7990 Custom Bios - Remove Throttling

[LtMatt]

Thank you for the quick response mat. I'll remove the side case for now and see how it goes.

That is the best option. I predict a big fall in temps. Unfortunately the 7990 needs a full tower case for optimum cooling i think. I only have a mid tower case but i have a good airflow and most importantly a capable side exhaust fan setup.

 

[LtMatt]

So do you think i'll be struggling to keep this thing cool enough on stock with lower voltages?


Edit:

Actually, would it be best just getting a new case? What would be a good case around the £100 range?

With the side off you'll be fine. A better case would help though if you wanted to keep a side panel on. I'm no expert in cases im afraid. Even my case is not that great for airflow thats why i had to install so many fans. Its annoying i still get a very hot area (case warm to the touch on the outside) to the left bottom/middle corner of my side exhaust fans.

 

[LtMatt]

Is it possible to make a backup of the bios before flashing?

It was using gpu-z. However you already have a backup of the bios on switch 2.

 

[LtMatt]

Excellent instructions, from start ( downloading ) to finish flashed it only took 15 mins and all working fine !

Thank you.

 

[LtMatt]

I've started mining. Getting around 698kh x2.

This is at stock clocks.

 

[LtMatt]

Went through the whole process of reflashing again last night with the last BIOS.

It still kills my framerates from stock. It is smooth but no smoother from stock.

the graphs in Afterburner look different. The GPU usage are a lot smoother and not so many peaks or troughs.

What I dont get is at stock. My framerates in BF4 with everything on ultra at 1920x1200 are in the 120 130 range and the average GPU core use is around 50% (But the graphs in AB are a lot more choppy, fluctuating between 30-90%).

With the new BIOS My framerates hang in teh 80 - 90 range but fluctuate more and my GPU's are in teh 80% usage but steady fluctuating between 70-95% .

So it seems to me that the new BIOS decreases fps and uses a higher load in GPU.

I have checked and double checked. It is perfectly playable in either but the stock BIOS is smoother due to the higher fps.

Have other 'FLASHERS' done a perfomance comparison in BF4 in particular? What changes have you noticed if any?

Also I did ask if there was any other factors we had to use such as voltage - on reading further posts I notice the power slider is being used in AB. Is this a must? I see some people have AB upto 50% on this slider - How do I get 50%? I'm using beta 17.

I'm using W8.1

Best

SHow me a screenshot of your afterburner settings.

 

[LtMatt]

It works if you use the version of atiflash i recommend in the guide. If you use a newer version then you might have to alter the name as suggested above.

 

[LtMatt]

Fired up Bf4, Ultra settings, I'm not sure if it was the patch that was released today, which I doubt, or Ltmatt's Bios + settings but man is running Bf4 is totally smooth!, before it was jerking all over the place, stuttering and freezing every few seconds.

I've reduced the Volts to 1.75 already, Bf4 has been stable in single player for 30 minutes now, looking good! Best program to test volts, Heaven perhaps?

Matt I owe you a beer!

I really hope this coil whine quietens down a bit, would be ideal, I think I can live with it but if I sell the card on will the next person..

I didn't expect such a smooth experience with my dated i7 930 @ 3.8 but it seems to be holding up!

Best way to remove tearing without using Vsync, anybody?

Get that voltage down to 1.150v. Might even be able to go lower, at stock.

 

[LtMatt]

I spoke too soon. For some reason since restarting my computer bf4 has turned laggy. If I put bf4 into a window, and drag any other windows on the desktop around they are choppy, missing lots of frames.
Assasins creed runs the same, really bad!

Im not sure what happened!

Update : Exited out of Afterburner, ac and bf4's framerate went straight back up!

Afterburner's causing some issues here! (Latest beta)

Crossfire only works in full screen mode so that could explain the problem. Not noticed any issues with afterburner myself, but it is possible and has been known before.

 

[LtMatt]

AB
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0doytm

cheers

Use IMGUR next time mate. Embed the image on the forum. Its quicker and easier for you.

Set unofficial overclocking mode to disabled. What cpu have you got?

Things look pretty good there in your screenshot. Have you tried under volting the card a bit? 1.200v is generally overkill for 1000/1500. Try 1.1785v or even 1.150v, or even lower.

What was the problem exactly?

Cheers for this, all updated and working now.

GPU usage on both gpus ranges from 55-80 or so when playing BF4, suprised that a 3570k must bottleneck it?

It's buttery smooth at 1200p on ultra so I could care less though.

An i5 will hold back a 7990 in BF4, but if its all smooth what does it matter.

Mantle may cure your cpu bottleneck entirely though.

 

[LtMatt]

Any help with the edited image above? Just making sure I get the maximum performance. Got me looking out for a 3770k in the MM now.

That's because your MSI afterburner is older than my brown and yellow poker dot y-fronts.

MSI Afterburner Beta 17

Settings should look like this for optimal performance.

 

[LtMatt]

Ah that's that one sorted, cheers!

Any ideas for enabling crossfire in CCC? Not even an option there, that is on the latest beta drivers etc.

The option is not there in CCC with a 7990. (for some unknown reason)

If you wish to disable Xfire for a specific game you need to create a profile for it in CCC. See example below.

 

[LtMatt]

LtMatt, how did you make/edit the BIOS?

I need to edit mine (no overclocking program has kept voltage down permanently) so it's...

0.9v Core
700Mhz Core
1250Mhz Memory

(~1000kHash @ 70C)

Bottom of the thread. VB 7.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1395490/ati-hd-7950-7970-bios-mod-thread

 

[LtMatt]

Superb instructions, flashed my MSI 7990 within 10 minutes, all up and running. Mining now at 1000/1500 at 1.050vcore, 675k/hash per core approx.

