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Stumped - Overclocking

Rik1254

Rik1254

Rik1254

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11 Jul 2011
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Abertillery - S.Wales
NEW ISSUE.....post 5



I get the whole OC practice, but whenever I do it, it never works.

For exmaple, today I bought a Sapphire HD7950 VX, 850/5000 stock, 950/5000 "Boost button".
Now on the stock bios (non boost button), if I try to overclock, once I click apply in MSi AB, the settings become permenant and will not reduce down, meaning its at full tilt all the time (I only tested this over a 5 minute period, but Im fairly certain it wouldnt change).

Am I doing something wrong?
Im now downloading sapphire Trixx as Ive had some good results from this before now, just everyone recommends MSi AB.
 
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Seems like Ive got a borked card, it wont clock past 880mhz core. Considering it should auto clock to 950 with the boost button, think Ive got caught short here.

EDIT:
Right, just upped the volts to 13% (HWmonitor shows 1.19v?) (MSi AB) and it will hold stable at 950 core, <13% will crash.

So I thought Id try a little OC to see how far it will go.
Right now Im sat at 1000/1500, still at 13% (1.19v).

I need to go out right now, but when I get in, Ill try and push the OC as high as it'll go on the 13%.


Now Im a 100% GPU OC novice, is 1.19v (ish) safe? Whats the max volts I can go to safely? or is it just a case of "if the temps are fine, dont worry"?
 
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I don't know myself about the 7*** series safe limits mate so I'll let someone with more experience answer.

I have a feeling anything up to 1.2V is 100% OK as long as your temps are in check.
 
What do you mean 13%?if thats the power target you can safely set it to +20. It just allows the card to draw more power temporarily if it needs it, and helps stability.

As Rusty said, temps are your main concern. Keep it under 70 degrees if at all possible, it helps stability when overclocked.

What is your max temp at your current settings when you run heaven 3.0?
 
psychodil said:
What do you mean 13%?if thats the power target you can safely set it to +20. It just allows the card to draw more power temporarily if it needs it, and helps stability.
On MSi AB, you have Core Voltage (mV), which is locked for me, then Power limit whihc is -20% to +20%, I currently have that at 13%

As Rusty said, temps are your main concern. Keep it under 70 degrees if at all possible, it helps stability when overclocked.

What is your max temp at your current settings when you run heaven 3.0?
Im yet to run heaven, but will do in the next 10-20 minutes. So far using MSi kombuster (the bundled program with AB), Ive not hit more than 55c and fans at 45%

Max 61c following the settings in the Heaven benchy thread and the following AB settings
Vcore - Stock
Power limit - +13%
Core clock - 1000
Mem clock - 1500
Fan - auto
Click to expand...



Geo-Gamer said:
hey mate aint the sapphire 7950 vapor-x you got voltage locked?
No idea if its locked, the HUD on both CCC and MSi AB both look that same, and both have power limit. Same as with every other card Ive used.
Click to expand...
 
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Obviously dont have the card, but do you have powertune at max 20%? Then it should auto boost to 950mhz when required.

And you say boost button??? The only button i can see is too switch between bios's
 
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Nickolp1974 said:
If you are on the latest drivers and the card is not doing what it is advertised to do, then yes. How long have you had it?
Click to expand...

Well Ive uninstalled all drivers (that I could find) and reinstalled with the latest I could find.
Ill give it till tomorrow to make my decision as Ive currently got it at 1000core.

Nickolp1974 said:
Obviously dont have the card, but do you have powertune at max 20%? Then it should auto boost to 950mhz when required.

And you say boost button??? The only button i can see is too switch between bios's
Click to expand...

Ill try it at 20% to see if it hits 950mhz, but as a scale, Im currently on 13% and Im at 1000mhz set manually.

The boost button Im on about is a button where the typical dual bios switch would be. After reading everything I can find, it does depend on the volts yoru pushing through it as it says "up to 950mhz".
As above, Ill give it till tomorrow to make my mind up as its currently running at 1000core.
 
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Right read a bit more, unless i have read this thread wrong, you need to boot the pc with button pressed, then you will get the boosted bios. Pressing whilst the pc is on will do nothing.



Snip from a review
Sapphire's HD 7950 Vapor-X is a well-rounded custom design HD 7950. It comes with an overclock out of the box that gives it a 4% performance lead over the reference design HD 7950. Sapphire used AMD's dual BIOS feature to put a second BIOS on the card that runs the card at even higher clocks of 950 MHz, resulting in another 3% improvement. What makes this mode much more appealing is the fact that Sapphire did not increase the GPU voltage to achieve stability. As a result, power, noise, and heat are not significantly higher than in normal mode, which is why I recommend all users activate Boost mode as default. This leaves normal mode without a real benefit. It would have been nice if Sapphire had optimized the normal BIOS for super-low noise-levels, easy given the low temperatures. I also miss an overclock on the memory.
 
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Just finished speaking with a sapphire rep in the US, essentially some of the cards arent tested as fully as others and it seems that mine would be one of those cards.
All I needed to do was turn the computer on and off a couple of times and monitor what the clocks are. 5th time and the latest drivers thanks to a special download and its finally 950/1500 as stock :D

Thanks for the help guys.
 
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