MSI R7950 issues... again

[Razyre]

Hi there.

I posted a thread about this a little while ago but didn't really get to the bottom of my issues.

I bought my R7950 a little while ago and I've been fairly happy with the card's performance. However, under load, temps have always been a little on the high side, usually around 75 degrees tops under stock clocks, which I feel gives me very little headroom for overclocking.

I then hear that my friend is getting 56 degree highs under a 1200MHz OC with his Sapphire card which doesn't half make me feel ripped off. I am feeling the need for the extra clock now too, which I didn't when I used to have a 1080p monitor. 2K really hits the top end settings of a lot of games so the extra clock would be nice and I don't really feel safe pushing this card up in clocks due to temperatures.

Having done a mini test @ 1100MHz just using Unigine, I've noticed that once the card hits 76 degrees (doesn't get higher than that), the card starts to throttle the GPU to 880MHz and drops the GPU usage, although there isn't a noticeable FPS drop on the benchmark. If the GPU is doing that while I'm gaming though, I assume this would be a good reason for experiencing micro stutters, because the card is actually throttling itself down intermittently.

I've just upgraded the drivers to 13.8 and my overclock settings are as so:

1250mv
1100MHz Core
1400MHz Memory

So not only is the card running way hotter than his, I can't clock it as highly and it appears to be throttling itself which is going to make games unplayable. I wondered if MSI's paste job is just awful? I can quite easily see me re-pasting this and dropping a good 10 degrees in temps. I've heard people say they've done that with these cards before. However, due to the seemingly unreliable nature of the series, voiding the warranty to do this does not seem like a wise idea.

I'm really stuck on this one.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[alex_123_fra]

Your options are:

1. Repaste -why would you void warranty. Does it have void stickers?
2. Sell and by another card/brand if you've lost confidence
3. Live with it

As an enthusiast, I can't see you going for 3.

 

[Razyre]

Your options are:

1. Repaste -why would you void warranty. Does it have void stickers?
2. Sell and by another card/brand if you've lost confidence
3. Live with it

As an enthusiast, I can't see you going for 3.

I read about MSI having a warranty void when you remove the cooler.

Here is the quote, while perhaps not true specifically for this video card (I will check) I would imagine it is:

"Wouldn't recomend msi cards tbh wouldnt recomend msi anything.

I have a 7870 in a 2nd rig and the fan on it hits 4000rpm as soon as the card hits 56 degrees.

So ordered a AC cooler for it and when I came to install it noticed they have those cheaky "warranty void" stickers on the screws.

Oh well new card, spent 30 quid on a new cooler and now have no warranty.

Wouldn't touch another msi product if you paid me.

Source: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=256351


Repaste is my most likely option and I'm perfectly happy to do it, but not if it's a warranty void.

Where would these stickers be most likely to be found if there are any?

 

[LtMatt]

You're suffering from the boost bios throttling problem. There are three different solutions.

1. Dial back your overclock and voltage significantly. Not ideal i know. Ensure you have the power limit at +20% all the time.

2. Use tommys power hack to increase the power limit to +50%. With boost cards +30% is enough usually to remove all throttling from the card at large overclocks like you're running.

3. Use a custom bios created by someone over at oc.net. It will remove the boost part of your bios and remove the throttling. It will also give you a power limity of 50% by default. The problem is the person who is creating this bios is afk atm, so he's not making them currently. The thread on oc.net is located here.

4. If you want you can try my custom bios. Uses clocks of 1000/1400 by default. Flash this bios to your card. Ensure your card is on bios switch one before flashing. Bios switch two is your backup in case anything goes wrong. I've uploaded my custom bios which Kaboom made me. It removes the boost part of the bios and adds 50% power limit to the cards bios via default so you don't need to do the power limit hack from 2.

Bios Download Link
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qmiyyi

Bios Flashing Instructions

You might want to write this down...

You need to create a bootable usb stick.

1. Download and install the USB disk format tool here.

2. Download the Windows98 system files here.

3. Create a folder called Win98boot on your desktop, extract the files from step 2 into the folder.

4. Plug in your usb stick. Launch the USB disk format tool. Copy these settings, then click format. You need to select quick format, tick dos startup and select the Win98 folder, like ive done below.

5. Click start, then ok and it should do it.

6. Download atiflash. Extract it onto the usb stick.

7. Download my bios. Cut and paste it into the usb stick.

8. If you've done everything correctly your usb stick folder contents should look like this. (except the bios should say Matt.rom instead of HIS7950.rom)

9. Make sure all gpu's in your pc are switched onto bios 1.

10. Uninstall gpu drivers and any overclocking apps. Do not keep settings delete everything.

11. Restart your pc. Before you hear the beep keep tapping F8. Boot from the usb stick.

12. You should be at dos prompt. Type atiflash -i to get the adapter number for both your gpu's. Typically it will be 0 and 1, unless you have a gpu in a third pci-e slot. You need the adapter number to tell it which gpu to flash.

13. To flash gpu 1 type atiflash -p -f 0 Matt.rom and hit enter.

Wait for it to finish. It will prompt you to restart but before we do that we need to flash the second gpu as well.

Now do the second gpu (if you have one)

Type atiflash -p -f 1 Matt.rom

Once that has completed and you get a notification saying you can restart press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart your pc.

All going well you should get a display and boot back into windows. Now you can reinstall fresh new drivers etc. Boost voltage and boost clock is disabled, your card thinks its a non boost card from now on in and you have the option to select 50% power setting as standard with every driver install.

If something goes wrong and you get no display from the cards after flashing the bios. Turn the pc off and flick both cards bios switch to position 2 to use the stock backup bios. Turn the pc back on and all will be ok.

Good luck.

 

[Razyre]

You're suffering from the boost bios throttling problem. There are three different solutions.

1. Dial back your overclock and voltage significantly. Not ideal i know. Ensure you have the power limit at +20% all the time.

2. Use tommys power hack to increase the power limit to +50%. With boost cards +30% is enough usually to remove all throttling from the card at large overclocks like you're running.

3. Use a custom bios created by someone over at oc.net. It will remove the boost part of your bios and remove the throttling. It will also give you a power limity of 50% by default. The problem is the person who is creating this bios is afk atm, so he's not making them currently. The thread on oc.net is located here.

4. If you want you can try my custom bios. Uses clocks of 1100/1500 by default. Flash this bios to your card. Ensure your card is on bios switch one before flashing. Bios switch two is your backup in case anything goes wrong. I've uploaded my custom bios which Kaboom made me. It removes the boost part of the bios and adds 50% power limit to the cards bios via default so you don't need to do the power limit hack from 2.

Bios Download Link
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cz9o35

Bios Flashing Instructions

You might want to write this down...

You need to create a bootable usb stick.

1. Download and install the USB disk format tool here.

2. Download the Windows98 system files here.

3. Create a folder called Win98boot on your desktop, extract the files from step 2 into the folder.

4. Plug in your usb stick. Launch the USB disk format tool. Copy these settings, then click format. You need to select quick format, tick dos startup and select the Win98 folder, like ive done below.

5. Click start, then ok and it should do it.

6. Download atiflash. Extract it onto the usb stick.

7. Download my bios. Cut and paste it into the usb stick.

8. If you've done everything correctly your usb stick folder contents should look like this. (except the bios should say Matt.rom instead of HIS7950.rom)

9. Make sure all gpu's in your pc are switched onto bios 1.

10. Uninstall gpu drivers and any overclocking apps. Do not keep settings delete everything.

11. Restart your pc. Before you hear the beep keep tapping F8. Boot from the usb stick.

12. You should be at dos prompt. Type atiflash -i to get the adapter number for both your gpu's. Typically it will be 0 and 1, unless you have a gpu in a third pci-e slot. You need the adapter number to tell it which gpu to flash.

13. To flash gpu 1 type atiflash -p -f 0 Matt.rom and hit enter.

Wait for it to finish. It will prompt you to restart but before we do that we need to flash the second gpu as well.

