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Concerned and in need of advice!

benj0145

benj0145

benj0145

Associate
Joined
1 May 2012
Posts
104
Hi everyone, I know there's been a million threads about 7950s etc recently, but I am in a bit of a pickle..

I bought a Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor-X OC about 10 days ago - had it delivered on monday and was uber excited. I had upgraded from an XFX 5850 so was expecting good things.

The card was really quiet (something I am bothered about) but oh god the performance was atrocious. :confused: I would have fps similar if not slightly worse than my 5850 about 5% of the time, then I would reboot or even from a fresh start up the best I could hope for was 15-17 fps. The games I tried were World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2.

This was tested on fresh format (twice) on an SSD + on a mechanical drive, latest 12.8 catalyst and CAP2.

I rang ocuk who basically told me to return it for testing.

So on to the quandry:

I've since read various concerns regarding the vapor-x and voltages, + perf and overclocking. I am starting to have doubts about the card :(

Baring in mind I only returned it late Sat afternoon (for £18!) I am starting to wonder if I should contact OCUK tomorrow morning and ask for a different card altogether, or just hope that the replacement I get is a lot better...

Any advice please??!?

Im tempted by the HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST as an alternative, or even the Gigabyte ATi Radeon HD 7950 Windforce 3X ... really worried and not sure what to do !
 
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/512?vs=550 Thats looking like close to 100% performance difference.

Did you install the latest 7950 Drivers (12.8)

Uninstall the old drivers and use something like Driver Sweeper to hoover up remaining bits of the old drivers and then install fresh 7950 v 12.8 drivers from the AMD website
 
Cheers for reply, and yes mate I did - fresh format and full reinstallation of drivers - thats why I RMA'd as I believe the card to be faulty. Sort of lost confidence in it now :/
 
Stupidly no, it's the one thing I haven't done :/ But the difference in performance when only the cards were the variable was night and day in the main.

I just feel at this point getting a straight replacement is a gamble. Really don't know what to do!
 
It's hard for me to give an answer lol Without knowing what the benches are like at stock, so I can compare them with online reviews for the 7950's. As for the voltage lock, only one person here has said that their card had voltage lock when it came to overclocking.

I did ask about the voltage lock on those cards funnily enough as I wanted one but there was no concrete evidence that the Vapor X is voltage locked.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1303929/7950-vapor-x-voltage-locked
 
I appreciate that I don't have all the data, and that makes it difficult. It's really a question of *if*the card was faulty, based on what is known about the vapor-x card is there a better alternative 7950, or do I take the risk of getting a straight replacement? As I say I have rma'd the card on the strength of what the guy at ocuk said, so troubleshooting is a fairly moot point now.

After a day or two of trying I did attempt to overclock it - I unlocked the ccc limits with ab and the appropriate voltage was unlocked + and appeared to hold when I increased in slightly. I do remember that the stock voltage was v low at about 0.970ish
 
I have got a similar problem too, I got the HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST delivered on friday and playing wow I am getting between 20 - 30 fps and I have lowered the gfx settings in game.

I had a geforce GTX 285 and I was getting between 40 - 60 fps before. What is worse is it seems to be causing a lot of lag in game as well which makes it unplayable.

I am running this at stock with 12.8 catalyst and CAP2, I am going to try and find an older version of the drivers now after seeing this post and see if that makes a difference.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH: it's a 600w ocz (I asked ocuk when I rang and they thought it should be enough) although I have been worried about this.

roked: pls let me know if the other drivers make a diff! The HIS card is one I was thinking of swapping to.
 
Ok installed 12.6 and it appears to be better already in wow between 50 -60 fps but that could be co-incidence, will play it over the next hour or so and confirm. I also changed from dx11 to dx9 settings in game to try that as well.
 
Thanks for your response roked, but I was getting the exact same fps in both gw2 and wow, around 15-17fps max.

So i really don't know. Hopefully ocuk will find that its faulty for them too.
glad youve at least got some improvement.
 
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