7950s on reference 7970 PCBs w/ unlocked voltage?

C

Caedo

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May 22, 2013
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Evenin' gents.

Friday I will depart with my Gigabyte 7950. It overclocks like a boss, is voltage unlocked (rev 1), and built on the reference 7950 PCB. That last part is the problem: water blocks for the 7950 are hard to find or not all that great. However, the 7970 gets a lot of watercooling love, especially for reference 7970 PCBs. It just so happens that some 7950s were made on exactly those PCBs.

According to this topic on OCN, the following 7950s use 7970 PCBs:

1. VTX3D HD 7950 X-Edition V2 w/ 7970 PC
2. HIS ICEQ X2 Boost
3. MSI TF3
4. Sapphire 950mhz Edition
5. A795 Fire Hurricane
6. SAPPHIRE 100352-4L and Sapphire 21196-00-20G

The goal now is to find the ones with unlocked voltages. Does anyone here know which of those boards qualify? I'm not too choosy about company or heatsink since it's going under water anyway (though the quieter the stock cooler, the happier I'll be while I wait for parts to come in).

Current reading suggests the HIS and MSI cards are both unlocked...
 
my HIS ICEQ Boost apears to have the volts unlocked.

also keep in mind the cooler actually uses more than 2 slots just enough that it blocks me from running 3 cards on my Crosshair V board. wish i would of known that before purchase since pictures dont really suggest that it would. the pictures show it extending to the sides alot but dont really show they would interfere with a card directly below.

which is kinda lame i had planned to run my 6870 between my 2 7950's to mine litecoins with the 6870.

arwawr.jpg
 
Also note, you have the HIS ICEQ listed with an X2, mine is not an X2 its the one on newegg listed for 289.99 right now its on sale from the 309.99 norm.

my settings on mine are
1125v
+20%
1100 core
1600 mem

wonder if i can bug HIS to send me a reference cooler so i can replace it on one of them so i can run 3 cards in my case, im a little upset i cant and dont really want to return them and pay to ship one back and deal with all that jazz
 
6. SAPPHIRE 100352-4L and Sapphire 21196-00-20G

When i got mine it had 21196-00-20G on the box and a sticker with 100352-4L mine is unlocked and has the best made ram as it rans 1500mhz with stock voltage
 
Wildace, the x2 version supposedly runs cooler and quieter than the non-x2 version. Can you confirm that your version uses a reference 7970 PCB and can take 7970 water blocks?

fanboy, I see both of those Sapphire cards use the reference cooler. How noisy are they by chance? It won't matter in a couple months, but I'm curious nonetheless.
 
is there an easy way for me to check? i can look tomorrow if its easy to tell from the non cooler side
 
Easiest way is to see if power is 6+6 vs 6+8 or 8+8. I think Sapphire is the only company to do a 6+6 power 7970 board and they only do it for the 7950.
 
the power connectors are 6+6 but on the pcb board it self is setup for 6+8

the newegg picture of the back of the pcb is accurate.

i think that means the iceq 1 is a normal 7950 pcb
 
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The MSI 7950 TF3 should be voltage unlocked (unless they've changed revisions again). I had three of them, but none of them overclocked very well (and two of them had really bad coil whine!).


Edit: I still have one Aquacomputer Reference 7950 full cover block if anyone wants to buy it:)
 
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Well , i use a headset so.. it can get loud but i use TRIXX fan profile as i have it set to climb with gpu temp as 60-70c is around 52% but it can hold it in check.

My gpu score 73.2% ASIC as default voltage in TRIXX is VCCD 1168 now i have tired the gpu alittle and it did crank up to 1150 pretty easy..
 
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