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Difference between 7950s?

I would go with the MSI, that version of the Powercolor its the first and older model of the 7950 also its slower out of the box and the cooling solution its pure crap, not sure but i think due to the older model it could be reference PCB in those matter MSI will be better also better cooling will allow to worth the Extra money due to better overclock margin..
 
Mavvok said:
Isn't there a 7970 bios hack you can do also?
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure they've made that pretty much inpossible on the newer revisions of 7950's.
Also, I'm with Araxie on the design choice... go for MSI or even something like PowerColor 7950. Stay away from the reference (crap) cooler cards....!!!!
 
mzs_biteme said:
I'm pretty sure they've made that pretty much inpossible on the newer revisions of 7950's.
Also, I'm with Araxie on the design choice... go for MSI or even something like PowerColor 7950. Stay away from the reference (crap) cooler cards....!!!!
Click to expand...

Someone recommended I stick with a reference cooler because they push air out of the case, I'm running a coolermaster elite 130 case right now so there isn't a ton of airflow.

Anyone have any feedback on this card: http://www.microcenter.com/product/...ost_Clock_3072MB_GDDR5_PCIe_30_x16_Video_Card ???
 
Mavvok said:
I'm assuming the cooler on the HIS works pretty well?
Click to expand...

its blower desing.. it will push the entire air out of the case and yes its a solid cooler that will work much better than the single fan Powercolor, also the powercolor its not blower desing, if you check its a regular fan that pull the heat into the case, also its a poorer desing in the heatsink.. so between the HIS and the Powercolor i would take the HIS.
 
Araxie said:
its blower desing.. it will push the entire air out of the case and yes its a solid cooler that will work much better than the single fan Powercolor, also the powercolor its not blower desing, if you check its a regular fan that pull the heat into the case, also its a poorer desing in the heatsink.. so between the HIS and the Powercolor i would take the HIS.
Click to expand...

Okay, then I'll grab the HIS.

The cooler on the twin frozr just pulls case air over the heat sink and doesn't really take it anywhere right?

Well I guess my next question would be if I have a fan pulling air in the front and one of the dual fan coolers practically up against a vent on the side, would the cooler be as effective as the blower design?

Also, thanks for the help. :cool:
 
the Twin Frozr exhaust the ir both Rear of the case and part of the air into the case.. at lower fan speeds most air its exhaust by the rear, at high fan speed inside the case and rear the case, wich its not bad into your case because the side panel its really close to the GPU and the heat will out fast.. the thing that really could help its the MSI run really cold compared to reference desing wich could help in your little case.. if you still add the MSI to the Equation i keep my vote to MSI if not then HIS will do well his job.
 
The MSI TF3 is voltage unlocked IF you get the right card.
You can identify it by the serial number;

MSI voltage unlocked cards have serial numbers that start with:
602-V277-17SBxxyy (xx is the year manufactured and yy is the month)
These are the cards that have the 8+6 pin power connectors.

MSI also has at least 2 other versions that are voltage locked, all sold as the TF3 7950 OC/BE (with boost).
Their serial numbers start as:
602-V276-130Bxxxxxxxx
and
602-V276-18SBxxxxxxxx

MSI warranties by serial number, so it's transferrable, but you pay a labor fee during the 3rd year.
Gigabyte cards are all voltage locked, so are powercolor & HIS AFAIK.

I also had a XFX DD 7950 and that card's heatsink was MUCH worse than the MSI TF3. The TF3 hsf actually works very well if you lap it with some 220 grit sandpaper and put better paste on there.

There was a MSI TF3 7970 on sale just last week for $264 after rebate. The TF3 7950 went on sale as cheap as $180, but a lot of people got them at $200-$220. For $250+, I would hold out for the new cards.

There is a Sapphire 7950 on sale today at Tigerdirect for $190. It should have unlocked voltage, and would be the best choice out of all these at these prices.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8140415&CatId=7387
 
I'm not particularly worried about whether or not the card is voltage locked as I won't be OC'ing a whole lot (if any)


Thanks for the info though J Macker. :)
 
Mavvok said:
Someone recommended I stick with a reference cooler because they push air out of the case, I'm running a coolermaster elite 130 case right now so there isn't a ton of airflow.

Anyone have any feedback on this card: http://www.microcenter.com/product/...ost_Clock_3072MB_GDDR5_PCIe_30_x16_Video_Card ???
Click to expand...

I know you already picked a card, but I just wanted to chime in here about this HIS cooler and blower designs, in general:

I have a HIS 7870 that came with this same cooler setup. i got it because at the time, it was a good deal. But I knew that I would probably not like the blower design and I was right!

People seem to over emphasize pushing the air directly out of the case. That's neat and certainly helps with ambient temps. But they ignore the fact that a little turbine blower fan then has the responsibility of getting the heat away from the heatsink. They just can't push enough air, to do this really well. Especially if noise is an issue.

and it is the case with this HIS blower. My 7870 would reach nearly 80c, when maxed in Kombustor or AMD's "Leon" tech demo. It would hit low 70's in BF3. Even with the fan maxed, which is quite loud.

The heatsink itself is decently sized and of good design. I tore off the shroud and turbine fan, then twist tied two generic 80mm case fans to the top of the heatsink. Temps in each scenario mentioned above dropped at least 10c. This is not the first card I've done this with. To cool computer chips, you need to move a lot of air, right into the heatsinks (that ideally, are fairly sizeable). having a small fan some distance away, via a shroud, pushing air out/over the length of the heatsink, is not ideal.

