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Did I pick the wrong 7950?

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Hey,

Bought a 7950 last week (HIS Turbo) aka this one: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=gx-065-hs&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1673


it's being used purely for cryptocurrency mining (specifically litecoin), and it's rather loud - are there any better/quieter alternatives? noise @ full load is my only issue, without spending any dollar on watercooling it.

are there any 7950s which are actually nice and fairly quiet under full load or is this the best i'll get? i have until monday to decide!

from what i can see from places such as tomshardware (aka here http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-hd-7950-review-benchmark,review-32465-14.html), the HIS is the best performing one and supposedly one of the quietest, but it's rather noisy! At full load I'm sat at 73c, so it's not too hot.
 
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The IceQ is usually renowned for being a rather quiet cooler.

How is your case cooling situation? Are there a lot of fans in it or are you relying on the card to cool itself?

Also, can you set a lower fan curve in CCC or Afterburner without the temps getting out of hand? This is what I did to make my card practically silent.
 
ArchAndroid said:
The IceQ is usually renowned for being a rather quiet cooler.

How is your case cooling situation. Are there a lot of fans in it or are you relying on the card to cool itself?

Also, can you set a lower fan curve in CCC or Afterburner without the temps getting out of hand? This is what I did to make my card practically silent.
Click to expand...

I'm in a 800d with the case open to accomodate for a 7970 and 7950 at full load 24/7, so it's getting all the cold air it can! My i7 + 7970 are under water so a lot of the temps are taken out through the rad, rather than blowing around.

I'd set a lower fan curve, but it's at 100% usage the whole time so I won't benefit :(.
 
You could alter the fan curve a bit so that it only really kicks in above 80c. Anything under 80c is more than fine and even above that upto around 85 is not an issue.

You could also reduce the voltage as I assume it's got the Boost Edition voltage at ~1.25V. That should lower your temperatures considerably.
 
Rusty0611 said:
You could alter the fan curve a bit so that it only really kicks in above 80c. Anything under 80c is more than fine and even above that upto around 85 is not an issue.

You could also reduce the voltage as I assume it's got the Boost Edition voltage at ~1.25V. That should lower your temperatures considerably.
Click to expand...

I found I can't seem to change the voltage in afterburner? (even to reduce it)

Fan speed is supposedly only 54% currently, so presumably if I go much lower it will rise pretty quickly!
 
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Do you benefit from overclocking while mining? If not tone it down to 900 MHz and put the voltage to 1.05V. It should be whisper quiet under 1.1V.

The HIS IceQ is actually a decent cooler. Only the ASUS DCIII and the GB WF are quieter AFAIK and even then not by much.
 
Yep, well particularly with the memory speeds.

I gather 1075/1550 isn't too high, but it certainly doesn't need the 1.25v it's being given.

Presumably I'd need to flash the bios to a normal 7950 to be able to alter the fixed 1.25v?
 
Rusty0611 said:
Nah, IIRC you can alter it with the latest MSI AB (beta 9) or you can use HIS iTurbo.
Click to expand...

Hmm strange I seem to be on 3.0 (beta 9) will give HIS iTurbo a go! :)

What do we think about applying some better thermal paste? I've got some of that IC Diamond paste, may help lower temps and in return lower noise slightly?
 
You've unlocked the voltage control yeah? You could try forcing constant voltage.... as well. It should take the voltage you're setting. Just bang it in Heaven to see what is stepping up to once you've changed it.
 
Yep unlocked voltage control, try to set to 1.175v and it just reverts to 1.25v under full load it seems :(.

I'm just trying HIS iTurbo now and it seems to do the same thing!

BeX2zuh.png
 
You don't want different overclocking things open at once as they can conflict (can see MSI AB in the background :p).

Can you check in GPUZ what voltage is going through it once you've changed it in HIS iTurbo? Also can you force a constant voltage in iTurbo? If so try that.
 
Looking at GPU-Z it says the VDDC is at 1.054v when I've set it to 1.125v, does that sound right?

Either way, it's certainly not saying 1.25v!
 
Is the GPU being used at that time? That looks like your idle voltage.

You could try flashing a non-boost BIOS... here's my HIS IceQ (non boost) BIOS. Make sure you back up your current BIOS if you do flash:

http://www.fileswap.com/dl/JXRSNWUT9o/

Alternatively, wait for Tommy or someone else who's used the boost versions and been successful changing the voltage.
 
Rusty0611 said:
Well that's interesting! If that is the true voltage reading the temperatures are quite high. Mine is 6-7c cooler on 1.175V.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's a bit odd, not too sure, I think it must be reading incorrectly, I'll do some proper testing at somepoint, though I guess even if I lower it a little bit the noise won't really reduce that much anyway!
 
Really happy with the performance on my asus 7950 top v2.

It has voltage control and I use msi afterburner setting it to 1.2v and 1150mhz.

When mining litecoins my fans sit are around 50% with temps around 60c which is fairly quiet.

Mind you I'm only getting 500 hashes out of mine on ltc :confused:
 
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