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7970 Lightning, worth the premium?

I noticed I had an issue even with my new card where the card would insist on locking down my FPS to 25, no matter what I was using. (No forced settings on CCC btw)


pgi947 said:
This post from the thread Nickolop posted earlier explains what it 'should' mean.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, how exactly does the card measure that? Or does AMD measure it themselves and then its linked to each core after testing?
 
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A few interesting bits from the thread i posted about earlier

im assuming you have the powertune slider set at 20%. it really just comes down to the silicon. i know that a lame reason but it difficult to say what could help you over that hurdle. is your stock voltage set at 1175? if so, on bios 1, the max u can set it to is 1.3v. If you want to experiment a bit, lower your clock to 1125, pull the voltage to 1.3, and see what happens, if its stable, slowly raise your clocks until you see artifacts again (without burning your card).

The reason i say max out the voltage is because there is a wall you will hit that you can get over sometimes. yours seems to be 1.22v and what i have seen is it may not work from lets say 1.22 to 1.25 but then 1.255 works like a charm.

o ok that makes sense actually. if ur chip is 1.12v stock, then your max theoretical is 1.27v on bios one (the bios itself is locked to .125mv over voltage from your stock voltage). and if you look at your afterburner voltage when running a game or benchmark, you will notice it compensates for vdroop by .012v. so, when you have your voltage set to 1.22 your actual voltage is 1.232 which is right up on your max allowed voltage on bios one. So what i am assuming is happening is your hitting the bios's voltage limit it and may be throttling you or somthing. I dont know exactly what the bios does when hitting this limit, but it must be locking you down when you hit or go over it. The ln2 switch wont hurt anything, all it does is release these thresh holds and allow you not to get slammed by your voltage limit.
 
From reviews i read the drivers have problems with crossfire in bf3 at 2560x1600 or above. The results for single cards were better in some cases.

Mine seems to be fine at 2560x1440 with all settings maxed holding 60 fps with sync on
 
Going to roll back to RC11 tonight and start overclocking from there. Have a strange issue with Heaven crashing with a mild OC regardless of voltage, when BF3 and other games appear stable, so I've narrowed it down to either drivers or my windows install being clogged with carp.

Managed to get 1250/1600 @ 1.22/1.65v +30mv last night, sustained 10mins of kombuster extreme preset (I know I shouldn't really use it) but insta-crashed heaven. odd.
 
Afaik the aux voltage pushes more voltage through the PCI socket to stabilise the voltages, it should do more good than harm having it at +30mv while overclocking.
 
Still waiting, I'm not expecting to have one until early July tbh, EK have allot going on atm with 670 ref pcb and 670 DCUII blocks being given priority over the Lightning.

The plus point is that I'll probably have funds for a second Lightning by the time the blocks are released.
 
I'm pretty much using the same as the Raystorm kit, except I'm using an XTX360 rather than RX360 (RX is probably the better anyway) and using a Primochill Typhoon III bay res, again the XSPC variant in the kit is probably better. If these kits were out when started my build, theres no doubt I would have used one as a base to start from.

What case do you have? for CPU + single GPU you'd probably be ok with a single RX360, with another lighting you'd be looking at 420mm cooling area min (360 + 120). Personally I'm going for XTX360 + RX120 + 140.1 GT with the aim of cooling a 2600K @ 5ghz and what ever I can butcher out of my Lightnings.
 
Got antec 1200, not ideal for WC, plan on i7 ivy plus new mobo z77. The only reason why i asked about another rad as the reviews about the ivy and the lightnings love lower than normal temps to achieve high susstainable overclocks and i want it quiet if i go down WC route.
 
I personally wouldn't bother with side-grade from Sandy to Ivy, if I had too (for HT/pcie 3.0 reasons in your case I'm guessing) I'd go Sandy to X79, which is something I am considering once IB-E rears its head.

As I said earlier, I don't expect temps to any higher than 45-50c on the lightning under water, even with a high clock and voltage.

Fairly sure if you sacrifice most of the front bays in the 1200 and get creative with the top you'd fit a 360 + 200/180 in no problem.
 
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