[H] users 7970 Overclock Results thread

I did some tests and seems that my vga can handle 1700mhz or even more on ram frequency. Do you think that similar frequencies are risky? or i can run it without problems?

On the vgpu side, i saw several users with even 1.3v on air, assuming that the colling is ok, isnt that voltage too high?
 
rickardkarstark said:
I did some tests and seems that my vga can handle 1700mhz or even more on ram frequency. Do you think that similar frequencies are risky? or i can run it without problems?

On the vgpu side, i saw several users with even 1.3v on air, assuming that the colling is ok, isnt that voltage too high?
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No, yes, no.
 
rickardkarstark said:
I did some tests and seems that my vga can handle 1700mhz or even more on ram frequency. Do you think that similar frequencies are risky? or i can run it without problems?

On the vgpu side, i saw several users with even 1.3v on air, assuming that the colling is ok, isnt that voltage too high?
Click to expand...

Not risky at all.

But, there is no reason to OC the VRAM that high for nothing. The cores are making a much bigger difference. My 3D Marks 11 score is the same at 1600 vs 1700 memory speed. :)

1.3v is the max "safe" voltage on air IMHO. But check all your temps to be sure. Temp is the real problem with those cards.

If you are not artifacting, then your ok.
 
Mr. K6 said:
I just ran my ASIC quality check and got 77.1%, yet I can still run 1340/1775MHz on this thing. I've seen few cards clock higher on water. Thoughts?
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i have an ASIC quality of 87% and i top out at 1150/1625MHz if i push the voltage. i'm on air, not water like you, but i wouldn't expect to get anywhere near your clocks if i were on water. it seems the ASIC quality means jack shit as far as overclocking potential. if anything it's an inverse correlation. congrats on the overclock, i don't think i've seen higher in this thread.
 
Porter_ said:
i have an ASIC quality of 87% and i top out at 1150/1625MHz if i push the voltage. i'm on air, not water like you, but i wouldn't expect to get anywhere near your clocks if i were on water. it seems the ASIC quality means jack shit as far as overclocking potential. if anything it's an inverse correlation. congrats on the overclock, i don't think i've seen higher in this thread.
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mine is 60%, but turns out to be defective card.... :p
 
What do people think is max safe temps for reference 7970?
Also if i set like 1.225v will vrm temp be much higher?.
I have wel airflowed case i think that will make vrm temp lower right?
 
Would taking off the shroud and mounting a 80mm fan help any? Yeh I know the hot air would just go back into my case. I wonder if a corsair h50 would mount on this card? :)
 
Between updating the drivers and MSI Afterburner, somewhere along the line I started getting this not long into Heaven:

D3D11AppWindow::swap_window: device removed

Only other thing that's changed is resolution. Went from 1920x1080 to 1920x1200 after I had one monitor die on me.

Looks like it was being caused by the core clock. Was running it at 1150/1575 at 1.175V. The strange part is that before I updated everything, I ran it at 1175 core at the same voltage for an hour and a half and everything was fine.

Stupid updates!
 
rivaltr said:
What do people think is max safe temps for reference 7970?
Also if i set like 1.225v will vrm temp be much higher?.
I have wel airflowed case i think that will make vrm temp lower right?
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The maximum safe temps are ~90C (where the card is designed to run at). Getting into 100-105C regularly probably hurts the life of the card, but I haven't seen reports of cards having cooling issues. The VRM's are right under the card's fan with the memory plate attached them (and some extra fins on top of it to help cool). They're pretty isolated from case airflow, but having good airflow or a secondary fan over the card will keep it cooler nonetheless.
 
83.3% ASIC quality
Stuck at 1100/1575 at 1.1v. Artifacts at 1125 all the way up to 1.2v, didn't try higher voltage. Should I try 1.3v?
 
My first card:

I have a Gigabyte 7970 which has an ASIC quality of only 59.3% and undervolts almost a full .1 mV under load at the default voltage. The good news is this thing overclocks well at these low volts. I'm currently mining 680MH/s with Diablo miner with the GPU @ 1150 MHz at default voltage (which is 1.082 volts for this card). Setting 1.3 mV in Afterburner only nets me 1.193 mV according to the new GPU-Z but I haven't tried maxing out my overclock yet.

My second 7970 card (also a Gigabyte Reference) should be arriving tomorrow or Friday and I'll report back how it compares to my first card.
 
When you all quote voltage, are you quoting set voltage (spec), or actual voltage during heavy GPU load? Mine are pretty decently different using Afterburner and GPU-Z.
 
