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My 7970 has arrived! =D

GoldenTiger

GoldenTiger

I Got It Back... Kinda
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Joined
Dec 2, 2004
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32,947
cardbox.jpg


7970card.jpg


Sapphire Radeon HD 7970.

Working on overclocking now and will compare my old 570 SLI medium-OC 3dmark score (Extreme preset) to it once it's done. Looking really promising so far.
 
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GoldenTiger said:
and will compare my old 570 SLI medium-OC 3dmark score (Extreme preset) to it once it's done. Looking really promising so far.
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congrats! looking forward to oc results and any gaming comparisons you want to give.
 
Nice! I wish I was at home so I could install my cards. Less than an hour to go till quitting time!
 
Porter_ said:
congrats! looking forward to oc results and any gaming comparisons you want to give.
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Will do :D. Initial quick oc run looks really good, I installed it maybe 30 minutes before posting this thread.

I can't tolerate much more than 41% fan on this card or it becomes a dust-buster but it cools well even with pumped voltage at that. I'm trying 1274mv, 1220core, 6260mem on the card right now and it's been running BF3 multi solid for 20 minutes so far at a max of 70c.
 
i assume for your first overclock attempt you just cranked it to 1125/1575 with no iterations in between?
 
Porter_ said:
i assume for your first overclock attempt you just cranked it to 1125/1575 with no iterations in between?
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You assume too much :). I couldn't resist just slapping some reasonable numbers in and seeing if it ran properly :p. I set 20% power-play and off I'm going... 1 crash on a scrap lower voltage then upped it to these #'s smoothly so far. Got about 25 mins of BF3 in now at it and going to eat now... will post back once I've further tested & pushed it.
 
Are you going to be running it in eyefinity? If so hold off on buying another reference and get a aftermarket card with 3 dp outputs to avoid getting the tearing issue.

Congrats GT, first me switching to AMD and now you. What is this world coming to :D
 
What's the driver you're using? I'm running 11.12 and my sapphire 7970 is hitting 1125 core and 1575 memory without a hitch.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Are you going to be running it in eyefinity? If so hold off on buying another reference and get a aftermarket card with 3 dp outputs to avoid getting the tearing issue.

Congrats GT, first me switching to AMD and now you. What is this world coming to :D
Click to expand...

Haha, yeah, I know... They really hit a home run with this product though!

I'm not planning on running eyefinity for a long time if I switch, sticking with my Dell 3007WFP-HC 2560x1600 for now, but thanks for the warning/info.

Igg said:
What's the driver you're using? I'm running 11.12 and my sapphire 7970 is hitting 1125 core and 1575 memory without a hitch.
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I'm using the official 7970 driver from yesterday, 11.12 based 8.921.2.0.

So, been gaming for a few now... I need to pump my CPU up some since I'm only running at 4.2ghz 2600K right now (I've had it at 4.8 before for months stable, but since swapping boards for the sata-port recall I've been having trouble getting that again :( )but here are my current stable settings for my 7970 @ 44% fan speed (also didn't tone down anything in CCC, was using High Quality AF and I don't know if 3dmark11 overrides that or not):

radeon7970goldentiger.jpg


I know it's not the most impressive score (definitely bottlenecked by my CPU), but it's run BattleField 3 stable for an hour plus 3dmark11 Extreme pre-set, 1.281v + 1240mhz core + 1655mhz memory (6620 effective) is not half bad! I'll be further stress-testing it over the course of the night. I'm mainly limited by thermals at the moment, as 44% just doesn't keep up when I go to 1.3v and even higher clocks, but anything much above that is testing my limits on noise. These things are beasts, though!
 
going from nvidia to amd, did you bother with driver sweeper and all that nonsense? or did you just uninstall nvidia drivers and then install the AMD drivers?
 
Porter_ said:
going from nvidia to amd, did you bother with driver sweeper and all that nonsense? or did you just uninstall nvidia drivers and then install the AMD drivers?
Click to expand...

Uninstalled nvidia drivers, rebooted, rebooted again once it had finalized the uninstall. Then shut down, plopped in 7970, and installed the AMD drivers.

I'm going to make a quick 3dmark11 run again without TRIXX out of the tray (i.e. in foreground), heard it can impact the score due to its monitoring. Also had GPU-Z going with monitor-in-background enabled.

EDIT: Barely any change with those disabled, X3322 instead.

I'm very impressed with this thing... must push CPU clocks soon to really unleash it, however!

EDIT2: Further info... it's maxing at about 70c during BF3 sessions so far.
 
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Porter_ said:
going from nvidia to amd, did you bother with driver sweeper and all that nonsense? or did you just uninstall nvidia drivers and then install the AMD drivers?
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if you have windows 7 you don't even need to uninstall the nvidia drivers if you wanted. one of the advantages to windows 7 is the drivers are separated which is why you can run an AMD and Nvidia card in the same system.
 
I've installed my cards. Just one hitch. One of the fans in my XFX BEDDs was flopping around, damn screws weren't tightened and they fell out during shipping. I found 2 of the 3 and reattached the fan, but not sure if I should keep the card or contact XFX for an RMA. You would figure a $600 card would have the fans attached correctly and securely. Hmmmmmmmmm. If I had another small screw I'd put it in, but it is SMALL and I don't have one like it around.
 
I'd try getting it cross shipped if at all possible. Although, at least if you have 2 you're not completely left without a card to play with.
 
