My 7950 stock clock question

[BSmith]

I might be a super noob here, but i thought the stock speed for the Windforce was 900?

 

[TropicLightning]

lol...Looks like you got lucky. Much better than getting less than you expected. Congrats, that's a nice clocked 7950!

 

[BSmith]

Another question, when the card is under load the voltage automatically shoots up to 1.24v. Is this how it should be? Seems a little high, no?

 

[Nelly]

Is this a Gigabyte 7950 WF3 by any chance? Gigabyte are shipping new batches with a GHz edition BIOS, 1200MHz max clock instead of 1100MHz in AMD Catalyst, but BIOS locked voltage.

I bought one last week, came clocked at 1000MHz default clock, 1.25v at full load.

See my post here >> http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18469510

As you can see from my post, I flashed a different BIOS to unlock the voltage controls, it wasn't hardware locked.

 

[weehamish]

Do you not think 1200 clock is enough?

I think its plenty and it gives people a lot more power at stock volts without messing anything up, thats if it runs fine at 1200 stock volts lol.

But i think its a nice touch for noobs who dont want to mess around with voltage.

 

[Nelly]

Do you not think 1200 clock is enough?

I think its plenty and it gives people a lot more power at stock volts without messing anything up, thats if it runs fine at 1200 stock volts lol.

But i think its a nice touch for noobs who dont want to mess around with voltage.

1200MHz would be great to hit, but with 1.25v mine wasn't stable, switching to unlocked voltage bios I was stable at 1150MHz @ 1.218v, I pushed for 1200MHz @ 1.268v, but it was still unstable.

I hate getting a bog standard clocking card, wanna smash it up in frustration lol.

 

[weehamish]

But dont you even think 1150 is good enough? I think 1000 basically runs every game perfect?

I wouldnt get mad over 50 on the core lol, i know some people love to OC but i cant see the point if you cant see any of it paying off in games?

The one thing i really want is 8GHz CPU so i can run epic battles on Sins of solar empire lol! I hate single core games :\

 

[Nelly]

But dont you even think 1150 is good enough? I think 1000 basically runs every game perfect?

I wouldnt get mad over 50 on the core lol, i know some people love to OC but i cant see the point if you cant see any of it paying off in games?

The one thing i really want is 8GHz CPU so i can run epic battles on Sins of solar empire lol! I hate single core games :\

It's good enough, I just had my mind set on getting a 1200MHz+ card. It's not going to make any difference in gaming realistically. Annoying thing with these BIOS running at 1.25v is this...

However, I do not agree with AMD's methods to achieve the performance boost. We measured an increased GPU voltage from 1.07 V on the original design, to 1.12 V on the HD 7950 Boost. Increased voltage will lead to increased stability at higher clock speeds, which is probably required to ensure that all cards can handle the increased clocks. This, unfortunately, means that power consumption is increased by around 20% during typical gaming, which seems to be a bad trade for a 5% performance improvement. I am a bit worried that AMD is cannibalizing on the hard work of their GPU development team to reduce power consumption - we've seen the same on the HD 7970 GHz Edition. The HD 7950 Boost has, as a result, 15% worse performance per Watt compared to the original HD 7950 design. This, considering that NVIDIA has taken a leadership position in performance per Watt now, seems to be the wrong direction to take.

Source

That produced an extra 30+ watts, that's running just 1.12v, these new BIOS are running 1.25v lol, I should reinstall the card, and run tests at 1.25v vs lower voltages - I never did see how much real voltage was needed to get 1000MHz stable, I bet it's at around <1.1v>

 

[shankly1985]

I wouldn't use GPU-z for Voltage reading am sure its broke. Will edit this post later but am sure my card hits 1.4v reading from GPU-z When I know thats not true I have it set 1.131v @1100/1500

 

[Nelly]

I wouldn't use GPU-z for Voltage reading am sure its broke. Will edit this post later but am sure my card hits 1.4v reading from GPU-z When I know thats not true I have it set 1.131v @1100/1500

I've been using MSI Afterburner, I hope the readings are accurate with that?

 

[shankly1985]

I've been using MSI Afterburner, I hope the readings are accurate with that?

Not sure, Does After burner allow you to see the voltage? If so check to see under load if it reads the same as you dialed in when Over clocking.

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

Not sure, Does After burner allow you to see the voltage? If so check to see under load if it reads the same as you dialed in when Over clocking.

Yeah, Afterburner does allow you to see the current voltage used in the graph section. It seems to be pretty accurate, at least it shows the voltage that I set correctly.