7990 Custom Bios - Remove Throttling

[LtMatt]

Can't help you with mining dude. Sometimes less is more with regards to mining. To see if the card is throttling while gaming check how my thread here. Look for the advanced method and setup overlays and check to see if gpu usage drops while running games/benchmarks.

 

[LtMatt]

HI there

I've just purchased myself a HD 7990.
Just flashed this none throttle BIOS, scores in Heaven are up quite a lot, so its a good BIOS.

But I am only getting around 660 Hash per GPU, so around 1300 hash rate on this card.

What are your voltage/clock speeds and mining settings please for 7990?

Thanks Gibbo, this is my bios.

I found on my 7990 at stock (1000/1500) and with power limit at +50% i was getting 700 hash per core or just under. So overall i was getting 1400 hash or just under. Voltage was around 1.150v i think.

 

[LtMatt]

I am using afterburner, can still only select +20 on power though. Got the much higher 1200MHz and 1700Mhz clock speeds though, which the card seems to do without issue.

I am at 1150mv, 1040MHz core, 1500 RAM, getting around 690 hash per core, which shall do.

Heaven went score increased by 15FPS just with this BIOS, which makes it quite clear GPU2 was throttling which I could also see it doing previously, now it does not throttle and temps are below 80c.

What is the ideal max temp per GPU on 7990 or the point where it would normally throttle please?

7990 should be ok up to 94c. At 95c the fans kick in loud and throttling begins somewhere between 95-100C. I find sometimes with mining less is more. Sometimes it can be better to run stock or close to it to get the best hash rate. Experiment with your clocks and if you get close to 700 per gpu id call it a day and settle for that.

 

[LtMatt]

Nice work. As you can see sometimes you need to lower clocks a bit to get a better hash. Its strange how it works. I only mined for a couple of weeks before i lost interest though.

 

[LtMatt]

first off all - really good stuff with your bios LtMatt. I found this tread by accident but I'm really happy with how this worked well. Most games run smoother and better.

I have one question though - when I max out all settings in BF4 both cores work 100% and with 1920/1080 resolution I am getting stable 40-60fps (including resolution scale to 200). but when I want increase fps amount and drop resolution scale to 100 fps goes only up to 120 with average 80 and the usage for cores looks very sketchy like on the picture below. The same story is with Arma 3. will you be able to tell why core aren't 100% used? I have i5 4670K overclocked to 4.6GHz 1.27V 8GB ram and MSI Mpower Z87 MB.

You're cpu bottlenecked a bit in BF4 using DX11. Mantle will help with this in BF4 so standby for that.

 

[LtMatt]

Your green line is higher because you have two gpu's so in the performance overlay your gpu rendering time is multiplied by two. Check this thread on how to setup afterburner overlays. Its important to use the latest beta of afterburner as well, which is beta 18.

 

[LtMatt]

Nice one fella, will do tonight and report back

Right all four GPU's flashed, lets see if ti makes any difference

May the force be with you. Set +20% in afterburner and test away.

 

[LtMatt]

Hi Matt

I have just flashed your bios and it works great! Finally my GPU does not jump from 30% -100% all the time.
I have done a 3d mark score, it shows a 3% increase in performance. (will upload the link later)

However I have experienced a few blue screens / gone frozen, dont know whether it is because I have activated the XMP mode (my ram speed drop from 800 mhz to 667) or due to the voltage @1.2v is a bit too high for stock clock. I will try to lower the voltage to 1.15v and see what will happen.

Thanks again!

Good to hear. BSOD will be nothing to do with the bios though, all the bios does is increase the cards low TDP and remove the boost part of the bios. Nothing else is changed so any system instability will be as a result of something else.

 

[LtMatt]

I see, probably it is the XMP mode / I have changed the ram setting from 'auto' to 'ddr3 800mhz'.

I will try to change it back to 'auto' and keep xmp setting and see what happen.

Regarding fan setting, should I keep it to auto or there is a good guide to follow?

If you run stock id experiment with lowering the voltage, to help keep temps down. Try lowering to 1.175v and play games for a couple of hours. No crashes, lower to 1.150v. Keep going if needs be until about 1.1000v. My 7990 (sold now for 2x290 cards) needed 1.140v to be fully stable at 1000/1500. If you run stock and under volt and have good case airflow ( a side exhaust fan helps loads with the 7990) then you can keep with the auto fan as its very quiet. 7990 should be kept at or below 90c. Mine used to operate on BF4 in the 80-85c range on auto fan.

 

[LtMatt]

The sun!!

ahaha

Amazing how hot those crossfires get

Lol. Thanks for spotting my mistake.

 

[LtMatt]

"Today in Norwich but nowhere else in Anglia.. 38 degrees dependant on how far away from Matt's you live.."

38C sounds nice. Pretty sure that's the temp it will be in my room come summer time with 2x290's putting out some heat.

 

[LtMatt]

Thanks for the info and yes I have a side fan to keep my foot warm

I saw you have OC it to core 1200mhz memory 1700mhz
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/1708968?
Sorry I know it has been a while but do you still remember how much improvement compared to stock?

Erm not really. I probably posted stock scores in the firststrike thread before i posted overclock scores so you could no doubt dig it up if required. Getting a large overclock on a 7990 is not really possible unless you have it under water. 1100/1600 should be possible. I ran mine at stock when gaming and only clocked it when posting in the bench threads.

 

[LtMatt]

Hi,

I didn't change the clock states as after doing that it voltage locked the cards for some people, including me. Not all though, so your mileage may vary. I found that increasing the TDP nullified the boost part of the bios anyway as it removed the throttling issue. As a result the card is always in its highest clock state.

What cpu have you got? Will need a beefy one to stop 2x7990's from bottlenecking.

 

[LtMatt]

Ok... now I get it.
I am going to try doing the same. I hope this helps at least with the stability.

You just placed a tricky question there
I was a Little stubborn on my CPU choice. I have a [email protected]. I got also a bad chip and I can't get it passed this clock. It is running with 1.295V as is.
In my defense tough , the processor curve on BF4 is pretty good. And it is running on 60% utilization only.
I already went way over Budget on this pc and I am going to stick to this cpu for some while. I just want to get the best Performance and the most stable fps on BF4 possible.

Ps.: Pointing fingers at my cpu and saying it is bottlenecking does not solve the Problem. That is Kind of given...

It will defo bottleneck a four gpu setup on bf4. However Mantle should help greatly with that. Have you tried Mantle? As you're on Tahiti you may need to change a couple of BF4 settings via a user.cfg file, but i can help you with that. Mantle also uses more vram, so you may need to lower your settings a tad. However you will get much better gpu scaling and cpu performance. You really need an i7 minimum for four gpu's.

 

[LtMatt]

I amm going to Spill out my config as well so maybe someone spots another bottleneck:

CPU: [email protected]
GPU: 2x 7990 XT2 Malta
MOBO: MSI Z87-GD65
PSU: Corsair AX1200i
COOLING: Aquaduct 720 XT mark V
RAM: 2x 8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 1600MHz

To be honest this was my first new rig in a very Long time. So I did the best I could with the Information I had.
And the 7990 I got them for under 500€ each

Cheers!

You'd get a performance increase with faster ram as well. 2133mhz ram with tight seconds would net you a nice fps boost over slow 1600mhz ram, especially as your cpu limited and its only at 4.4ghz. Funny you're running that clock, i tested dirt showdown and these are the differences ram speed can make in that game at 4.4ghz. I'd wager your gains could potentially be bigger as you have an extra two gpu's than i do. (YMMV)

2700k 4.4ghz

1600mhz 9-9-9-27-2T - stock seconds

290 crossfire @975/1250 stock





2700k 4.4ghz

2133mhz 9-10-10-21-1T - tight seconds

290 crossfire @975/1250 stock





2700k 5.27ghz

2133mhz 9-10-10-21-1T - tight seconds - BCLK 102.5

290 Crossfire 975/1250 stock

Spoiler

 

[LtMatt]

Yes please!!!!!!!! I'd likey these user.cfg settings for tahiti when convenient Lt MAtt.

Thanks in advance!

Try this one.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/qfynto

Will enable the overlay so you can monitor vram usage using your settings. Make sure you stay at least a couple of hundred MB below your vram limit.

 

[LtMatt]

Hi LtMatt,

I just tried your user.cfg! And I got funny results.
Can you please tell me what These three commands do:
-PerfOverlay.Enable 1
-RenderDevice.FramePacingMethod 1
-Render.DrawScreenInfo 1

Here what happened after trying them:
-MANTLE: Utilization still very low at 40% and fps was as before around 60fps @1080p+resolution scale 200%.
I was able to see the amount of vram used and it showed 3.700MB/3.000MB

-DIRECT3d11.1: My utilization went up to 80% and fps is great at 120-160fps!
The amount of vram is not being shown anymore, don't know why. I haven't changed anything else.


I don't know how to explain that...

Perfoverlay shows the gpu and cpu render times at the bottom.

RenderDevice.FramePacingMethod alters the mantle frame pacing method. Not available on DX. Available settings are 0 = off, 1=on balanced frame pacing, 2 = extreme frame pacing, very smooth but lowers fps. 0 or 1 are recommended.

Render.DrawScreenInfo tells you what renderer you're using and if using Mantle shows how much vram you're using.

From the info you've give me you're exceeding the vram limit. As i said in my original message to you Mantle uses slightly more vram than DX. You need to stay well below 3000MB of vram usage. If you want to use those settings on Mantle you'll need to back off the resolution scale a bit.

 

[LtMatt]

Mantle provides a superior gaming experience. You have four powerful gpu's though so you can brute force your way to a smooth experience with DX. You might be able to up the res scale a bit further with Mantle as well. Just try to leave 200MB spare or so. Experiment.

 

[LtMatt]

Hi LtMatt,

I have just tried my new bios files and I am getting weird results.
I simply copied what you have changed in yours, however using my original files as template.
I have doubled checked all files and they are ok in theory.

PROBLEM:
In Idle I get 501Mhz for GPU1 and 1100Mhz for GPU2, GPU3 and GPU4.
While gaming they all jump to 1100Mhz.

Needless to say that 1100MHz is the predefined OC that I have on Afterburner. I just don't understand how is it that Afterburner is changing my Idle clock.

Any ideas???

Not sure mate sorry. Have you got a 120hz screen or something? I know if you have a higher Hz screen i think the card resides in a slightly higher clock state.

 

[LtMatt]

I found out what was responsible for that error... the new Catalyst 14.4 Beta!
I went back to 14.3 Beta and it is working now.


I am now trying to find my way through overclocking and I see a fixed Limitation on voltage at 1,2V.
How do I work around that?

The max OC I get with 1.2V is 1100/1575. My temperatures are very low at 50°C, so I'd like to push it more. I have set the base clock and boost clock at 1000/1500 1.2V and I am using Afterburner to push it further.

LtMatt, how far did you get with ocing?

1200/1700 was the max i reached on 1.3v, but i don't think it was stable. For gaming i think the max was around 1150/1600. I was on air though so i tended to run 1000/1500 and undervolt the card to 1.135v.