stock voltage for when the card runs at it's normal 850Mhz, but the boost voltage always stays the same at 1.25V and i can't seem to do anything about it

. I'm not sure if it's safe to flash the card with a non-boost bios version?

Spenty said:
Load up sleeping dogs and use extreme AA, then laugh as the 660ti slideshows.

That game runs great on my 7950 maxed out, although the cutscenes can be a bit choppy (i believe it's a bug).

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 00:37

PowerPie5000 said:
I can lower the stock voltage for when the card runs at it's normal 850Mhz, but the boost voltage always stays the same at 1.25V and i can't seem to do anything about it . I'm not sure if it's safe to flash the bios with a non-boost version?

Hmm, I can't really help you with changing the boost voltage as I don't have a boost card so I don't know. You could flash the BIOS, however this will void the warranty (pretty sure most if not all manufacturers don't warrant BIOS flashing). There is also the risk of bricking the card if it goes wrong. Having a dual BIOS switch is definitely useful when flashing. I've seen people who have bricked the card on one BIOS due to a botched flash, but they are able to use the card on the spare BIOS. I personally wouldn't risk it, but perhaps someone who owns a boosting 7950 can help with changing the boost voltage, because even the worst binned 7950 should be able to do that clock speed at much lower voltage (tbh, 1.25v is kinda pushing the safe limits).

I actually just saw your thread on another forum, did you try upping the normal non boosted speed to 925MHz (or higher) to see if that stops the card from boosting like someone suggested?

PowerPie5000 · 26 Sep 2012 at 00:52

Nuclear Fusion said:
I actually just saw your thread on another forum, did you try upping the normal non boosted speed to 925MHz (or higher) to see if that stops the card from boosting like someone suggested?

The problem is all OC utils only display the boost speed (925Mhz) and not the cards regular speed (850Mhz for my model)... I suppose i could try clocking it to 950Mhz (with a slightly lower voltage) and see what happens with the boost? It seems to only boost for short periods as it fluctuates between 850Mhz and 925Mhz (this is probably again due to AMD's over enthusiastic boost voltage :rolleyes:

). At least it still runs cool.

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 01:03

PowerPie5000 said:
The problem is all OC utils only display the boost speed (925Mhz) and not the cards regular speed (850Mhz for my model)... I suppose i could try clocking it to 950Mhz (with a slightly lower voltage) and see what happens with the boost? It seems to only boost for short periods as it fluctuates between 850Mhz and 925Mhz (this is probably again due to AMD's over enthusiastic boost voltage ). At least it still runs cool.

Ahh I see, well I suppose that makes sense that you can only overclock the boost speed. Yeah, just try that and see what happens. If you aren't able to lower the 1.25v boost voltage, I'd say you may as well just overclock it anyway since 1.25v should be enough for a very substantial overclock- far more than 925 MHz anyway.

PowerPie5000 · 26 Sep 2012 at 14:35

Nuclear Fusion said:
Ahh I see, well I suppose that makes sense that you can only overclock the boost speed. Yeah, just try that and see what happens. If you aren't able to lower the 1.25v boost voltage, I'd say you may as well just overclock it anyway since 1.25v should be enough for a very substantial overclock- far more than 925 MHz anyway.

I've got it running stable at 1100Mhz without breaking a sweat (the huge cooler on this card is great!)... It seems to stay at this speed while gaming, so i assume the boost is disabled as the core speed only drops when idle (as it should). Even when i reduce the voltage using HIS iTurbo, it still reads 1.25V under load using GPU-Z (it used to read 1.093V when it dropped to normal 850Mhz speed).

Anyway, i'm not going to keep it overclocked as i don't see a need for it and don't want to break it!. This was just a test and it seems to overclock just fine considering it has a low ASIC quality score of just 65.5%

.

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:15

PowerPie5000 said:
I've got it running stable at 1100Mhz without breaking a sweat (the huge cooler on this card is great!)... It seems to stay at this speed while gaming, so i assume the boost is disabled as the core speed only drops when idle (as it should). Even when i reduce the voltage using HIS iTurbo, it still reads 1.25V under load using GPU-Z (it used to read 1.093V when it dropped to normal 850Mhz speed).

Anyway, i'm not going to keep it overclocked as i don't see a need for it and don't want to break it!. This was just a test and it seems to overclock just fine considering it has a low ASIC quality score of just 65.5% .

Sounds good, annoying that the 1.25v can't be changed though. Just managed 1250 MHz on 1.2v for 3DM11, so I don't know why they set the boost voltage so high for just 925 MHz.

TheRealDeal · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:26

Nuclear Fusion said:
Sounds good, annoying that the 1.25v can't be changed though. Just managed 1250 MHz on 1.2v for 3DM11, so I don't know why they set the boost voltage so high for just 925 MHz.

Its most likely for the stability side of things as not all cores will be great at overclocking so setting the boost voltage high should make sure that even on the worst cores the boost speed is stable.

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:31

TheRealDeal said:
Its most likely for the stability side of things as not all cores will be great at overclocking so setting the boost voltage high should make sure that even on the worst cores the boost speed is stable.

Yeah I suppose, but you would have to get an absolutely atrocious chip to need 1.25v for only 925 MHz. Surely there must be some way to change it? If not, then that's a bit silly.

PowerPie5000 · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:36

Ok i just found out something... It seems the voltage does change when i adjust it, but only for the base/non-boost state (850Mhz) :rolleyes:

. I think the boost voltage will remain at 1.25V on all boost enabled cards until manufacturers add this in their OC utils. Overclocking basically eliminates the non-boost state (850Mhz) as everything seems to think the boost speed (925Mhz) is the actual base speed (so when i bump it up, the card never clocks back down to 850Mhz).

Looking back at my purchase, i probably would have bought a factory oc'd 7950 without AMD's terrible (and probably pointless) boost bios installed... It's still a great card though as it's fast, quiet and cool

.

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:39

As long as it gives you the performance you want in games, then it's fine really

Just a bit silly that they set the boost voltage so high without an easy way to reduce it. But as long as temps are under control it's all good.

Uncle Petey · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:42

Anyone having an issue with their 7950 not idling down? Mine isn't

At the desktop it's sitting at 54C (custom fan profile is fine) with the fans at 52% with zero load.
It used to do what it's supposed to and sit at around 33C with fans at about 22%. I say 'used to', I've only had it since last friday...

Any ideas?

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:48

Uncle Petey said:
Anyone having an issue with their 7950 not idling down? Mine isn't At the desktop it's sitting at 54C (custom fan profile is fine) with the fans at 52% with zero load.
It used to do what it's supposed to and sit at around 33C with fans at about 22%. I say 'used to', I've only had it since last friday...

Any ideas?

That is most likely an issue with flash hardware acceleration, it makes the GPU stay at 501/1250 (for me anyway) when it was enabled (it is by default). Just right click on any video and click settings and then untick the Enable hardware acceleration box. That should fix your problem

PowerPie5000 · 26 Sep 2012 at 16:10

Nuclear Fusion said:
As long as it gives you the performance you want in games, then it's fine really
Just a bit silly that they set the boost voltage so high without an easy way to reduce it. But as long as temps are under control it's all good.

The GPU temps are perfectly fine (i've yet to see it go over 61C at stock settings), but the VRM temps are stuck for some reason?! According to GPU-Z, both VRM 1 and VRM 2 temps are stuck at 24C and never budge! Is this likely to be a software or sensor issue? HWMonitor doesn't even display the VRM temps at all.

Someone else on another forum has a HIS Radeon 7950 and his VRM temps are stuck at 25C.

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 17:06

PowerPie5000 said:
The GPU temps are perfectly fine (i've yet to see it go over 61C at stock settings), but the VRM temps are stuck for some reason?! According to GPU-Z, both VRM 1 and VRM 2 temps are stuck at 24C and never budge! Is this likely to be a software or sensor issue? HWMonitor doesn't even display the VRM temps at all.

Someone else on another forum has a HIS Radeon 7950 and his VRM temps are stuck at 25C.

Not sure, but mine change with GPU load so I guess it might be something to do with the card (I used GPU-Z as well).

Uncle Petey · 26 Sep 2012 at 17:34

Nuclear Fusion said:
That is most likely an issue with flash hardware acceleration, it makes the GPU stay at 501/1250 (for me anyway) when it was enabled (it is by default). Just right click on any video and click settings and then untick the Enable hardware acceleration box. That should fix your problem

Cheers mate. At first I thought it hadn't worked, but then I gave it a minute of gaming load, came out and it idled back down properly.

Don't understand why this has only just started though. Like i said, nothing has changed. Hardware acceleration must have been on before, yet it idled fine.

Ah whatever, at least it's sorted now. Cheers.

Nuclear Fusion · 26 Sep 2012 at 18:44

Uncle Petey said:
Cheers mate. At first I thought it hadn't worked, but then I gave it a minute of gaming load, came out and it idled back down properly.

Don't understand why this has only just started though. Like i said, nothing has changed. Hardware acceleration must have been on before, yet it idled fine.

Ah whatever, at least it's sorted now. Cheers.

No problem, glad it is fixed. The same happened with me, it was fine at first (it went straight back to 300/150 fine after gaming or whatever I was doing), but after a while it started going back to 501/1250 after watching videos. Flash always seems to have problems, but we still have to rely on it unfortunately.

Spenty · 27 Sep 2012 at 12:15

Just installed my 7870. 87.4 ASIC reading. Is that about average?

wazza300 · 27 Sep 2012 at 12:32

Spenty said:
Just installed my 7870. 87.4 ASIC reading. Is that about average?

quite decent actually,its no reflection on a good clocker though,ive seen poor asic cards clock rather well and vice versa