• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

7970 Lightning, worth the premium?

pgi947 said:
Just a slight word of warning on a second lightning, both with heavy overclocks might (depending on clock speed) slightly bottleneck a 3570k in games like bf3, could be an idea to plan a minor upgrade to an 8 thread chip :)
Click to expand...

I've been thinking about going with a 3930k but everyone keeps telling me that I wouldn't notice any difference in games. :confused:

I'll probably wait to see what Haswell has to offer and then make a choice.
 
Last edited:
Maybe not now, but a 2500k was enough to give a slight bottleneck in bf3 @ 5760x with two 680's, futureproofing tells me it's a good idea to pair up dual top end cards with an 8thread chip.

I'd sit tight and wait for ivy-e, haswell afaik is going to be all about the igpu & will require a new socket.
 
I've been playing with my second card today, which has a lower ASIC percentage than my previous one (60.6% vs 71%).

I'm starting to get artifacts when I pass the 1200 MHz mark in Heaven. Reading through this thread, am I right to believe that when watercooled I'd be able to go a bit further without any artifacts due to the lower temps?

I've also noticed that this one crashes when I don't have enough volts coming through, while the other one only gave me artifacts. Do you think the ASIC quality may have something to do with that?

Anyway, I'll be leaving these at stock for now as I really don't need any more power in my games. Getting constant 90+ FPS in BF3 with everything on max at 2560x1440 res.
 
ASIC doesn't related to anything IMO. What PSU are you using? These cards can but a fair bit of power once clocked.

Water will allow you to push them to the absolute limit.
 
To be honest the 90+ you're getting on non 120hz 1440p monitor is great and as long as it's accounting for drops and staying above 60 I don't see any point in going further for gaming.
 
@pgi947 - It's in my sig, got an AX1200i

It's just that I read somewhere in this thread that you can hit a patch of voltage that makes you GPU unstable, and when you pass it your GPU stabilizes again. And I have a feeling that having lower temps though water cooling will make the GPU more stable, as I start reaching 70'C on my 60.06% ASIC card to go past 1200 MHz.

@theCrim - That is what I plan to do, until I move to water.
 
Not a clue how I missed that :p

Cards do seem to have a voltage/clock wall that is sometimes a pain to get over, for example you may find you can hit 1200mhz for 1.2v, but may need 1.25v to hit 1210mhz, that point is the wall, once you are over it you may for example hit 1250mhz for 1.26v.

I hit a wall quite early on, getting above 1150mhz required a hefty bump in voltage (1.22v) but once over it I was running almost 1:1 core:voltage all the way up to 1340mhz/1.35v

Get it under water, ramp it up to 1.35/1.65/+30/+20% and do some benching:D
 
That looks fine, your overall 'P' score is being held back massively by the 4 thread CPU though which is why in the grand scheme of things it might look a little low.

GPU score of 21k however looks sweet, some good scaling too, iirc a stock lightning single card hits around 10500-11000, so thats nearly 1:1 scaling on a dual card setup :)
 
pgi947 said:
That looks fine, your overall 'P' score is being held back massively by the 4 thread CPU though which is why in the grand scheme of things it might look a little low.

GPU score of 21k however looks sweet, some good scaling too, iirc a stock lightning single card hits around 10500-11000, so thats nearly 1:1 scaling on a dual card setup :)
Click to expand...

The cards were overclocked. 1240/1600 for the first and 1225/1600 for the second. Might be able to push a little further in water?

And I'm thinking about getting an X79 Rampage IV Extreme fitted with a 3930k, but it will have to wait a month or so.
 
Under water you should easily be pushing towards 1300mhz on the cores :)

X79 is the way to go IMO, brilliant choice if you end up with the RIVE ;)
 
Well, I've been testing my card's core overclocking ability and I'm a little underwhelmed...

I can only stably get 1200Mhz on the core. Even if I boost the volts up to 1.35v in Afterburner, I cannot get anything stable over that without artifacts/crashing etc.

Also, my VRMs go up to 55c with 1.35v pumping through the 7970...

Haven't looked at memory overclocking yet but looks like my chip aint the best ;(
 
Damn, been a few like this now :( Have you tried both sides of the bios switch?

I hope I get a BE in return, have a hunch I won't get as good of a clocker as my last card.
 
hughythomas said:
Well, I've been testing my card's core overclocking ability and I'm a little underwhelmed...

I can only stably get 1200Mhz on the core. Even if I boost the volts up to 1.35v in Afterburner, I cannot get anything stable over that without artifacts/crashing etc.

Also, my VRMs go up to 55c with 1.35v pumping through the 7970...

Haven't looked at memory overclocking yet but looks like my chip aint the best ;(
Click to expand...

When I got my second card yesterday, I was struggling to go past 1200 core without artifacts showing up. I tried again today and was able to go as high as 1250 core.

I'm not sure but could the cards need to "burn in" before reaching their optimum?

I'm crossfiring two of them now at 1240 MHz core each with no problems, while yesterday I couldn't get one of them stable at 1200 MHz core.
 
pgi947 said:
Damn, been a few like this now :( Have you tried both sides of the bios switch?

I hope I get a BE in return, have a hunch I won't get as good of a clocker as my last card.
Click to expand...

Sorry for my ignorance man but are you talking about some kind of physical switch on the actual card itself or simply a second BIOS which I can try through software somehow?

Thanks for all your replies thus far btw!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom