7970Observation/Important Information (Please Read)

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kinjo

[H]ard|Gawd
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Posted this info in another thread but reposting in it's own thread so that it does not get lost.

It seems alot of people have questions about 7970 including things like max temp / voltage and especially regarding some of the apparent voltage regulation irregularities with this cards.

The following is a list of things I have discovered so far both by conferring with other forum users and through personal research. please feel free to add to or discuss this list or to post question that you would like answered as I want to get as much good info in one place about this card as I can so people have an easy one stop reference guide for the 7970.


1. Stock voltage for some cards is 1.05 volts while for most it is 1.17 volts however Afterburner/GPUTweak/Trixx will put all cards at a default 1.17 volts.

2. Cards with a default voltage of 1.17 can hit the limits of the CCC slider whereas ones with a default VID of 1.05 can not.

3. Cards with a stock VID of 1.05 which get auto bumped to 1.17 by oc software usually gain significant OC headroom at the new voltage putting them on par with the 1.17 VID cards.

4. Afterburner is the only software which actually reports current voltage for the 7970.

5. 7970's seem to have some sort of vdroop voltage mechanism for example a 7970 set to 1.1 volts on afterburner will only actually draw 1.07-1.08 volts at load.

6. Afterburner (but not other OC software) will sometimes report extremely shot extremely large voltage spikes which range anywhere from 1.3 volts to 1.5 volts this appears to be a software issue and not a case of the voltage actually getting that high.

7. Max safe Temp appears to be 95C

8. Anytime a 7970 exceeds 95c it will immediately move the fan up to 100% till it gets temps back under control.

9. Max safe voltage appears to be 1.3 volts (assuming you can keep it cool) no guarantees on this one could be higher or lower but it's looking like that's what it is.
 
So far at least for me this experience has not been the best.

1. Removed GTX580 and cleaned all the drivers and installed the 7970's. Installed ok but upon reboot I was introduced to a black screen with just a cursor blinking. I did a hard reboot and it finally came up.
2. Both Serious Sam 3 and Payday the heist are having issues with my PLP setup for some odd reason my mouse cursor gets thrown off to one of the side screens and basically the game crashes to the task bar and I constantly get the sounds that if I was plugging and unplugging a usb drive in windows.
3. Battlefield 3 for me seems to run good but for some reason will only run in windowed mode.


I am going to keep trying some more tonight but so far these are become annoying issue that I really did not hope I would expect. I really do not want to re-install windows just for video cards.


Any advice for me to check into???

Might just end up putting my gtx 580's back in if I keep having problems.
 
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AthlonXP said:
So far at least for me this experience has not been the best.

1. Removed GTX580 and cleaned all the drivers and installed the 7970's. Installed ok but upon reboot I was introduced to a black screen with just a cursor blinking. I did a hard reboot and it finally came up.
2. Both Serious Sam 3 and Payday the heist are having issues with my PLP setup for some odd reason my mouse cursor gets thrown off to one of the side screens and basically the game crashes to the task bar and I constantly get the sounds that if I was plugging and unplugging a usb drive in windows.
3. Battlefield 3 for me seems to run good but for some reason will only run in windowed mode.


I am going to keep trying some more tonight but so far these are become annoying issue that I really did not hope I would expect. I really do not want to re-install windows just for video cards.


Any advice for me to check into???
Click to expand...

I had the exact same problem with the black cursor and my pc not booting and it is a known issue. the solution is to make sure that you are using the drivers that came on the CD with your cards as the ones off AMD's website are known to have serious issues. also make sure that before you install the drivers off of the cd that you remove the existing drivers preferably by using the actual AMD uninstall tool as using driver sweeper can cause other issues.

Not sure about your other issues I will look into it and see what I can find but using the cd drivers may fix those as well.
 
AthlonXP said:
So far at least for me this experience has not been the best.

1. Removed GTX580 and cleaned all the drivers and installed the 7970's. Installed ok but upon reboot I was introduced to a black screen with just a cursor blinking. I did a hard reboot and it finally came up.
2. Both Serious Sam 3 and Payday the heist are having issues with my PLP setup for some odd reason my mouse cursor gets thrown off to one of the side screens and basically the game crashes to the task bar and I constantly get the sounds that if I was plugging and unplugging a usb drive in windows.
3. Battlefield 3 for me seems to run good but for some reason will only run in windowed mode.


I am going to keep trying some more tonight but so far these are become annoying issue that I really did not hope I would expect. I really do not want to re-install windows just for video cards.


Any advice for me to check into???

Might just end up putting my gtx 580's back in if I keep having problems.
Click to expand...

Try ATIMAN?

I heard it fixes some problems.

http://atiman.go-board.net/
 
AthlonXP said:
3. Battlefield 3 for me seems to run good but for some reason will only run in windowed mode.


