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Gigabit 7970 WF Voltage Locked

LtMatt

LtMatt

LtMatt

Caporegime
Joined
12 Jul 2007
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Why stick a quiet, high performance cooler on a card and then lock the voltage?

Have gigabit lost the plot?

Early editions of the card weren't voltage locked so am surprised to see reports around the net that all new versions are coming voltage locked.

Flashing the old bios hasn't worked either.

Can anyone explain it? I noticed ocuk dont stock them any more.
 
Pretty lame IMO. Probably too many Mal x type RMA's have scared them off. Have you got hold of a card Ltmatt or are you just going on reports?
 
Sounds like they have changed the vregs to restrict the voltage so you can put whatever bios on it you want as it won't make a blind bit difference to voltage control. This is nothing new and not a policy exculsive to Gigabyte as Asus has done the same on some of there custom cards.
 
Maybe that explains why the GA7970 is currently so cheap. Having said that, is it necessarily such a huge issue? That's assuming the card can hit 1100 or so at stock voltage of course.

Do the current batches not allow any leeway either way (undervolting)? Because that would be sort of strange since the silicon lottery would mean that Gigabyte would be forced to make their cards for the lowest common denominator: that is ship with the equivalent of the 7970GHz Edition BIOS with a voltage too high for most ASICs 'just in case'.
 
In honesty, anybody who has a half decent brain and knows anything about overclocking should know how easy it is to flash a BIOS. Those who don't wont care it is voltage locked anyway.
 
gregster said:
In honesty, anybody who has a half decent brain and knows anything about overclocking should know how easy it is to flash a BIOS. Those who don't wont care it is voltage locked anyway.
Click to expand...

That's a bit harsh.

The OP has already said he's flashed the BIOS and the voltage is still locked.

If Gigabyte have done something to the hardware to lock the voltage then there's presumably nothing that can be done unless someone comes up with a hardware mod.
 
MFW I found out the 7970 I bought for near £300 is slower than an overclocked 7950 due to a voltage lock: :/

I feel your pain Matt. My Giga 7970 is going back.
 
Matt doesnt have a Gigabyte 7970 windforce. I am the one that's looking into buying one.

Kinda glad it was out of stock because Matt told me about these voltagelocked cards.

Defeats the whole purpose really which is a shame because that gigabyte WF is a good card with the coolers and pricewise.

Tempted to just suck it up and go for a MSI Lightning but thats a 100 euro extra.
 
It's a good purchase for anyone who doesn't overclock.

Always good to google around on cards before you make a purchase, I mentioned on another forum nearly 3 days ago these are voltage locked, I didn't purchase one in the end.

If you wasn't prepared to try other BIOS, then it wasn't worth the gamble in the first place.
 
Surveyor said:
That's a bit harsh.

The OP has already said he's flashed the BIOS and the voltage is still locked.

If Gigabyte have done something to the hardware to lock the voltage then there's presumably nothing that can be done unless someone comes up with a hardware mod.
Click to expand...

Ahh fair point and my fault for not reading properly. I find it hard to believe they have hard modded it to be voltage locked though. Time will tell.

Also it wasn't a dig at anyone and more a statement of how easy it is to flash a bios.
 
gregster said:
Ahh fair point and my fault for not reading properly. I find it hard to believe they have hard modded it to be voltage locked though. Time will tell.

Also it wasn't a dig at anyone and more a statement of how easy it is to flash a bios.
Click to expand...

I'm fairly certain it is a hardware issue because I've looked back at some old forum posts (from various forums) and reports of these cards and others (e.g. the Asus DCII cards) being voltage locked started cropping up in mid-summer, yet no solutions have been found to date.

To add to that, those people who did flash their BIOS to the GHz edition BIOS experienced major instability issues, which leads me to believe that even thought their cards were set to 1.25v (as per all GHz edition cards) their cards weren't actually getting 1.25v due to hardware limitations, and were running GHz clocks (1100 core/1600 memory) at non-GHz voltages (i.e. 1.17v), which would obviously cause artifacting, BSODs, etc, etc.
 