If everything else in your case has decent cooling and you have at least average ventilation, ambient temps will not be an issue. Most power supplies exhaust, most of the tower style CPU coolers can be oriented for push/pull with a rear exhaust case fan. This is plenty, to control ambient temps. and having everything up a couple of degrees average is better than having your videocard running well past the redzone, when actually using it.
 
Both will be loud though the MSI will be quieter, and cooler

Underlying manufacturing processes have changed over the life of the 7000 series, but the MSI one should still be a good overclocker

That particular Powercolor looks to be what is called a reference card, that is, something straight from AMD with no frills that happens to have the Powercolor name on it. They have other, better models. MSI also has some reference cards
 
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chameleoneel said:
I know you already picked a card, but I just wanted to chime in here about this HIS cooler and blower designs, in general:

I have a HIS 7870 that came with this same cooler setup. i got it because at the time, it was a good deal. But I knew that I would probably not like the blower design and I was right!

People seem to over emphasize pushing the air directly out of the case. That's neat and certainly helps with ambient temps. But they ignore the fact that a little turbine blower fan then has the responsibility of getting the heat away from the heatsink. They just can't push enough air, to do this really well. Especially if noise is an issue.

and it is the case with this HIS blower. My 7870 would reach nearly 80c, when maxed in Kombustor or AMD's "Leon" tech demo. It would hit low 70's in BF3. Even with the fan maxed, which is quite loud.

The heatsink itself is decently sized and of good design. I tore off the shroud and turbine fan, then twist tied two generic 80mm case fans to the top of the heatsink. Temps in each scenario mentioned above dropped at least 10c. This is not the first card I've done this with. To cool computer chips, you need to move a lot of air, right into the heatsinks (that ideally, are fairly sizeable). having a small fan some distance away, via a shroud, pushing air out/over the length of the heatsink, is not ideal.

If everything else in your case has decent cooling and you have at least average ventilation, ambient temps will not be an issue. Most power supplies exhaust, most of the tower style CPU coolers can be oriented for push/pull with a rear exhaust case fan. This is plenty, to control ambient temps. and having everything up a couple of degrees average is better than having your videocard running well past the redzone, when actually using it.
Click to expand...

I bought 2 MSI 7970R reference cooler cards clocked @ 1010mhz factory and the highest temps I hit are around 63 degrees
 
I bought the Powercolor 7950 V5E mentioned above for $190 about a month ago. I was surprised that GPU-z said it was a reference design. I got it because it's short in length compared to most other designs (XFX makes some short 7950s and 7970s as well) and just barely fit my case. As it turned out the cooler on the 7950 was just barely able to handle the card's heat output. I wasn't satisfied with all the hot air pouring out of my side exhaust and I was having some stability issues with light overclocks.

Solution? I got a Gelid Icy Vision A. Sucks to toss another 55 dollars on a cooler and spend more time than I'm willing to admit doing the installation of said aftermarket cooler, but the results were just short of stupendous. I was not expecting to drop 30 degrees C. It seems to me the worst part of the original design (and a lot of the stock 7900s with more than 1 fan are just like the Powercolor solution, I think) is the shroud itself. The heatsink was fine, the fans were probably fine too (they were bigger, even) but the plastic shroud encapsulating both the heatsink AND the fans' framing was trapping in heat more effectively than the fan assembly was able to expel it. The Gelid Icy Vision A open side heatsink design is far more effective, although I suppose it relies on your case ventilation to adequately expel the more manageable flow of heat the card gets away from itself in (presumably) all directions.

I am disappointed to see that AMD has followed down this inefficient cooling design path again... inexplicably, because the shrouds of the new R series are pretty mundane and generally unappealing.

The end result of the Icy Vision A mod on the V5E Powercolor 7950 was that I can now push the card to 1175/1475 clocks @62C after an hour in Unigine Valley. It simply would not function at all like that with the stock cooler. Stock boost is 925/1250. The fps bump was enough to make me clap like an idiot. The only other mod I did to it was to flash the BIOS to allow CCC AMD Overdrive to give it more than 20+ Power Control (I use a recommended +30 and it does help with stability considerably). The really weird thing about doing that BIOS flash is that after that--MSI Afterburner did not function correctly. The Card is voltage locked .925/1.25v but Afterburner would somehow overvolt it--no other AMD OC program I tried would do this. There is some mention of this, at least in the place where I got the BIOS editing tool. Card got super hot with Afterburner installed no matter what; but I think this is caused by editing the card's BIOS in this situation, and would not normally occur with a stock card using MSI afterburner. In the end, the Icy Vision A fans are so quiet and handle the heat profile fine at the highest possible clocks, there is no use for custom fan speed profiles, and I only ended up needing AMD Overdrive to OC the card. I don't know if this counts as BIOS hacking a 7950 to a 7970, but the benchmark numbers I'm getting now often blow other peoples' numbers out of the water when they are using a single 7970.

I'd probably do the XFX for crossfire, they are the same length (I'm unclear if PCB sizes are same across the board or if the cooling solutions alone account for card length differences), and you can get another rebate maybe. But I hate the giant PowerSupply thing... was really hoping AMD would come up with a visually appealing answer to the TITAN. Since this hasn't happened I think I'll make the dethroned TITAN my next big purchase when prices come down a bit next year.
 
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