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7950/7970 Watercooled Overclocks

spoffle

spoffle

spoffle

Soldato
Joined
4 Jul 2012
Posts
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As per the title, I'm interested in what sort of clocks people who've got watercooled 79XX get.

I've just got a few universal blocks for my 7950s, but I'm waiting on a few bits before I can put them in (shim and block bridge).

I hit about 1200Mhz on the core on both my cards (HIS IceQX²) with the stock cooling, so I'm really interested in what I might be in for with them both watercooled.
 
1200 might be the chips limit no matter how low you can get the temp. Looking around it's a very small percentage that reach 1300 on the core and you have to ask yourself whether it's worth watercooling for such a small gain. What are the temps like with your stock cooling under load?
 
Both my 7970s are average as average can be.

Card 1: 1220/1800
Card 2: 1265/1830

That's with maxed voltage sliders (1300mv) Trixx can give 1380mv, but no memory voltage so i never use that. I'd probably be looking for an extra 20mhz from the exta voltage though.
 
This is why i dont bother with water cooling tbh, even from 1150 -1300 theres not much in it when gaming so why bother stressing the card by overvolting?

A massive card like the Titan/7990/690 thats where you want more than air, as they can get hot and noisy, well the titan part is a guess.
 
weehamish said:
This is why i dont bother with water cooling tbh, even from 1150 -1300 theres not much in it when gaming so why bother stressing the card by overvolting?

A massive card like the Titan/7990/690 thats where you want more than air, as they can get hot and noisy, well the titan part is a guess.
Click to expand...

No the point of watercooling is you can put a tonne of volts through without stressing the card as it keeps the temps at a level where the card will never be damaged from heat...

Watercooling cards like the 7990 and 690 is in a way pointless as they usually have very little overclocking headroom.
 
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Temps are a bit higher than I'd like, part of the reason why I'm water cooling them. As since I water cooled my CPU I've got less air flow going to the cards. But at the moment they get up to high 70s at 1200mhz.

Which is why I've not really bothered trying for more. I didn't get the blocks specifically for overclocks though. Partly for fun as I got two EK VGA supremes for £50 (£25 each) delivered and the fact that I'll be able to use them on future cards was a massive plus for me. Partly for overclocks and partly for reduced temps due to the lesser airflow.
 
weehamish said:
This is why i dont bother with water cooling tbh, even from 1150 -1300 theres not much in it when gaming so why bother stressing the card by overvolting?

A massive card like the Titan/7990/690 thats where you want more than air, as they can get hot and noisy, well the titan part is a guess.
Click to expand...

What Aceowner said, plus I got the water blocks for much cheaper than a decent after market heatsink and fan, and it's a bit of fun since my 3930k is water cooled.
 
Tonester0011 said:
Both my 7970s are average as average can be.

Card 1: 1220/1800
Card 2: 1265/1830

That's with maxed voltage sliders (1300mv) Trixx can give 1380mv, but no memory voltage so i never use that. I'd probably be looking for an extra 20mhz from the exta voltage though.
Click to expand...

Thanks :) I've not put that much time into properly playing with overclocking my cards yet so I don't really know what they're capable of.

When I first got them, I was running on socket 775 with a Q6600, so I didn't bother with proper overclocking since they were massively bottle necking at stock, and when I went socket 2011 with a 3930k, I was more interested in clocking that, plus water cooling that made the 7950 temps worse. So yeah :p
 
I agree it would probly be a waste with them cards too, water is mostly for noise/heat.

I still stick to my point 1150-1300 is nothing really while gaming.

Tone is there a game you can bench stock vrs oced 7970? Do you own Shogun 2 or something that has an inbuilt benchmark?

I dont really rely on benchmark software as you can get sweet score on them and then some games run like crap lol.
 
weehamish said:
I agree it would probly be a waste with them cards too, water is mostly for noise/heat.

I still stick to my point 1150-1300 is nothing really while gaming.

Tone is there a game you can bench stock vrs oced 7970? Do you own Shogun 2 or something that has an inbuilt benchmark?

I dont really rely on benchmark software as you can get sweet score on them and then some games run like crap lol.
Click to expand...

Go check our benchmark thread. loads of games stock vs Oc on many different cards
 
My cheapo vanilla Sapphire 7970 does a stable 1250/1750...but the fan is crap and screams like a banshee at that OC. So much so that I only really run those clocks for benchmarking and not gaming. Superior cooling like a waterloop would bring he acoustics down to a more bearable level.

In other words, I agree with what has already been said :p
 
ACEOWNER said:
No the point of watercooling is you can put a tonne of volts through without stressing the card as it keeps the temps at a level where the card will never be damaged from heat...

Watercooling cards like the 7990 and 690 is in a way pointless as they usually have very little overclocking headroom.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily true, voltage alone can kill a card, even if the temps are excellent. I killed a GTX570 with 1.1V under water (load temps were <50C).
You still have to be careful!

I would have thought most people watercool so they can have great temps, higher overclocks (if they were limited by heat before) and a quiet PC.
 
iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
Not necessarily true, voltage alone can kill a card, even if the temps are excellent. I killed a GTX570 with 1.1V under water (load temps were <50C).
You still have to be careful!

I would have thought most people watercool so they can have great temps, higher overclocks (if they were limited by heat before) and a quiet PC.
Click to expand...

I know voltage can kill a card, that's why I said people watercool to stop heat from damaging the card.
 
iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
Ok, I just thought your post was alittle misleading as you can't put a tonne of volts through a card even if the temps are very good. It still stresses the card...
Click to expand...

Well I think you'll find you can as many people here watercool their cards before increasing the voltage substantially. Just because your card died through voltage increase doesn't mean they all will.
 
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