Gigabyte Windforce 7950 Problem

phobic · 26 Mar 2013 at 10:44

So this is my third 7950 in a month, and it seemed to be going ok for about 2 weeks, or so i thought. First of all, the core clock speed is 1Ghz, not 900Mhz as advertised on the website and the box. First time i fired it up, i got no signal to either monitor, but i just put that down to luck and rebooted, and it seemed fine after. But as time goes on, i'm getting this problem more and more frequently. Suddenly i'll lose signal to both monitors or the system will just hang. A few times also, i have had major artifacts on the bios and windows/linux start screens.

I tried a new Bios from Gigabyte's website and flashed it through the Atitool. Apparently it reverts the core speed to 900Mhz, but i flashed it and GPU-Z still shows 1000Mhz stock and current speed. I'm guessing these issues i'm having might be due to Gigabyte overclocking it too high or not enough voltage (1.25v if i can remember correctly). I don't really care about overclocking my GPU, and i'd rather have a stable card.

The problem comes in trying to reproduce the issues i'm having, since they seem so random. I can run Furmark sometimes for an hour straight without a crash. Other times it will crash within 10 mins. Same goes for Unigine Heaven or any games like Far Cry 3.

Should i RMA? My worry is that they won't be able to reproduce the issues. Or should i try to underclock it a bit? But would that even work? Since i was getting issues in bios and windows start screen, it would still be overclocked by the GPU bios right? Until it reaches windows anyway...

Getting very frustrated with these 7950's now. First two were MSI with faulty fan diode's. Any suggestions? :confused:

Btw, the cooling on the card is fine. The highest i've seen it go was 70 in Furmark, and it usually tops out at 60 in Unigine.

kronos13 · 26 Mar 2013 at 14:04

Hi,
I've not had similar issues to you with Artifacts or Signal getting lost but I have played around with the Bios for a bit. From what I've found out is we have the Rev2 version of the Gigabyte WF3 7950 card (they have a 8+6pin pcie power cables). Gigabyte have released these with the upped core clock speed of 1000mhz up from 900mhz voltage locked at 1.25v. They are release with the FX0 Bios, and no matter what Bios you put on them they will not allow for core voltage unlock (they seem locked on hardware level), trying to load the F43 Bios only dropped the core speed to 900mhz and I also lost the HDMI output on my card but still the core voltage was locked.

I am currently speaking to Gigabyte support asking them to confirm this to me but they are just ridiculous in the answers they give me and refuse to answer my questions straight up.
With all that said it is still a good card and it runs very well but it sounds like you might have a faulty card. Have you tried doing a clean uninstall of the AMD drivers and installing the latest 13.3 Beta drivers with the CAP files? I am running those on Win7 Ultimate 64bit and have not had any issues on Far Cry 3. Also return back to the FX0 Bios when you do your stability testing.

phobic · 26 Mar 2013 at 14:22

kronos13 said:
Hi,
I've not had similar issues to you with Artifacts or Signal getting lost but I have played around with the Bios for a bit. From what I've found out is we have the Rev2 version of the Gigabyte WF3 7950 card (they have a 8+6pin pcie power cables). Gigabyte have released these with the upped core clock speed of 1000mhz up from 900mhz voltage locked at 1.25v. They are release with the FX0 Bios, and no matter what Bios you put on them they will not allow for core voltage unlock (they seem locked on hardware level), trying to load the F43 Bios only dropped the core speed to 900mhz and I also lost the HDMI output on my card but still the core voltage was locked.

I am currently speaking to Gigabyte support asking them to confirm this to me but they are just ridiculous in the answers they give me and refuse to answer my questions straight up.
With all that said it is still a good card and it runs very well but it sounds like you might have a faulty card. Have you tried doing a clean uninstall of the AMD drivers and installing the latest 13.3 Beta drivers with the CAP files? I am running those on Win7 Ultimate 64bit and have not had any issues on Far Cry 3. Also return back to the FX0 Bios when you do your stability testing.

Hey, glad to see i'm not alone!