Can't see an option to go to 50% powertune though, only 20% available still?


Before installing this bios I was having an issue with AB in that when changing the vcore, it only changed one gpu not both. When this happened i found GPU0 was 15c hotter than GPU1.

All appears to be ok right now though. Not tried any BF4 yet, will try that tomorrow.

Thanks again LtMatt.

+20% is fine. I updated the bios to +50% is no longer needed. Enjoy.

hi guys (first post!)

I recently bought the GIGABYTE 7990 but have been completely unable to reduce the voltage on the card.

Is this card fully voltage locked?

thanks

( i want to reduce it because of fairly high temps - my core 1 is about 10oc hotter than core 0)

Are you using the latest beta of msi afterburner and have you ticked unlock voltage control and monitoring in afterburner settings?

 

[LtMatt]

Hold on, i just changed to gpu1 in ab settings and its letting me change mv now, why only on gpu1 and not 2?

It applies to both gpu's. Afterbuer has a setting applied automatically called sync gpu settings.

Hi Matt,

Can you just have a look at my setup, I have flashed both bios as per the OP, disabled upls, crossfire tech icon appears during benchmark, but just doesn't seem right to me.

This is MSIAB post 3dmark test:

Spoiler

and here is my 3dmark score:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7608901

What are your thoughts mate?

Spot on there ^.

 

[LtMatt]

When you say turn off do you mean the whole system turns off or reboots? or does the card just stop working until a reboot? I.E fans lower speed and screen goes black.

Some sort of OCP protection. I think all Tahiti cards have it when you exceed the TDP limit.

 

[LtMatt]

Hi, I've just flash my 7990 bios about 2 hours ago with this guide as I was finding that my performance in BF4 didn't seem right. I was on all ultra @ 1080p with one monitor and getting around 40-100 fps. I flashed my card with the steps above and now i seem to be getting around 30-100 fps.

The main test I done were on the Zavod 311 map and Siege of Shanghai. I used to get around 40-100 fps on Zavod within the middle of the map with buildings and with the flashed bios test i got around the same and maybe even less. I tried the map Siege of Shanghai without the flash bios and got around 40-100 fps too. With the flashed bios i am seeing around as low as 35 fps when the building collapses when i look at it to around 100 fps. This is with the same settings mentioned above.

I'm not sure if I've missed anything but it does seem that its about the same performance or maybe even a slightly worse than what I used to be getting FPS wise. If anyone knows why or is having the same issue it would be great if we could try find a solution to the problem. Thanks, also my specs are below.

PC specs:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770k CPU @ 3.80GHz
RAM: 8192MB RAM 1333
Graphics Card: MSI AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB
Monitor: Samsung 22" S22B300H Series 3 Full HD LED Monitor
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
PSU: Corsair AX860 860W

Yeah mine is worse also. I could go back to the old BIOS and it was much higher. But now I cant get the stock or the new BIOS to get the framerates I was getting. There has been a patch since and i think that now blurs the problem. Could be the patch. I need to install another game and test the fps there. May try Bf3 and see what I get there. Or a benchmark and see what I'm getting. Flaming annoying. Gone back to beta 9.4 and still no increase. It's just odd now the stock BIOS wont go back to the fps I used to get.

Placebo, both of you. The bios does nothing that could harm fps. The only thing different from the stock bios is my bios does not throttle the card under intense load. Everything else is the same, EVERYTHING!

 

[LtMatt]

Just making it clear that any issues you may have are not down to the bios. There is simply nothing there that could cause such an issue.

 

[LtMatt]

LtMatt, thanks for your previous help and input


What is fact is that when I flashed your BIOS my BF4 performance halved. I changed nothing else. Reinstalled same drivers.

I could flip the BIOS switch back to stock and it was back to 130-140fps so could see the difference. This was not placebo. I'm not saying it's the BIOS. It's a setting in something else. Now oddly I get barely any difference between BIOS's when looking at AB graphs. My GPU graphs in AB look the same where as before the stock BIOS was much more errtic and fluctuating. I was having terrible issues with installing the drivers at this time using driver sweeper and fusion. Often teking numerous attepts for an install. Tried all fixes such as certificates. Only way I solved this was by using DDU uninstaller which now allows me a full install without errors everytime. But I still cant get my performance back. This uninstaller may have done a very deep clean and removed something I havent reinstalled yet. ( NNow thinking about Direct x)

I have changed my PSU out and BF4 has had a patch. I have reinstalled windows. So there is plenty of things there to form an issue and I'm just trying to work it out. I don't think it is the BIOS as it is hardware. But software needs to talk to hardware and so maybe I'm missing something - just dunno. Got me stumped.

I was empathising with Rykane as he also had low performance from a 7990 and was hoping for some guru to maybe chuck a thought that fixes our problem. It certainly wasnt aimed at discrediting your BIOS. I know nothing about BIOS's and there seems to be many AB settings that people are tweaking around the flash in AB/CCC. I must just have a setting or two that I've gotten wrong.

Currently I've just got ULPS disabled via registry and +20% power in CCC. Performance is the same in Stock and V3 BIOS - bar throttling. GPU usauge graphs look the same. I've changed my PSU to draw from 2 ports instead of one. No difference to BF4 perf.

my thinking at the moment is maybe Direct X isn't up to date as I thought maybe it would come as part of windows updates - or BF4.

Any input welcome - thanks in advance

Woodsta

I'm stumped mate sorry, no idea what to suggest. You seem to be in the minority.

 

[LtMatt]

Hi LtMatt, Thank you very much for the bios, I have successfully flashed my 7990 and its working great. Your time and effort are truly appreciated! Have a great Christmas

Thank you, you too.