Now do the second gpu (if you have one)

Type atiflash -p -f 1 Matt.rom

Once that has completed and you get a notification saying you can restart press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart your pc.

All going well you should get a display and boot back into windows. Now you can reinstall fresh new drivers etc. Boost voltage and boost clock is disabled, your card thinks its a non boost card from now on in and you have the option to select 50% power setting as standard with every driver install.

If something goes wrong and you get no display from the cards after flashing the bios. Turn the pc off and flick both cards bios switch to position 2 to use the stock backup bios. Turn the pc back on and all will be ok.

Good luck.

*Overwhelmed face*

Well that's a brilliant post and thanks for all the advice there haha.

Which of these would you recommend from 2, 3 and 4? Easiest is best for me. Never flashed a vBIOS before but done numerous custo BIOS flashes to a laptop. Looks like the same deal.

EDIT:

I think the regedit worked. It's a bit of a bodge, but it works XD

So at 1.225v I can stably run 1100/1400 with a max temp of 75. 75 is still too hot.

 

[Drangueos]

I have 2 MSI 7950s tfiii running at 1100/1500 and 1.25V and 20% power limit and they never clock down.

With my room temperature about 28 to 30C (hot as hell) the top card can reach 75C with default fan profile, with my fan profile it tops 70C.

75C is not that hot, before that I used to have 2 his 7950 reference ones and the top card used to get up to 86C with my room at 25C or less.

Dunno if this can make any difference, but what is the BIOS version of your cards?
mine is: 015.029.000.005.000000 (113-xxx-xxx)

 

[LtMatt]

I'd recommend option 3 or 4. Option 2 is great but you have to re-do it on every driver install. With option 4 the =50% is flashed to the bios so it stays forever, plus it removes the boost part of the card which is what causes the throttling problem.

Try and bring your voltage down, 1.25v is overkill. My cards are very volt hungry and i need 1.175v for 1100/1500. Try and copy my voltage and see how you go. Lower voltage = lower temps but increased chance of instability.

 

[Razyre]

I have 2 MSI 7950s tfiii running at 1100/1500 and 1.25V and 20% power limit and they never clock down.

With my room temperature about 28 to 30C (hot as hell) the top card can reach 75C with default fan profile, with my fan profile it tops 70C.

75C is not that hot, before that I used to have 2 his 7950 reference ones and the top card used to get up to 86C with my room at 25C or less.

Dunno if this can make any difference, but what is the BIOS version of your cards?
mine is: 015.029.000.005.000000 (113-xxx-xxx)

Just the fact that a friend is nearly 20 degrees cooler under load is insane. I'm pretty sure I have good airflow too.

BIOS: 015.031.000.001.001867 (113-C3861300-X03)

I'd recommend option 3 or 4. Option 2 is great but you have to re-do it on every driver install. With option 4 the =50% is flashed to the bios so it stays forever, plus it removes the boost part of the card which is what causes the throttling problem.

Try and bring your voltage down, 1.25v is overkill. My cards are very volt hungry and i need 1.175v for 1100/1500. Try and copy my voltage and see how you go. Lower voltage = lower temps but increased chance of instability.

I'll leave option 2 until I get ****ed with changing it back, then I'll flash it

What I do find interesting, is that this card sits at 960 all the time if I'm gaming? Is that the boost clock? Because it's reported as the clock in GPU-Z, not a boost clock. And when I set the card to 1100, it stays at 1100 constant when gaming. My laptop is using Turbo Boost 1 (Nvidia), that has a base clock of lets say 1100 and it'll boost to 1275 and stay constant at that when gaming. GPU-Z reports both base and boost clocks there.

In terms of voltage, stock it's 1188 (Higher than what you've got!?) and temperatures change by around 3 degrees from stock voltage to the one I have? I'm actually at 1.225 now and am working my way gradually down the voltages.