I was indeed on the FX0 bios and i tried the FX1 since you can only stay on the bios with a similar naming scheme apparently. I dunno about trying F43 and losing HDMI, since i'm using the HDMI and DVI port at the minute. Did your card become stable with the F43 bios? It might be worth ditching the HDMI port in that case.

Dunno about the voltage lock though. I wouldn't want to raise it though, just lower it if anything. Yeah i've tried several clean driver installs, but since it was artifacting in bios, drivers wouldn't cause that. Are the CAP files not only for crossfire?

kronos13 · 26 Mar 2013 at 14:51

Hi,
My card was never unstable like yours and it's never shown any artifacts, the only reason I loaded another Bios was to try and see if I could unlock the core voltage control so that I can overclock it a bit higher, it was by chance that I found that HDMI was disabled on the F43 version as my media centre stopped working which is connected to my TV.

From what I've read the CAP files are not just for Crossfire and will also improve single card gaming performance. From what you've explained it does sound like your card might be faulty, seeing artifacts is a worry.

When I get home I'll go check if I have artifacts in the Bios, but like I said, I've been lucky and not had any issues with the card so far and it's been stable in Windows running at stock clocks with the original FX0 Bios.

Rusty0611 · 26 Mar 2013 at 15:16

The voltage if anything is way over what 1000 MHz actually requires. Normally you get a 1:1 ratio (or thereabouts) so 1.25V is way more than what's needed. I don't think underclocking it will solve anything and even if it does, this is a fault as it should run at the out the box speeds without tweaking.

Mine is also a 1000 MHz 1.25V version and have no problems. Mine goes up to 1275 on 1.25V actually

.

kronos13 · 26 Mar 2013 at 15:26

Rusty0611 said:
The voltage if anything is way over what 1000 MHz actually requires. Normally you get a 1:1 ratio (or thereabouts) so 1.25V is way more than what's needed. I don't think underclocking it will solve anything and even if it does, this is a fault as it should run at the out the box speeds without tweaking.

Mine is also a 1000 MHz 1.25V version and have no problems. Mine goes up to 1275 on 1.25V actually .

With my card I cannot get it over 1050Mhz without a crash, that is the Maximum it will go.. I'm considering sending mine back because of that.
But yeah it does look like Phobic's card has a problem.

Rusty0611 · 26 Mar 2013 at 15:31

kronos13 said:
With my card I cannot get it over 1050Mhz without a crash, that is the Maximum it will go.. I'm considering sending mine back because of that.
But yeah it does look like Phobic's card has a problem.

Can't send it back for that unless you're in the DSR period.

phobic · 26 Mar 2013 at 15:39

Just filled out an RMA request...

Hopefully i'll get a 7950 that is as reliable as my old 5850 was. Seriously considering dropping more cash and getting an Nvidia card, since the 7 series are giving me no ends of trouble

epuzki · 26 Mar 2013 at 21:01

kronos13 said:
With my card I cannot get it over 1050Mhz without a crash, that is the Maximum it will go.. I'm considering sending mine back because of that.
But yeah it does look like Phobic's card has a problem.

I also cant go over 1050mhz without crashing, 1.1ghz it went fine on heaven 4 but crashes at crysis and guild wars. Cant also OC memory almost at all without getting some wierd lines and crashes in gw2, voltage is locked at 1.25V. Looked at gigabyte forums and few guys have the same problem, wonder why.. but im really disappointed in this card.

ChrisD. · 26 Mar 2013 at 21:05

I had random issues with my 7950. In the end I changed it for a 670 and the problems ended.

danyulland · 27 Mar 2013 at 10:58

epuzki said:
I also cant go over 1050mhz without crashing, 1.1ghz it went fine on heaven 4 but crashes at crysis and guild wars. Cant also OC memory almost at all without getting some wierd lines and crashes in gw2, voltage is locked at 1.25V. Looked at gigabyte forums and few guys have the same problem, wonder why.. but im really disappointed in this card.

Same card, exact same situation as above.

Its got the latest "GHZ bios" with 1.25V locked and its stable at the stock 1000/1250.

Core will go to 1050 anymore and i get random crashes, memory will goto 1300 anymore then i get artifacts (even with a voltage bump on memory).

I decided just to live with it as 1050/1300 isn't the end of the world, would have liked more but that's how it goes...

epuzki · 27 Mar 2013 at 11:37

danyulland said:
Same card, exact same situation as above.

Its got the latest "GHZ bios" with 1.25V locked and its stable at the stock 1000/1250.

Core will go to 1050 anymore and i get random crashes, memory will goto 1300 anymore then i get artifacts (even with a voltage bump on memory).

I decided just to live with it as 1050/1300 isn't the end of the world, would have liked more but that's how it goes...

so u got the 7950 Rev2?

Yup, the card aint bad at 1050mhz but should do much more with 1.25Voltages its locked in.

Tobes · 27 Mar 2013 at 12:06

Kinda the same only I had the FZ1 bios and flashed it to F43. Have 2 in xfire and one came with F42.

Can't get my overclock higher than 1100/1350 on 1.25 but the fan noise is too loud so I have gone down to 1000/1350 on 1.1v. Sadly it looks like they don't make the cards as good as they used to for ocing. Tempted to buy 2 coolers for them but that's a £100 and if I was to do that I would rather sell the cards and put it towards something else.

Geo-Gamer · 27 Mar 2013 at 12:16

I can kinda relate to you guys with the 7950 WF.

I recived mine just a month ago with the 1000 core and 1.25 vddc bios. But strangely I can change the voltage and its not locked? After playing around with it im very happy with the core as I can set the voltage to 1150 and the core to 1150 which is very low for that core IMO.

But the memory overclocking is what getting to me as I cant even clock the memory any higher than 1300...Such a pain unless i touch the memory voltage which I really dont want to do :/

I was expecting atleast 1400/1450 on the memory at stock memory voltage [1.5].

danyulland · 27 Mar 2013 at 13:09

epuzki said:
so u got the 7950 Rev2?

Yup, the card aint bad at 1050mhz but should do much more with 1.25Voltages its locked in.

It seems so.

However i have now tried flashing the f43 bios and this worked successfully.The voltage is much lower 1.1? (its reading 1.08 in GPUZ) this runs stable at the stock speeds and is much quieter so i think i might just leave it at 1000/1250 at this lower voltage as the voltage needed for 50MHZ increase isn't worth the heat and noise!

kronos13 · 27 Mar 2013 at 13:12

danyulland said:
It seems so.

However i have now tried flashing the f43 bios and this worked successfully.The voltage is much lower 1.1? (its reading 1.08 in GPUZ) this runs stable at the stock speeds and is much quieter so i think i might just leave it at 1000/1250 at this lower voltage as the voltage needed for 50MHZ increase isn't worth the heat and noise!

That is different from mine then. I have the Rev2 card that was released with the 1000mhz clock at 1.25 volt, when i put the F43 Bios on mine drops down to 900mhz clock though and does not stay at 1000mhz.. It also breaks my HDMI out on the card.

danyulland · 27 Mar 2013 at 13:14

i havn't tried the HDMI as running DVI

kronos13 · 27 Mar 2013 at 13:23

danyulland said:
i havn't tried the HDMI as running DVI

Yeap, so am I, but my media centre out runs from HDMI, so that's a fail for me.

epuzki · 27 Mar 2013 at 20:19

meh dunno what happened... was idling in guild wars and watching tv, suddenly fans spin maybe at 100% for like 1 sec and stopped, went to check temps, hardware monitor show temps of 98C :O, opened Trixx and my custom fan settings kicked in and cooled it back to 35C in like 10 secs lol.. Even more disappointed now :J

phobic · 29 Mar 2013 at 11:22

So i managed to grab a few pics of my issue. Did get an RMA number etc, but just wanted to test some more to be sure.

Here's what i see upon some boots

This was after a bios reset and an attempt to boot into linux, where it had a kernel panic.

On this one, it didn't even boot into windows, but just froze on that screen.

I'd say it's fairly safe to put it down to GPU. I tried a 580GTX for a day or so and had no issues. Strangely though, i tried this card in another system and also had no issues. Though it happens very randomly in my own system. After i took these shots, it took forever to get into either OS. My monitors would just lose signal and had a pain in the ass getting the machine to even post after rebooting.

Anybody think it could be something else?