Madpacket said:
Setting 1.3 mV in Afterburner only nets me 1.193 mV according to the new GPU-Z but I haven't tried maxing out my overclock yet.
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I was under the impression these cards were designed with voltage loss in mind, meaning the intent isn't to literally pump 1.175V to be considered stock? Someone can correct me if that's not entirely accurate, just seen some people complaining about this.
 
After quite a bit of stability testing, it seems that mine has maxed out at 1225/1750 with 1.2 V core and 1.65 V memory. I could probably push it a little more, but it's not worth the additional voltage for ~25mhz extra core speed. I haven't noticed any artifacts if I push the core clock higher -- games\benchmarks will just crash. ASIC quality is 83.6% with stock 1.05 V.

Crysis 2 seems to be the benchmark most sensitive to the magnitude of overclock -- other DX11 apps (Metro 2033, Heaven, etc.) will run OK at 1250/1775 but Crysis 2 will crash at those speeds unless I increase core/memory voltages. Anyone have a clue why this is? Maybe it's just the most GPU-intensive app of the bunch...

I'm running an XFX BEDD in a Silverstone FT02. Right now temps are in the low 70s under load with the fan at 55-60% (manual profile set in Afterburner).
 
1125/1575: Driver crashes/artifacts in BF3.
1050/1450: Artifacts in BF3.
1000/1400: Seems fine.

Voltages are 1.17v and power draw is at +20%.

I dunno. I'd think I'd have a bit more headroom. But then again, I have generally terrible ambient temps (I idle in the mid-40s C), how much of an impact does heat have? I'm sure it gets up into the 90s.

EDIT: The VDDC readings I got from Furmark were incorrect, the card was running at 1.05v. That explains that.
 
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Shocked said:
I was under the impression these cards were designed with voltage loss in mind, meaning the intent isn't to literally pump 1.175V to be considered stock? Someone can correct me if that's not entirely accurate, just seen some people complaining about this.
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Yes I think they all undervolt but it appears some cards do more than others. I'm not really convinced yet this ASIC quality is tied to performance or voltage, we need more evidence before we can start trending this more accurately.
 
soldierblue said:
1125/1575: Driver crashes/artifacts in BF3.
1050/1450: Artifacts in BF3.
1000/1400: Seems fine.

Voltages are 1.17v and power draw is at +20%.

I dunno. I'd think I'd have a bit more headroom. But then again, I have generally terrible ambient temps (I idle in the mid-40s C), how much of an impact does heat have? I'm sure it gets up into the 90s.

EDIT: The VDDC readings I got from Furmark were incorrect, the card was running at 1.05v. That explains that.
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you should install msi afterburner latest beta, powertune doesn't increase your load voltage adequately. Set a manual voltage, also, try BIOS 2 on your card. There's a switch on it. (turn PC off when doing this obviously)
 
xoleras said:
you should install msi afterburner latest beta, powertune doesn't increase your load voltage adequately. Set a manual voltage, also, try BIOS 2 on your card. There's a switch on it. (turn PC off when doing this obviously)
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What in all will the second BIOS do?
 
Well, it looks like 1200 core, 1725 mem @ 1.3v is the limit on my Sapphire.

Edit: Asic quality 80.2%, btw.
 
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soldierblue said:
What in all will the second BIOS do?
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Its a backup BIOS, but most 7970s have different voltage profiles between the two BIOS'. I know on asus and MSI cards , bios 1 is for general use, while BIOS 2 has higher voltages for extreme overclocking.
 
Can someone please tell me if powertune voids any warranties?

And if i am at stock voltage (1.112v) and 1125/1575 (stable for me without overvolting) can the card also get throttled if powertune is not at +20% as mentioned many times in this thread?

I am not seeking to maximize the overclock on my card and want to remain at stock voltage since this is already good performance for me but I dont know if the card can loose performance from this "auto-throttle" system it seems to have as reported by other users. I'm using a custom fan profile with MSI AB which goes up to 60% and the card never exceeds 70c when gaming, reached 74c in furmark.
 
Whats the default voltage for the Asus 7970 cause Afterburner says its 1.174V.
 
xoleras said:
Its a backup BIOS, but most 7970s have different voltage profiles between the two BIOS'. I know on asus and MSI cards , bios 1 is for general use, while BIOS 2 has higher voltages for extreme overclocking.
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Just tried BIOS 2, still gives me 1.05v. What's the best way to get the power control of Overdrive and the voltage control of third party utilities?
 
Kaynar said:
Can someone please tell me if powertune voids any warranties?

And if i am at stock voltage (1.112v) and 1125/1575 (stable for me without overvolting) can the card also get throttled if powertune is not at +20% as mentioned many times in this thread?

I am not seeking to maximize the overclock on my card and want to remain at stock voltage since this is already good performance for me but I dont know if the card can loose performance from this "auto-throttle" system it seems to have as reported by other users. I'm using a custom fan profile with MSI AB which goes up to 60% and the card never exceeds 70c when gaming, reached 74c in furmark.
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It will not void warranty because you're setting it with software and ati can't find out they would have had to hack your pc but come on ofc they are not going to do that :p
I have experienced that it only throttles with furmark. With games and benchmarks it doesnt get throttled. Afterburner resets powertune so im not sure if anyone has any fix with this. But like i said you will not notice in games or benchmarks maybe you will notice it in future games but im not sure.
 
Neon01 said:
When you all quote voltage, are you quoting set voltage (spec), or actual voltage during heavy GPU load? Mine are pretty decently different using Afterburner and GPU-Z.
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Gpu-z is the real measured voltage afterburner shows target voltage however latest ab fixed it showing real measured voltage altho it doesnt show for me i tried to set the 2 things in .cfg but its ok i can use gpu-z to monitor. Gpu-z 0.5.8
 
Now I'm at 1.175v (really this time) with the clocks at 1125/1575. Tested playing a couple rounds in BF3, no apparent artifacts (hard to tell with laser sights and all that other stuff in game). It's a touch over 80C load.
 
Did some tests while I was at it (AVG/MIN/MAX):

BF3 Scene 1 (925/1375) - 106.1/79/154
BF3 Scene 1 (1125/1575) - 125.2/87/187 (+18.0%)
BF3 Scene 2 (925/1375) - 77.2/56/92
BF3 Scene 2 (1125/1575) - 92.3/68/109 (+19.6%)
 
soldierblue said:
1125/1575: Driver crashes/artifacts in BF3.

Now I'm at 1.175v (really this time) with the clocks at 1125/1575. Tested playing a couple rounds in BF3, no apparent artifacts (hard to tell with laser sights and all that other stuff in game). It's a touch over 80C load.
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Do you mean 1.175v in Afterburner or are you compensating for the v-droop?
 
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My Gigabyte 7970 overclocks to max ccc overdrive settings @ 1.170. Havnt tried anything more so far. Not until I can figure why Im having cold boot issues yet again with a 2nd 7970 where Im not having these issues with my gtx285.
 
Second bios didn't get me anything except for a bit more stability. STill artifacts beyond 1100 no matter what voltage. However, with the 1st bios I got rendering errors in Heaven no matter what speed and more CTD's. Now all I get are artifacts as I crank up the MHZ and voltage.

Dud card?
 
I applied MX4 thermal paste to the GPU and added the external fan duct for video cards for my Coolermaster ATCS 840 case, which now gives me cooler temps below 70 C under load and increased overclocking. I was at 1090 core and 1550 memory with fan speeds below 50% without artifacting, now I can do 1100 core and 1600 memory.

If I experiment more with increased voltage, I may be able to go higher, but I seem to get artifacting pretty quickly above 1100 core at 1.181V and it is quite temperature sensitive so increasing the voltage probably wont help too much since I refuse to use the fan above 50%.
 
EquaLiZr said:
I wonder if a corsair h50 would mount on this card? :)
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Just read your post and yes it is possible. Re-posting from the Purchasing thread here: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038313567&postcount=1128

dsc00580ea.jpg
7b196130.jpg

dsc0054zm.jpg
6017946711b12bd51320b.jpg


The one thing I want to know is if the copper plate+aluminum fin heatsink vapor chamber assembly on AMD cards can be detached from the metal plate under it so that you are left with the same setup as the bottom left picture. On Nvidia cards the vapor chamber + heatsink fin assembly screws onto the metal plate so it is easier to take apart, but in the AMD card the vapor chamber almost looks as if it were soldered onto the metal plate.

cooler2b.jpg


Links:
http://www.corsair.com/blog/using-a-hydro-series-h70-on-a-nvidia-geforce-gtx480/
http://www.overclock.net/t/1140299/gtx-480-sli-antec-620s-mod
http://www.overclock.net/t/1086286/complete-build-log-zotac-560ti-corsair-h70
http://www.overclock.net/t/1198510/build-log-amd-6970-lightning-antec-kuhler-920-mod-56k-warning
 
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1200/1800 80c-82c maxed 55% fan.
Voltage is still stock and have not looked at what it is yet.
Could go for higher but most likely my cpu is bottlenecking the card already (phenom II 965).

Card is also 79.4% from /rr174
 
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