Awesome clocks so far. Probably time to put that bad boy on water, and away it goes. :D
 
Damn, QA issues on the other card. It started overheating and I'm saying WTF. Pull it out do some trouble shooting and the damn fan plug isn't seated. Do they test these damn things before they send them out?
 
yeah XFX is going down the tubes its starting to get really sad.
 
DooKey said:
Damn, QA issues on the other card. It started overheating and I'm saying WTF. Pull it out do some trouble shooting and the damn fan plug isn't seated. Do they test these damn things before they send them out?
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OUCH, sorry to hear your trouble on those :(.

So, weird thing for me is... BF3/3dmark11 run till the cows come home on the settings I posted, but SWTOR has small artifacting, unless I basically go down to stock (even tried 1.300v on the core and no go). Anyone else play The Old Republic? If so, any issues with these drivers for you too at any overclock? Going to go look for something else to test with... don't understand why SWTOR alone is having these problems.
 
DooKey said:
Damn, QA issues on the other card. It started overheating and I'm saying WTF. Pull it out do some trouble shooting and the damn fan plug isn't seated. Do they test these damn things before they send them out?
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jesus you're 0 for 2? I'm installing the drivers as I type...but now I'm getting nervous I didn't inspect the card thoroughly enough before I installed it.
 
Both cards are working, but I had to work on them to make it so. First card had a fan that wasn't attached to the HS. The second card the fans didn't run until I seated the power plug for them. Neither of those cards should have made it past QA like that.

Both cards are running nicely at 1125 core and 1480 mem at default voltage.
 
DooKey said:
Damn, QA issues on the other card. It started overheating and I'm saying WTF. Pull it out do some trouble shooting and the damn fan plug isn't seated. Do they test these damn things before they send them out?
Click to expand...

they test them but they don't test them with the heatsink its sold with on it. its just done in a machine. then they pretest them just by doing a power up test. if it starts then its good and its boxed. but i've seen the fan plug not plugged in before on my EVGA 8800GT, luckily i had already planned to rip that pos heatsink off and put a duorb cooler on it the day they both arrived so i didn't care.
 
Well, after playing around with some stuff I have found that SWTOR is not happy at 1220, 1230, or 1240+ even with 1.3v, but an Extreme preset 3dmark11 run and SWTOR are quite pleased with 1200core/1625mem(6500 effective) with 1.268v (will continue lowering it over the course of the evening to determine the minimum). May also play around with upping the memory speed again later on, as well.
 
DooKey said:
Both cards are working, but I had to work on them to make it so. First card had a fan that wasn't attached to the HS. The second card the fans didn't run until I seated the power plug for them. Neither of those cards should have made it past QA like that.

Both cards are running nicely at 1125 core and 1480 mem at default voltage.
Click to expand...

i've got to say, i'm not very impressed with this XFX Black DD cooler. at 1125/1575 the card idles at 60 C and i got it up to 79 C at 80% fan while playing BF3. might have to pop it out and take a closer look at the HSF.
 
Porter_ said:
i've got to say, i'm not very impressed with this XFX Black DD cooler. at 1125/1575 the card idles at 60 C and i got it up to 79 C at 80% fan while playing BF3. might have to pop it out and take a closer look at the HSF.
Click to expand...

I think what you guys are saying is that the DD heatsink is a POS, or a $50 paperweight... not sure.
 
Porter_ said:
i've got to say, i'm not very impressed with this XFX Black DD cooler. at 1125/1575 the card idles at 60 C and i got it up to 79 C at 80% fan while playing BF3. might have to pop it out and take a closer look at the HSF.
Click to expand...

Something is wrong with your HS. At 1200 core 1500 RAM default voltage I idle on both of mine at 37C.
 
GT,
Do you notice voltage not going up or down when adjusting with trixx but GPU-Z does not show the change for voltage?
 
Igg said:
GT,
Do you notice voltage not going up or down when adjusting with trixx but GPU-Z does not show the change for voltage?
Click to expand...

Can you clarify your question? I'm sorry but the two "not" phrases in there are making me unsure if I'm answering the right thing if I try... :). However, the voltage was working properly according to GPU-Z when raising it inside of Trixx (I'm now using Afterburner again, same thing too).

SWTOR seems to be the most sensitive game so far for my overclock, heh... it's strange. Still, thing is blistering fast, just wish I could use FXAA like I could on my 570 sli with SWTOR :p, might try MLAA and see if it works decently or not... 4x MSAA forced works at least.
 
Ok I raised mine to 1200 core and 6000 memory, i was getting some artifacts so i wanted to bump up core voltage by .01 from the default of 1.17 to 1.18 or 1.19 perhaps, after i apply the changes in trixx,
GPU-Z would show the correct clocks of 1200 and 6000 memory but still shows default voltage of 1.17
 
AMD needs to change their cooler cover design...it's been the exact same look for years now
 
Igg said:
Ok I raised mine to 1200 core and 6000 memory, i was getting some artifacts so i wanted to bump up core voltage by .01 from the default of 1.17 to 1.18 or 1.19 perhaps, after i apply the changes in trixx,
GPU-Z would show the correct clocks of 1200 and 6000 memory but still shows default voltage of 1.17
Click to expand...

That's happening to me, too, a lot of people on other forums are saying it's happening to them as well. Current theory is it's just a display bug, which makes sense to me since I'm definitely seeing different results based on the afterburner setting.
 
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