Which 'This Week Only' 7950 and PSU?

[Vilhjalmir]

Hi all, new to the forums so sorry if this is flogging a dead horse! The title says it all really, I'm after a 7950 and noticed that ocuk are selling three at the same price of £239.99.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-065-HS
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-098-GI
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-190-MS

I've been looking at benchmarks and reviews and all three seem pretty neck and neck noise/temp-wise. I don't fancy playing the diode lottery with the MSI FrozrIII, especially if it means breaking something off the card to make it work properly. I like the HIS IceQ's exhaust cooler design but the warranty is a bit shorter and apparently they aren't a great company to deal with. The Gigabyte W3 is another lottery as to whether you get a 900MHz unlocked or 1000MHz voltage locked board and supposedly runs a little cooler than the other two. At the minute I'm leaning towards the Gigabyte, just wondered if anyone on the forums could add their 2 cents?

Another quick question I had was whether a 600W PSU (specifically http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-048-CS) would be enough for an i5 2500K (OCed) system with one of the 7950s? I'm sure it is but it doesn't hurt to ask and I've been recommended units as high as 1200W!

 

[whyscotty]

I would go with the WF3, PSU you linked will be fine

 

[tommybhoy]

I have had 6 79's, 2-70's and 4-50's:

7970 WF, ok silent@idle, aggressive when it hits 60c, medium clocker@1150MHz but developed a fault within days-returned.


His Ice-Q 7950, annoying grating noise@idle, not bad on the noise under load, rear venting too-tremendous clocker@1200MHz-returned as I'm anal about noise.


MSI 7970 OC another tremendous clocker@1200MHz+/1850MHz on the memory but died out of the blue-gutted but full refund as they are hard to get now-seriously bad noise levels but it was sat on top of the fantastic AC Extreme.


XFX 7950 seriously cheap@£200 inc Never Settle bundle-Flawed cooler, poor clocker@1100MHz max voltage through Trixx(meant to be voltage locked), it's now getting passed on to a friend.


Another Ice-Q, monster clocker@1250MHz+/1650MHz His iTurbo full core/vram voltage support-this one doesn't have the grating problem-guessing His sorted it out.


MSI TFIII bought the other day, no diode issue, fan works as it should, 1170MHz/1600MHz+(stopped pushing as it doesn't need to go that far could go further on the vram), but AB doesn't apply voltage even though AB reports it as applied, so Trixx to the rescue again, but no vram voltage option-yet(upcoming newer Trixx is supposed to have vram voltage adjustment support).

For gaming@1080p, although the 7970 was fantastic and I was very happy with it, the price difference you pay is only noticeable from your wallets pov.

If it runs on a 70, it runs just as good on a 50 when they are both oc'ed, the only way I would say go 70 is for high res gaming or bench marking-where the little extra oomph(the vram clocks considerably higher due to higher grade chips, so at least there's some justification) will see you good.

So what ones my overall best recommendation?

It can only be this one:

1 x HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H795QC3G2M) with Crysis 3 & Bioshock PC Games £239.99





Just found out it's on offer and I never noticed, but it's time for tommy to just be content now.

I caved in and bought another this morning btw.

OcUK deal with His warranty afaik, but you could ask in CS to clarify.

Psu you linked is more than up for the task-unless you want to add another 7950, then the 750W version would do.

 

[Vilhjalmir]

Thanks guys, at least that's the PSU put to bed!

Cheers for the detailed reply tommy, sorry you had to spend another £240

I've posted a thread in CS so we'll see what they say, it was just the fact the warranty is 2 years instead of 3 and I didn't fancy having to wait 90 days for a RMA response if something went wrong!

The exhaust cooler really is tempting me as my case has pretty poor airflow and it sounds relatively quiet (guessing via youtube videos at least). I was also wondering about the boost feature as I'm not quite sure how it works. If you OC the card does the boost still kick in and add x% to what you've already added to the clocks, or is it a target for if you leave it at factory settings?

 

[tommybhoy]

The cooler is the best bar none out of all the ones I've used in the post above(excluding the mighty AC Extreme), great combination of noise levels while dumping all the heat out the case, win win.

If you oc it through AMD CCC(1100MHz), the boost can be erratic I found out last night with swift spiking up and down clocks-not cool and afaik, that's AMD's powerplay kicking in, even if set to +20%.