Another interesting point, is that I was getting system crashes at 1500MHz on the memory which is weird since apparently 7950s have very high clocking memory as a rule, so I stick that at 1400MHz. Really isn't a concern to me because I can't see how the memory needs overclocking in any way shape or form with a 384-bit bus and an already decent 5GHzish clock. Stick the memory down to 1400MHz, I can clock up further without any issue. Looks like I may have some low clocking memory chips (not too fussed).

 

[Uncle Petey]

My old Sapphire 7950 (dual-X) would 'only' get to 1150/1400 @1.15v and all the voltage in the world made no difference (and this was a fancy 'on a 7970 pcb' model...).
Temps would peak at 69-79°C depending on what I was playing.
Even putting a massive aftermarket cooler and dropping temps substantially made no difference to achievable clocks.

Overclocking is a lottery and it could just well be that your card is at it's limit, like mine was.
You may well get a little drop in temps by re-pasting as they do tend to overdo it and it can often be a little uneven and oozing out of the sides.
Quality may be questionable too. I've found that on both my last two cards that the stock paste was a little dried out on top of being poorly applied.

If you bought your MSI card here, you can remove the cooler without voiding your warranty as MSI have a little deal with OcUK to allow this.

 

[ICDP]

I may have missed it but is it a reference MSI 7950 or a TF3?

Reference 7950s would run hotter than custom cooled versions and that would explain the higher GPU temperatures.

I have an MSI 7950 TF3 non-boost that has a stock voltage of 1169 according to MSI Afterburner. To be honest I am not impressed by the TF3 fans as they do get quite loud to my ears at anything over 50% fan speed. I have flashed the BIOS with a boost edition BIOS and it does throttle at 960 core unless I use the +20% power tune.

The GPU will clock to 1250 core and 1700 VRAM with 1.3v but the fans become unbearable. I use 1150/1700 clocks and the fan never goes above 50% and temperatures stay less than 70c.

 

[wildman]

I thought you could remove MSI stock HSF without voiding warranty ? I am sure I saw a post on here somewhere from the MSI rep saying that for cards you buy from OCUK you can do this without fear of voiding warranty ?

 

[Marine-RX179]

Regarding the temp...

OP there's something you need to consider- when your friend says his 7950 is only 56C max, his card's GPU may not be under 100% load in the games he plays may it be either due to CPU bottleneck, or the games he plays is not demanding enough to require 100% load with the 7950. For example the temp of playing Left4Dead 2 and Crysis 3 (with frame rate capped/vsync to 60fps) there would be a huge temp difference.

 

[Razyre]

My old Sapphire 7950 (dual-X) would 'only' get to 1150/1400 @1.15v and all the voltage in the world made no difference (and this was a fancy 'on a 7970 pcb' model...).
Temps would peak at 69-79°C depending on what I was playing.
Even putting a massive aftermarket cooler and dropping temps substantially made no difference to achievable clocks.

Overclocking is a lottery and it could just well be that your card is at it's limit, like mine was.
You may well get a little drop in temps by re-pasting as they do tend to overdo it and it can often be a little uneven and oozing out of the sides.
Quality may be questionable too. I've found that on both my last two cards that the stock paste was a little dried out on top of being poorly applied.

If you bought your MSI card here, you can remove the cooler without voiding your warranty as MSI have a little deal with OcUK to allow this.

Well I'm not 100% sure what my limit is yet. I get 75 max on pretty much any clock that I've found thus far. I've got it happily to 1150 stable, although my method of stress testing for the minute is questionable, just using Unigine to give it a realistic real world test. I have a feeling when I start up something like Metro Last Light it's going to bomb into the ground.

See I was thinking MSI have used ****** paste and done a poor job of applying it, so perhaps a repaste would give me my extra 5 degrees to take it to 70 and make the fans bearable.

I may have missed it but is it a reference MSI 7950 or a TF3?

Reference 7950s would run hotter than custom cooled versions and that would explain the higher GPU temperatures.

I have an MSI 7950 TF3 non-boost that has a stock voltage of 1169 according to MSI Afterburner. To be honest I am not impressed by the TF3 fans as they do get quite loud to my ears at anything over 50% fan speed. I have flashed the BIOS with a boost edition BIOS and it does throttle at 960 core unless I use the +20% power tune.

