ATI 7970 niggles

[DigitalPrime]

I recently bought and built a new system

i7 2700k (cooler H100)
ASRock Z68 Extreme 7 Gen 3
16gb Corsair Vengence
ATI XFX 7970 black edition
850 PSU (just incase )
Win7



I bought this system to run The old republic, Battlefield 3 (which im yet to buy) and to run some music production software, such as Abelton Live and VST instruments.


When playing TOR, I run HWmonitor and I noticed the max temp on the ATI card was at 78c. I have the card set to default, default fan control etc.

This temp looks a little high to me. Can someone shine some light on this as to if its normal. Ive read these cards can get hotter then most. But i have yet to try BF3 and im worried the card will get even hotter, To the point of concern.

 

[Speed]

What case do you have? Some are awful at aircooling GPUs.

The Black Edition is a factory overclocked reference 7970 isn't it? If that is the case then that temp is normal. I've seen 85c on my overclocked 7950, anything sub 90c is fine.

 

[Aurhinius]

No that temperature is probably about right and nothing to worry about.

 

[DigitalPrime]

The case is a coolermaster 922.

Thanks for the reply guys.

 

[Speed]

Yeah sounds fine, it will get slightly hotter in BF3 but unless you experience stability problems or graphical artifacts then it will be fine.

Is the side panel fan on? That might help if you make sure it is running at 12v (full speed).

 

[mmj_uk]

I had a similar problem with 6970 back in the day with v-sync on, the card seemed to prioritise noise over temperature my card was hitting 90C because the fan wasn't kicking in.

IMO ATI reference heatsinks are not very good, you're better off waiting for the non-reference cards or sticking a custom cooler on, or just set the fan speed manually.

I remember being shocked at the time because with the reference cooler I was getting 90C and then I stuck on a waterblock and it barely budged over 40C.

 

[Speed]

You could always create a custom fan profile in something like MSI Afterburner or as suggested by mmj_uk get a custom cooler but that will void the warranty. The ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme 7970 cooler does look good if a big err big! lol

Reference coolers are never great when it comes to noise levels, but they are usually designed so they can cope in any environment, unfortunately that often means they are loud in order to keep the temperate within safe limits. Still, at least the 7970 reference cooler vents hot air out the back of the case rather than dumping it inside, so better than the 7950 cooler in that respect.

Water will always be better than air, but it isn't for everyone and voids the warranty.

 

[ChrisD.]

You could always create a custom fan profile in something like MSI Afterburner

This is what I would suggest and what I use to keep my two cards cooler.

 

[DigitalPrime]

I downloaded Heaven benchmark. First time using it and I thought it would give the temps a good run.

Everything is stock, nothing is touched on the PC in terms of overclocking.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/220/heavenbenchmark150212.jpg (IMG tags not working)

Max temp was 79c so im happy at the moment.

I would love water cooling as some of you sugested, I spent 2k on the system, I did nearly order a full WC setup. But I'm new to watercooling, so I backout at the checkout lol.

Its something I want to look into later, just finding my feet again with all this new tech. Ive had a laptop for the past 6 years, im behind the times Last time I had to benchmark a system futuremark had the max payne engine as a test

 

[DigitalPrime]

I thought I would give you guys an update. The case got an overall tidy.

Before the big tidy

My setup

Everything is running great, Playing BF3 on ultra at 1080. It plays TOR nicely, apart from the engine hickups with ilum and the fleet.
runs all my VST instruments within Abelton live.

But the heat on the 7970 is still 79c when I game. I have uprated the H100 fans to the 120ml Xigmatek orange fans due to the noise from the CPU usage. I did buy a 200ml Xigmatek orange fan to replace the coolermaster HAF922 front red fan. But with the mounts only one sided on the Xigmatek. Ill have to do that at another date when i have time to mod the case

But yeh, after a whole year of waiting for my inheritance. And a years worth of browsing the OC forums for much needed advice, I have my rig pretty much done.

The misses hates the wires

 

[zuludawn]

Taken from XFX 7970 support pages


The normal temperature range of a video card is up to 95C under load.**We
expect that in most cases a card will not break the high 80s but large cards
under high load can get as hot as 95C.*


I have two XFX Black xfire 8x8 lanes hottest temp 83C. At 16x16 closer together hottest was around 90C. Only lost 2-3 fps at 8x8.

 

[ALXAndy]

See that fan mount in the bottom? you want one there with the airflow aiming up.

Then, buy some nice cable extensions and sort out that bloody rat nest man.

 

[Speed]

The 7970 is a high end card, high end cards run hot on reference coolers. 79c is suprisingly good infact, so I wouldn't worry.

 

[DigitalPrime]

See that fan mount in the bottom? you want one there with the airflow aiming up.

Then, buy some nice cable extensions and sort out that bloody rat nest man.

I will do m8, It is abit neater but not as neat as I would like it. To be honest I regret not buying the power pack with the braided cables.

 

[Yaayuh!]

See that fan mount in the bottom? you want one there with the airflow aiming up.

Then, buy some nice cable extensions and sort out that bloody rat nest man.

This.

You should notice quite a big difference in temperature by putting an intake fan in the bottom and tidying those cables.

 

[Speed]

I will do m8, It is abit neater but not as neat as I would like it. To be honest I regret not buying the power pack with the braided cables.

Those are braided!

Get yourself some cable/zip ties and re-route some of the cables, tidying them up at the end. Will look much better but won't have a huge effect on the temps tbh.

 

[feck199]

Custom fan profile with afterburner is the way to go, ATI's default fan profile really has no issues with the card reaching 90 and the fan not going above about 35%

 

[Marine-RX179]

I thought I would give you guys an update. The case got an overall tidy.

Before the big tidy

My setup

Everything is running great, Playing BF3 on ultra at 1080. It plays TOR nicely, apart from the engine hickups with ilum and the fleet.
runs all my VST instruments within Abelton live.

But the heat on the 7970 is still 79c when I game. I have uprated the H100 fans to the 120ml Xigmatek orange fans due to the noise from the CPU usage. I did buy a 200ml Xigmatek orange fan to replace the coolermaster HAF922 front red fan. But with the mounts only one sided on the Xigmatek. Ill have to do that at another date when i have time to mod the case

But yeh, after a whole year of waiting for my inheritance. And a years worth of browsing the OC forums for much needed advice, I have my rig pretty much done.

The misses hates the wires

If you can tidy the cables, and installed a 120mm fan (and a 120mm dust filter) to the bottom middle as intake that directing into the main chamber of the case and the graphic card's cooler's intake, it should give drop the temp by a couple of degrees. At the moment, your main intake (or should I said the only? ) is with the drive bays in the way, so it would restrict the amount of air reaching the main part of the case. If you do not wish to do that, at least take out the 3 HDD holder at the bottom, so there would be more air getting through the drive cage. Personally, I would put the HDD and SSD at the bottom two slot, and take out the 3 drive holders at above.

 

[Surveyor]

Those are braided!

He probably meant modular.