But, using the official His Itool, without touching anything else and only putting the core to 1100MHz, it's static, holds firm@1100MHz and good to go.

 

[Vilhjalmir]

Nice, and you will shortly have two of the wee beasties!

Would I still use CCC for other card settings (sorry, I've used nvidia cards for ages so not sure what's going on with CCC) and the Itool instead of MSI afterburner? Does the Itool let you set up fan profiles and could I still use afterburner for video capture without it trying to take over?

 

[tommybhoy]

Nice, and you will shortly have two of the wee beasties!

Hopefully this will be the one and I can leave it at that, can't believe I have had soo many.

It's a total pita that one program does 'x' amount of gpus and another only works with 'y', I'm just looking for ease of use instead of having to use two programs everytime I want to set clocks.

Would I still use CCC for other card settings (sorry, I've used nvidia cards for ages so not sure what's going on with CCC) and the Itool instead of MSI afterburner? Does the Itool let you set up fan profiles and could I still use afterburner for video capture without it trying to take over?

I wouldn't use CCC for clocking the Ice-Q now that I know about the clock spikes tbh.

Use His Itool for all your clocking/fan profiles-it's fully voltage unlocked on both the core/vram for the card and use AB for it's other features-but don't use any oc'ing features though as it will conflict with iTool.

AB monitoring/OSD is fine for screen capture too, but you have to open it after you use itools for clocking or you won't get a proper indication of clocks etc and it will nullify any Itool voltage adjustments.

Dxtory is good for screen capture I have heard, and RadeonPro is simply a must for AMD users(similar to Nvida inspector being a must for Nvidia), there is a thread here about RadeonPro, it's in beta and is fallible however and won't work on some titles, but has fantastic features like individual game profile driver tweaks, adaptive vysnc(Nvidia style), and in built SweetFX support and in-game 'on the fly' MSAA/FXAA adjustment.


A little bit of advice from tommy:

Coming from Nvidia(or vice versa), it's best to keep an open mind using the control panel-they are different and a lot of folks don't like the change as features are in different places, if they have it at all btw.

You will get plenty of help in the forum btw, just ask and someone will help.

 

[Vilhjalmir]

I wouldn't use CCC for clocking the Ice-Q now that I know about the clock spikes tbh.

Dxtory is good for screen capture I have heard, and RadeonPro is simply a must for AMD users(similar to Nvida inspector being a must for Nvidia), there is a thread here about RadeonPro, it's in beta and is fallible however and won't work on some titles, but has fantastic features like individual game profile driver tweaks, adaptive vysnc(Nvidia style), and in built SweetFX support and in-game 'on the fly' MSAA/FXAA adjustment.

A little bit of advice from tommy:

Coming from Nvidia(or vice versa), it's best to keep an open mind using the control panel-they are different and a lot of folks don't like the change as features are in different places, if they have it at all btw.

You will get plenty of help in the forum btw, just ask and someone will help.

Thanks for the advice, by using CCC I meant for things like vibrance, triple buffering, global AA settings and the like. But it seems RadeonPro will have a few more of the features that I've gotten used to!

Hopefully everyone else on the forums is as helpful as you are! One more thing before I pull the trigger, what are the card dimensions (roughly)? I can't seem to find any concrete figures but some places say over 12 inches, which simply wouldn't fit in my case!

 

[tommybhoy]

Np.

I don't know off hand I'm afraid and not near the PC, I'm at work just now but can tell you that it's the longest/widest of them all due to the cooler overhanging the PCB.

It's slightly shorter than my AC Extreme cooler though which is about 12", at a guess your talking ~29cm in length while slightly protruding towards the side panel too.

If your lucky and I remember, I will measure it sometime tonight tomorrow.

Triple buffering, AA settings can be setup on a global profile, and/or individual game profiles, vibrance/colour/scaling settings CCC panel.

 

[Vilhjalmir]

Damn, you're right, it seems to be somewhere between 26 and 29.5cm. After all this I think my case may be too small for any of them!

Thanks for the assist in any case, I'll do some measuring up and see if it will squeeze in or if I can take a hack saw to the hard drive bays

 

[tommybhoy]

Oh well, I was 5mm out!

http://www.hisdigital.com/un/product2-725.shtml

Dremel time!