The GPU will clock to 1250 core and 1700 VRAM with 1.3v but the fans become unbearable. I use 1150/1700 clocks and the fan never goes above 50% and temperatures stay less than 70c.

It's an MSI TFIII. See I'd be happy at 1150/1400 if I could get the fans below 70 degrees. At that point, they are bearable for me, in the position that the case is. Above 60%ish, they whine HORRIBLY. Unless I pump the 5.1 up below a few bars it's fairly audible and much of the time I play on a low volume to not **** off the rest of the house.

If I can get it to 70 degrees, I'd be much happier.

Regarding the temp...

OP there's something you need to consider- when your friend says his 7950 is only 56C max, his card's GPU may not be under 100% load in the games he plays may it be either due to CPU bottleneck, or the games he plays is not demanding enough to require 100% load with the 7950. For example the temp of playing Left4Dead 2 and Crysis 3 (with frame rate capped/vsync to 60fps) there would be a huge temp difference.

He's actually using Unigine the same as me to mess about with clocks on the card. He's maxing the GPU load and getting 56 degrees which is ridiculous. I'm getting 75 degrees on that and every other game I play.

Also interestingly, my ASIC is 71% vs his 58 odd, not that I'm saying it's a credible way to measure GPUs because it seems to have no real correlation to performance from what I've read.

 

[Neutronstar1989]

I think it's just a lottery, I have a sapphire dual x 7950 and @ 1.15v (1080mhz/1500mhz) my temps reach 70C with my custom fan profile (linear increase from 40C to 75C with 58% max).

If I use my second bios, which gives 1.25v, I can only reach 1170~/1575 and temps increase by approximately 8-10C in games like crysis 3.

Does your friends sapphire card run at 1.25v too? I don't understand how he's getting such a low temp

 

[kevbiss1]

All this faffing around,you could have repasted by now and cured your problem,either that or undervolt it

 

[Razyre]

I think it's just a lottery, I have a sapphire dual x 7950 and @ 1.15v (1080mhz/1500mhz) my temps reach 70C with my custom fan profile (linear increase from 40C to 75C with 58% max).

If I use my second bios, which gives 1.25v, I can only reach 1170~/1575 and temps increase by approximately 8-10C in games like crysis 3.

Does your friends sapphire card run at 1.25v too? I don't understand how he's getting such a low temp

I'm honestly not sure. His definitely isn't stable at the high clocks he was putting it at though.

Basically, **** 50-60 degrees, I just want below 70.

All this faffing around,you could have repasted by now and cured your problem,either that or undervolt it

Calm down dear, it's a conversation.

I will repaste it now people have confirmed that I won't have a voided warranty.

 

[kevbiss1]

that's good,at least you will know,ive done this before and had big temp drops,let us know the out come.

 

[Razyre]

that's good,at least you will know,ive done this before and had big temp drops,let us know the out come.

That's what I expected, will do.

I stuck a thermal pad on an old AMD part instead of re-pasting. 105 degrees. Re-pasted, got 50-60 (Single core 2.2GHz CPU from around 2004, Athlon 64 3500+ or something).

 

[Razyre]

Sorry to double post (still haven't repasted yet XD) but I've got a horizontal line that will appear for a split second every few hours on my desktop. I've had some 2K monitor woes with the U2713HM where I had this issue plus backlight bleed/cross hatching so bought an LG monitor instead.

It has been fine but I have seen another horizontal line exhibiting the same attitude. Just did it again as I typed that. This is on desktop with the card clocked down. It is a different DVI cable so that is ruled out.

However, I recently upgraded to 13.8 beta, could that be a problem? In addition to this, I did the registry hack to unlock the power limit for my 7950. Could either of these things be an issue? I assume it must be my GPU causing the problem since it's acting in the exact same nature on a different 2K screen by a different manufacturer using a different panel.

 

[Heisenberg]

I think my bro said he had a problem with flickering on the latest beta. Try rolling back mate.