I am going to keep trying some more tonight but so far these are become annoying issue that I really did not hope I would expect. I really do not want to re-install windows just for video cards.


Any advice for me to check into???

Might just end up putting my gtx 580's back in if I keep having problems.
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem with my 6950's for a short time. Problem was some setting in CCC had been unchecked, and although I don't remember the exact setting, I think it had to do with GPU accleration
 
reserved for the future, if anyone wants to come with me you must bring your own gear, I have only done this once.
 
AthlonXP said:
2. Both Serious Sam 3 and Payday the heist are having issues with my PLP setup for some odd reason my mouse cursor gets thrown off to one of the side screens and basically the game crashes to the task bar and I constantly get the sounds that if I was plugging and unplugging a usb drive in windows.
Click to expand...

Hi,

How did you get PLP working?

SoftTH or Windowed mode?

Or did you somehow make the new Eyefinity work with PLP resolution?

Cheers
 
Only gaming on the 30 inch at the moment. Reloaded windows and will do some more testing.
 
AthlonXP said:
Only gaming on the 30 inch at the moment. Reloaded windows and will do some more testing.
Click to expand...

So after doing a clean install of windows, the drivers installed ok and those issues you were having are no longer there?
 
Ok just played BF3 for 30 minutes. Ran great for the first 20 minutes and then my 2 side monitors started to disconnect and my game crashed!! Unless someone can help me find a fix for this (Occurs in every game) these bad boys are going back. Seriously hate shitty coded drivers. I even re-installed windows to see if that would help!!
 
AthlonXP said:
Ok just played BF3 for 30 minutes. Ran great for the first 20 minutes and then my 2 side monitors started to disconnect and my game crashed!! Unless someone can help me find a fix for this (Occurs in every game) these bad boys are going back. Seriously hate shitty coded drivers. I even re-installed windows to see if that would help!!
Click to expand...

Your side monitors work in a dx11 game, and they are a PLP setup..

This can only mean Eyefinity now supports PLP!!??

Am I missing something?
 
danwatto said:
Your side monitors work in a dx11 game, and they are a PLP setup..

This can only mean Eyefinity now supports PLP!!??

Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

No, The center 30 inch is the only monitor used for gaming.
 
""Afterburner Beta 11 will be submitted to MSI soon. Changes list includes:

- Added memory voltage control for reference design AMD RADEON 7970 graphics cards with CHL8228 voltage regulators

- Now MSI Afterburner displays target VID instead of real voltage sensor reading on "GPU voltage" graph on graphics cards equipped with CHL8228 voltage regulators. These changes are implemented to avoid confusing the beginners and prevent the hysteria about voltage drop on AMD RADEON 7970 series graphic cards spreading across different discussion forums. Experienced users, understanding the difference between target and real voltages, may still unlock the previous real voltage monitoring mode via editing the hardware profiles

- Core and memory clock limits have been extended to 180% on AMD RADEON 7970 graphics cards in unofficial overclocking mode
- Now MSI Afterburner's startup daemon routine precaches VRM I2C registers state at the first Windows startup. Precached VRM state is being used to detect default voltage instead of hardcoding default voltages into the database. Please take a note that you may forcibly perform precaching later with command line switch or disable the precaching at all via configuration file if necessary and force MSI Afterburner to use the previous hardcoded database based default voltage detection
- MSI On-Screen Display server has been upgraded to version 4.3.1. New version gives you the following improvements:
o Added workaround for AMD OpenGL driver context switching issues causing abnormally low framerate in ID Software Rage when OSD is enabled
o Added workaround for AMD OpenGL driver PBO issues causing the driver to crash or perform abnormally slow during videocapture


The main reason of releasing new version is highlighted in bold. I'm tired of seeing lamers badmouthing current version of MSI Afterburner because of it "incorrect" voltage control causing "voltage drops" in different forums. Now preceise voltage monitoring from real sensor is simply hidden from users's eyes and you see traditional target VID monitoring, which was available in the previous graphics card families.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alexey Nicolaychuk aka Unwinder, RivaTuner creator "
 
If your 2 side monitors are not being used for gaming then they are going into sleep mode after the normal 20 minutes of inactivity. Either set both monitors to never power off, or create a single centre monitor profile for your 30" monitor.

When I had Eyefinity I setup 4 profiles to be activated by keystroke only. No shortcuts created and not assigned to any exe files.

1_Monitor - Middle monitor, set to be activated by pressing (CTRL+SHIFT+1)
2_Monitors - Middle and one side monitor, your choice which one. (CTRL+SHIFT+2)
3_Monitors - All Monitors without bezel correction (CTRL+SHIFT+3)
Bezel - All Monitors with bezel correction (CTRL+SHIFT+B)

You should also setup individual profiles for each game so that the side monitors are disabled when the game is loaded.
 
kinjo said:
1. Stock voltage for some cards is 1.05 volts while for most it is 1.17 volts however Afterburner/GPUTweak/Trixx will put all cards at a default 1.17 volts.

2. Cards with a default voltage of 1.17 can hit the limits of the CCC slider whereas ones with a default VID of 1.05 can not.

3. Cards with a stock VID of 1.05 which get auto bumped to 1.17 by oc software usually gain significant OC headroom at the new voltage putting them on par with the 1.17 VID cards.
Click to expand...

Interesting. My 4 Asus 7970 VID are 1.05, and I was wondering why Afterburner was pumping the voltage top 1.175 at default, while the new Asus OC utlities (still in beta) was staying at 1.05...

1.05. Wow. Alot of headroom to OC when getting my 4 waterblocks.

So now the new hysteria will be people everywhere searching for those 1.05 7970!!!!!! LOL!
 
ICDP said:
If your 2 side monitors are not being used for gaming then they are going into sleep mode after the normal 20 minutes of inactivity. Either set both monitors to never power off, or create a single centre monitor profile for your 30" monitor.

When I had Eyefinity I setup 4 profiles to be activated by keystroke only. No shortcuts created and not assigned to any exe files.

1_Monitor - Middle monitor, set to be activated by pressing (CTRL+SHIFT+1)
2_Monitors - Middle and one side monitor, your choice which one. (CTRL+SHIFT+2)
3_Monitors - All Monitors without bezel correction (CTRL+SHIFT+3)
Bezel - All Monitors with bezel correction (CTRL+SHIFT+B)

You should also setup individual profiles for each game so that the side monitors are disabled when the game is loaded.
Click to expand...

My gripe is why should I have to do this when with a pair of 6970's before I never did. I am going to do some more testing this morning.
 
AthlonXP said:
My gripe is why should I have to do this when with a pair of 6970's before I never did. I am going to do some more testing this morning.
Click to expand...

i agree. this worked fine for me before with the 6xxx series. both with single and dual GPUs. im very disappointed AMD couldn't implement this simple feature in time before public use. isnt this the point of the 7970? running eyefinity resolutions? you'd think they'd have their ducks in a row...
 
Still trying to nail down the voltage spike issue in afterburner Unwinder (guy who developed it) over at guru3d claims that it's is due to two programs monitoring voltages at the same time but I have no monitoring program other than AB running.
 
Awesome post by the OP. I was wondering why I could only OC up to 1060MHz on stock voltage, and I didn't realize that some cards have different stock voltages. After checking in Afterburner, my card is indeed one of those with stock voltage 1.05V. I'm excited to see how much I can OC to now with 1.17V, then perhaps over the weekend I'll bump the voltage up a little more.
 
Can you see if you can do 1200 on the core stable, with 1.17v (1175 mv?)
The big key here is to see if this follows the CPU trend of lower VID chips overclocking higher than higher VID.

By the way when you run your low VID card at 1175 mv, does it run hotter than normal, compared to a card that defaults at 1175 mv?
 
this is a great thread kinjo, a lot of good info here. i wish i would have read through this when you first posted as over the last few days i've been discovering everything you outline in the first post. i would have saved a lot of time reading this.
 
I shutdown Trixx and started active monitoring in Afterburner. Idle GPU voltage is between 0.85V and 0.947V at load, voltage jumps to 1.047v so I guess I have the 1.05v bios. This is fully stable in Furmark burn test up to 1200/1575. When the fan was set to maximum temperature averaged at 65C and peaked at 66C (in a room that is about 22-23C). Going even to 1210MHz, even with a voltage boost causes rapid artifacting. When higher voltages are dialed into Afterburner, it seems that once voltage spikes to 1.19V or 1.2V is when the artifacts start to appear.

Note: I am cross posting this in a couple of other threads where it will probably be relevant.
 
Yeah I've read posts about people who have seen crashes or artifacts as soon as they hit 1.2v. Seems like it's the lower VID cards so far. I've done 1.225v fine at 1200 mhz, but I have a "high" vid 1175mv card. I don't know if 1.3v will even work, and I'm not about to test that....
 
Re: black screen after install. If there is a cursor (or even if there isn't one), try to right click on the blank desktop to change the resolution. Each of my ATI cards did the black screen trick after drivers were installed; with each, I managed to right click on a black screen and change the resolution to give a display. I could not find any documentation about this anywhere. I was using a viewsonic 24" led lcd monitor.
 
The default target voltage on my card was 1.112mV, how odd. Had to crank it to 1.8 target to get it to OC, still sags to <1.6 under load.
 
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