• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Watercooled 6970

Dale

Dale

Dale

Associate
Joined
5 Jan 2004
Posts
663
Location
Sussex
Hi chaps, got me a pair of WC'd XFX 6970's, but it seems the bu**ers won't overclock, not even a little bit.

I've tried just nudging them a bit using CCC, I've also tried MSI. I've given them voltage, more voltage, then less, and tried lots of different mild overclocks, but eventually it stacks the OS.

Just wondering if anyone has any ideas? Has anyone experienced similar? Could it just be that these cards don't fancy it?

Standard clocks they are solid as a rock, and never miss a beat.

Temps are very cool on them (average 35-38 degrees in Windows), highest I've seen them get is 45 when playing BF3.

Is there a BIOS upgrade for them that might help? (never flashed a GFX card before).

Appreciate thoughts.
 
Leave them as they are, they're plenty of power for 1080p.

If you've tried everything else to OC them and none of it worked, I doubt anything else will.

Last thing you want to be doing is playing around with the BIOS of £400 of cards wit no arranty :)
 
Should have mentioned in the first post, I have an 5760x1200 eyefinity setup. BF3 hits around 50-60fps on medium, and on high it's at 25-35 (maybe 40 in places) - but not really a "comfortable" gaming experience on that if I'm honest.

@Surveyor, yes, I've tried that on various settings, must admit, not 100% sure what it does...
 
strange mine goes with stock cooler 950/1450 with stock voltage didn't try to get higher as it is enough for me and gets hotter if i did.

what clocks they come in maybe they clocked to the max out of the box ?
 
Interesting, 880 and 1375 out the box. I am a bit perplexed by this, I have to be honest.

I was hoping I've just not done something somewhere, maybe there was something on the motherboard I needed to turn on... but stumped to here.
 
whats the power supply ? did they overclock while they were on air cooler ?

edit: did you applied waterblock correctly vrm cooled ?
 
Last edited:
psychas said:
strange mine goes with stock cooler 950/1450 with stock voltage didn't try to get higher as it is enough for me and gets hotter if i did.

what clocks they come in maybe they clocked to the max out of the box ?
Click to expand...

Same here! Mine will also do 950/1450 at stock volts without having to increase the Power limits and 1000/1500 with a little tweak in volts! allthough I run both cards at 950/1450 which is plenty fast enough for a single screen.
 
psychas said:
whats the power supply ? did they overclock while they were on air cooler ?

edit: did you applied waterblock correctly vrm cooled ?
Click to expand...

The powersupply is currently a 1000w Cougar CMX unit, 80 Plus Bronze.

To be honest, we put them straight onto the waterblocks when originally purchased, not plugged in whilst on their air coolers.


MichaelM said:
Are you saying they won't even go to 881 on the core?
Click to expand...

Yup, that is correct. I just tried (via MSI) to put just the core to 881 and it crashed and re-booted (bluescreen).

Just a thought, do you think this could be MSI, rather than the cards? Other than CCC, are there any other recommended software products to use to OC a graphics card?
 
Dale said:
The powersupply is currently a 1000w Cougar CMX unit, 80 Plus Bronze.

To be honest, we put them straight onto the waterblocks when originally purchased, not plugged in whilst on their air coolers.




Yup, that is correct. I just tried (via MSI) to put just the core to 881 and it crashed and re-booted (bluescreen).

Just a thought, do you think this could be MSI, rather than the cards? Other than CCC, are there any other recommended software products to use to OC a graphics card?
Click to expand...

Try this https://www.sapphireselectclub.com/ssc/TriXX/TriXX.aspx allthough I use AB!
 
Thanks Geeman, that seems to be working a bit better, I've got a run of 3DMark11 off a clock of 1002 on the GPU and 1497 on the Memory clock. Pushed it to 1080 and 1504 (just to push the memory above 1500) and instability returned - Obviously don't mind this so much, there is a limit to how far we can go :-)

I've put the "board Power Li" at 20 - not entirely sure what this is, but was assuming it was a percentage of extra power to be made available should it be required??

Temps are still well below 50 degrees.
 
So far so good with using TriXX. Can't seem to go any higher than 1ghz core and 1497 memory thought. TriXX has the power modifier option (up to "20"), but doesn't appear to have anything built in to modify the actual VCore for the cards?? Should I use a seperate application to up the VCore to see if the reason it won't go past 1/1500 is down to power?

I am watercooled on both cards, temps are still very low (no higher than 50 degrees during an Extreme run of 3DMark11) - would like to try for more if possible.

Thanks again for the suggestions, big help so far :-)
 
Dale said:
So far so good with using TriXX. Can't seem to go any higher than 1ghz core and 1497 memory thought. TriXX has the power modifier option (up to "20"), but doesn't appear to have anything built in to modify the actual VCore for the cards?? Should I use a seperate application to up the VCore to see if the reason it won't go past 1/1500 is down to power?

I am watercooled on both cards, temps are still very low (no higher than 50 degrees during an Extreme run of 3DMark11) - would like to try for more if possible.

Thanks again for the suggestions, big help so far :-)
Click to expand...

What version of TriXX are you using? You may have to except you've just found the limits of your cards. Also! have you tried clocking the cards independently of each other to find your max clock on each of the individual cards?
 
geeman1979 said:
What version of TriXX are you using? You may have to except you've just found the limits of your cards. Also! have you tried clocking the cards independently of each other to find your max clock on each of the individual cards?
Click to expand...

Current version: V4.3.0.

Good point on the individual clocking, not thought of that. True, I may have found the limit, which is kinda disappointing, especially on a WC setup.

It is odd that MSI AB doesn't work at all though, still not sure why that is...

Only odd thing I have seen with Trixx is that the voltage option only has 0-20 available. I can't seem to set it to 1300 or 1200 etc as people have done. Not sure why that is?
 
Does seem strange that you cant use AB. AB would allow you to take your voltage up to 1.3v allthough you will be limited on how far you can push the sliders up as they only go up to 1000 core clock and 1500 Memory clock anyway. Ive found the Power limit function makes no odds on my cards wether it's set to -20 or +20.
 
I've seen other people use Trixx and have the option to actually change the voltage (it was in place of the power slider...) - plus my version of MSI (I'm quite sure) allowed me past 1000 and 1500...?

Maybe I may try an older version of Trixx, see what that achieves.
 
geeman1979 said:
allthough you will be limited on how far you can push the sliders up as they only go up to 1000 core clock and 1500 Memory clock anyway.
Click to expand...

i believe you can unlock the sliders in afterburner by agreeing to their unlocked safety thingy in the config files :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom