Just thought I would share this, I'm sure quite a lot of people already know or have done this but I hadn't until now and have had amazing results.
I have 2 MSI 7970oc cards in crossfire and with heavy gaming they would reach and maintain temps of 82 to 85c in a very well ventilated case. Removing the side panel made little difference and I was getting fed up with the noise of the fans at those temps.
I decided to drop the clocks to AMD reference stocks of 925MHz core and 1375MHz memory and saw virtually no difference in fps (factory oc is 1010MHz core and 1375MHz memory). I then began reducing the voltage from stock of 1170mV and tested for stability using Heaven with everything on max. I am now stable at 995mV on both cards and temps under load have dropped to 68 to 70c which is an amazing 15c difference and the cards are quiet at last! My CPU temp has also dropped a couple of degrees too, I assume this is due to not having 2 cards acting like heaters in my case now
Not sure if I am just lucky on both my 7970's or if they are generally overvolted to start with and all 7970's can operate on such reduced power?
I used afterburner to make the adjustments and GPUz to monitor the power under load.
I have 2 MSI 7970oc cards in crossfire and with heavy gaming they would reach and maintain temps of 82 to 85c in a very well ventilated case. Removing the side panel made little difference and I was getting fed up with the noise of the fans at those temps.
I decided to drop the clocks to AMD reference stocks of 925MHz core and 1375MHz memory and saw virtually no difference in fps (factory oc is 1010MHz core and 1375MHz memory). I then began reducing the voltage from stock of 1170mV and tested for stability using Heaven with everything on max. I am now stable at 995mV on both cards and temps under load have dropped to 68 to 70c which is an amazing 15c difference and the cards are quiet at last! My CPU temp has also dropped a couple of degrees too, I assume this is due to not having 2 cards acting like heaters in my case now
Not sure if I am just lucky on both my 7970's or if they are generally overvolted to start with and all 7970's can operate on such reduced power?
I used afterburner to make the adjustments and GPUz to monitor the power under load.