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sapphire 7970

atomic7431

atomic7431

atomic7431

Soldato
Joined
18 Feb 2004
Posts
3,095
Location
Lincolnshire
need help please

ok i did post a bit about this yesterday and now i need some answers please.

i cant get the sapphire 7970 to clock in ccc past 1050/1575 and be stable on stock volts. now everyone seems to be able to do this.
Also i have a half display during bios loading screens and had this initially on the desktop but seems to have fixed itself, weird.

Questions are do i return the card under dsr or do i have to accept that this card is bad silicon?

i have a corsair tx650w psu.
i called ocuk this morning but they said i have to come on the forums to get help and if you think its faulty i should return it for them to test :confused:
now i was quoted on the phone that ocing is not something they can guarentee, but surely it should perform like all the others out there?

what do people think and what would you do as i dont want to be charged a fee etc if it turns out they think its not faulty.
 
It's possible you just have a 'bad' chip which won't overclock as well as others.

If that's the case send it back under the DSR and try your luck again if you wish.

Have you been setting the Power Control Setting in the CCC to +20% while trying to overclock?

When overclocking, there is one important slider you must set no matter what program you are using to overclock. You will maximize the Power Control Settings to +20% when overclocking any AMD Radeon video card. This will allow the video card to have a higher maintainable TDP, and in result, better performance. We've seen past video cards where this has been an issue, and we have overclocked with little performance gain. When we maxed out this slider, then the overclocking performance we were looking for was there.
Click to expand...
 
Poor overclocking doesn't make it faulty, as it is outside the spec of the product is rated/guaranteed to be working at. You could however return it under DSR, but you will have to pay the delivery for sending it back out of your own pocket in order to get a refund.

In terms of your overclocking not going as far as other people, it could be your Sapphire card has a lower "stock voltage" than people with 7970 of other brands. Not much you can do about it except for waiting for MSI Afterburner update to support voltage unlock, or flashing your card to a different brand's bios (which I wouldn't recommend). But of course, there's also the possibility of you have an unlucky draw on the chip, which require more voltage than others. It's like buying a CPU chip...you only get the choice to choose what CPU to buy, but not CPU with a specific low VID from retailers.
 
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was gonna see what afterburner will work like as thats what i had with my 5850, i have set the 20% slider and no difference. dont want to dsr it if i can but i do also have this half screen issue on the bios loading screens.
lower stock voltage is possible, need afterburner to check it or gpuz will look at that and see what i can figure out.

edit i see msi afterburner supports the new cards and voltage as of the 6th jan
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Poor overclocking doesn't make it faulty, as it is outside the spec of the product is rated/guaranteed to be working at. You could however return it under DSR, but you will have to pay the delivery for sending it back out of your own pocket in order to get a refund.

In terms of your overclocking not going as far as other people, it could be your Sapphire card has a lower "stock voltage" than people with 7970 of other brands. Not much you can do about it except for waiting for MSI Afterburner update to support voltage unlock, or flashing your card to a different brand's bios (which I wouldn't recommend). But of course, there's also the possibility of you have an unlucky draw on the chip, which require more voltage than others. It's like buying a CPU chip...you only get the choice to choose what CPU to buy, but not CPU with a specific low VID from retailers.
Click to expand...

MSI Afterburner Beta 10 supports voltage control on all of the reference design HD7970's.

Tweaking the voltage is a bit "iffy" though, not due to a problem, but due to how Afterburner reads the voltages. The HD7970 has voltage sensors that allow voltage to be shown in real time as opposed to a target VID (like the HD69xx). Coupled with Vdroop this can make it slightly confusing (at first) exactly what voltage the card is running at based on what you set in Afterburner.

As an example in MSI Afterburner I set the following:

Set Voltage on slider - 1.112v
Afterburner graph reads - 1.087v

In game voltage fluctuates between 1.04 and 1.06v.

Quotes from Unwinder on the subject:

Unwinder said:
Fluctuatuing voltages are NORMAL and EXPECTED on 7970 series. CHL8228 voltage controllers installed on these cards are equipped with voltage monitoring sensors, which allow you to see the REAL voltages monitored by sensor, which are SUPPOSED to fluctuate due to vdroop and other factors. You're NOT seeing actual monitored voltages on other cards because you're seeing only TARGET VIDs in monitoring area, and the voltages are fluctuating there too, you don't see it just because there are no real voltage readback circuits onboard.
Click to expand...

Additional quote regarding differences in what is set and what actually appears on the graphs:

Unwinder said:
Because VRM has a non-ideal output voltage accuracy, especially under load.
Click to expand...
 
ok been playing around with afterburner and the most i can get without problems is 1100/1575 with 1112v and fan set to 60% which gives me a temp under load of around 68 and a score of 1878 in unigine
 
I'm a novice at over locking but used overdrive in CCC on the my new sapphire 7970 and was able to reach 1125/1575 with +20 power and all fine in 3dmark11 and playing an hour of BF3.
 
anything above 1075 cor and it freezes up really considering sending this card back? wondering if psu is an issue 650w corsair tx and why this display issue is still there, gonna try and borrow someones monitor to see if it still does it.
 
try setting the fan profile to step up the same as the card temp. Set voltage to 1174 and put the clocks to 1125/1575 using afterburner. Mine was exactly how you describe until I did that.
 
atomic7431 said:
anything above 1075 cor and it freezes up really considering sending this card back? wondering if psu is an issue 650w corsair tx and why this display issue is still there, gonna try and borrow someones monitor to see if it still does it.
Click to expand...

Couple of points:

With AMD setting the clocks at 925mhz leads me to think that cards that clock like yours will be very common. Manufacturing yields will have driven that clock rate, and I'm guessing that AMD will be binning the more capable chips for the manufacturers will to pay a premium for them.

Is a 15% overclock something to be upset about?
 
i take your point its just all the places were saying just move the sliders and job done easy oc but thats proving not the case. I accept you can have differing silicon etc but practically all reviews were saying the same.
Ive now used the settings as posted above `Set voltage to 1174 and put the clocks to 1125/1575 using afterburner` and after i had tried all sorts of settings myself, this one seems to have gotten me somewhere, im running tests as we speak and things are going, dare i say, well so far.
Still have this half screen issue but off to brother in laws to test on a normal pc monitor to see what happens will post results asap.
 
atomic7431 said:
i take your point its just all the places were saying just move the sliders and job done easy oc but thats proving not the case. I accept you can have differing silicon etc but practically all reviews were saying the same.
Ive now used the settings as posted above `Set voltage to 1174 and put the clocks to 1125/1575 using afterburner` and after i had tried all sorts of settings myself, this one seems to have gotten me somewhere, im running tests as we speak and things are going, dare i say, well so far.
Still have this half screen issue but off to brother in laws to test on a normal pc monitor to see what happens will post results asap.
Click to expand...

if its a 120hz display you got with half a screen just unplug it from the mains, leave it 10 secs then plug it back in. They all do it occaisionally.
 
650w is presumably the bare minimum it can run on isn't it? Maybe the stability is power related.

That said you're not guaranteed any performance beyond that which is specified, everyones luck with silicon is different really. Not sure how you can think it's fine to return under DSR just because it won't overclock sufficiently?
 
ok tested on a 22" samsung and the bios was displayed fine but using the hdmi with a cable convertor too dvi. will keep an eye on the oc and if stable then great, as for dsr as said before from everywhere you look at reviews and what gibbo said on this site they should oc to ccc settings without bother.
Ive disconnected everything for ages and still makes no difference as to how is displays on my panasonic plasma 42", even now it displays wrong on load up of bios and im missing most the right of the display.
 
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