I have been hunting and hunting for help after my statement looked rude and seems others can't unlocke these either. Hopefully there will be a modded BIOS that allows voltage adjustment but I wouldn't be happy if I bought one of these and couldn't fiddle.
 
gregster said:
I have been hunting and hunting for help after my statement looked rude and seems others can't unlocke these either. Hopefully there will be a modded BIOS that allows voltage adjustment but I wouldn't be happy if I bought one of these and couldn't fiddle.
Click to expand...

I don't actually believe a modded bios will work as Gigabyte changed the voltage chip on the newer cards, overclock.net has similar threads regarding the new Gigabyte cards rev 3.1 and they encountered the problem a good few weeks ago with no solution.

Its getting kinda of stupid now how these vendors are locking the cards, if that's the case why not release them on a normal bog standard reference board, reference cooling + locked bios with a simple 230-240 price tag, why go custom pcb, custom cooling (wind-force) and then lock the card - its stupid.

Then you got XFX with their 7950 which is based off the 7970 pcb 6pin+8pin, apparently overclocks very well, but placed warranty void stickers on their screws preventing you from removing to stock cooler for TIM/Water-blocks, which is ignored if you are in the US? and their 7970 rev 3.1 is also locked lol

Kamz
 
^^Agreed and the same applies to Nvidia (Which AMD AIBs seem to be following). They have all these nice coolers and the best clocking cards don't reach high temps and are limited to stock volts. It takes the fun out of computing for me. I love gaming but at times I love pushing hardware to the safe max *cough**cough*
 
I know what you mean - my fav oc purchase has to be my 2500k which I bought the first week it was released and is currently sitting at 4.8gig the amount of hours tweaking, reading, monitoring temps/volts is very addictive and for what £180 pounds, whereas the gfx card market is still very expensive and now very restricted.

Nvidia you say, I bought a GB 670 windforce on release that got around 1260 boost stock voltage (this was before the LN bios were out) temps of around 56-57 under heaven load, I was pleased only to later find out that thats it no more room for overclocking not because I had voltage spikes, temp issues, or lack of vrm cooling but not more voltage control, for me it was a waste of a custom card+cooling when there is no voltage, nvidia feels the cores cant handle it blah blah, the card went straight back and its the best decision I ever made.

I haven't owned a ATi card for a while but just reading the 7850 oc threads made me smile, the happiness people show when they get 1200+ scores from the various AIB cards, one week its this brand next week its this other, but these days appear to be numbered...
 
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I bought a 680 LTG because of a guy on here called OptimaLNRG. I see his scores and wanted to go SLI, so bought one. I sold my original EVGA 680 (a good clocker) and bought another LTG purely to go water cooling and it is easier with the same cards. Thanks to PGI, I found out you can hack the 680 LTG BIOS (I am sure this works on other 680s also) with Art Money and After Burner. The smile was back on my face because I knew I could break it/them (if that makes sense).

Us enthusiasts demand the right to have the ability to break our toys. It is no fun doing what it says on the tin for me anyways.
 
gregster said:
I bought a 680 LTG because of a guy on here called OptimaLNRG. I see his scores and wanted to go SLI, so bought one. I sold my original EVGA 680 (a good clocker) and bought another LTG purely to go water cooling and it is easier with the same cards. Thanks to PGI, I found out you can hack the 680 LTG BIOS (I am sure this works on other 680s also) with Art Money and After Burner. The smile was back on my face because I knew I could break it/them (if that makes sense).

Us enthusiasts demand the right to have the ability to break our toys. It is no fun doing what it says on the tin for me anyways.
Click to expand...

Agreed! People would think pushing components further than recommended is silly, but that's why they call it enthusiasts :D!
 
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