6970 to 7970 Ghz

[MrK6]

I went from an unlocked heavily overclocked 6950 (identical to a 6970) to an overclocked 7970 at it's launch in January 2012 and my performance doubled. With the driver improvements over the last 18 months it's probably more than that now. That said, I agree with the points others are making in that a 7950 is the way to go. The performance difference between the 7950 and 7970, especially on air, is <10% once both are overclocked. Get a nice 7950 with unlocked voltage, a quiet but beefy cooler, and some games and save your cash for a rainy day.

 

[Makaveli]

The MSI TF3 is not a good cooler. the HIS Iceq x2 HD 7970 Ghz is a very good card. see if you can fit this card in your case. 311mm long.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16814161431

Cooler that are too big would be an issue.

right below my current aftermarket artic cooler which takes up two slots is my GTX 650 SC.

The only complaints i've heard with this cooler is it get bit alot when the fan speed to close to max.

 

[Makaveli]

I would not touch a reference 7970 with a 100 foot pole. 1100mhz overclock on a reference 7970 and you better be rocking headphones.

Have you thought about saving $100 and getting a 7950 V2 and overclocking it to 1100+mhz?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16814202026

You can get that for the next 12 months and just upgrade again in 2014 to 20nm. The difference between 7970 OC and 7950 OC is 5%-10%. $100 savings that you can use towards 20nm next year is going to net you more than 10%.

7950 OC screams, beating HD7970GE/GTX680. NV fanboys have been downplaying 7950's OC for the last 12 months since this bad boy made their $500 680 seem like a waste of $ in the right hands.

http://www.legionhardware.com/artic...z_edition_7950_iceq_xsup2_boost_clock,13.html

I saved expecting to spend $400 so saving $100 isn't important to me as I won't be putting that $100 into any other upgrades in the system, Machine is maxed out minus videocard upgrade or unless I go to 24gb's of ram which I don't need currently.

The 7950 is a great option that I did consider when I was in store.

I however still picked up the Msi card.

It still came with 2 games Bioshock and Crysis 3.

As for upgrading in 2014, I will totally skip it and if I feel the 7970 is too slow I would look at the refresh products in 2015. I generally tend to keep gpu's 2-3 years and only upgrade when there is alteast a 50% improvement in speed like from the 6970-7970.

I went from an unlocked heavily overclocked 6950 (identical to a 6970) to an overclocked 7970 at it's launch in January 2012 and my performance doubled. With the driver improvements over the last 18 months it's probably more than that now. That said, I agree with the points others are making in that a 7950 is the way to go. The performance difference between the 7950 and 7970, especially on air, is <10% once both are overclocked. Get a nice 7950 with unlocked voltage, a quiet but beefy cooler, and some games and save your cash for a rainy day.

I'm going to throw the card in my system abit later today and will start doing some overclocking testing.

I honestly don't mine keeping the card stock for abit plenty of time to tweak and will see how it goes.

I know I probably would have had better luck with a reference card and just a beefy cooler added to it but my goal is not for extreme overclocking with this card.

And if it only did 1150 on the core I would be fine with it.

 

[DooKey]

Grats on the 7970 Mak. You'll enjoy it I'm sure.

 

[RussianSensation]

Congrats on the card. Please update us with your overclocking results and general impressions in the games you play wrt to stepping up from HD6950 2GB.

 

[Makaveli]

 

[tweakboy]

Is this really a upgrade or more like a sidegrade.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Grats, cooler works great even in CF, though it does blow at high fan speed.

You don't actually need high fan speed to run close to on air max anyways, I can do Crysis 3 with 1.3v and 45% fan speed on both cards, temps get into the upper 70's but who cares they're stable!

Just keep the fan speed low, not only does it get loud, but it makes little difference between 2200 rpm and 4200 rpm from a cooling standpoint.

 

[24601]

Remember to clock the RAM at 1500 mhz (6000 MT/s) or higher as memory bandwidth does actually increase performance fairly substantially on 79xx cards contrary to popular belief, due to the 7xxx series having bad ROPs/IMC.

 

[RaistlinZ]

Grats on the card! Overclock it and prepare for nerdgasm.

 

[Kinesis]

selling my 6950 also.

I think I can get $175 with the after market cooler on it.

I just "sold" mine to my folks for $200 and put that money to XFX DD 7970 3 GB card that was on for $336 (CAD) with MIR.

Couldn't be happier with my 7970. For the first time I have everything maxed on my games and I have the CPU horse power and GPU horsepower to do it. LOVE IT!

 

[Makaveli]

I just "sold" mine to my folks for $200 and put that money to XFX DD 7970 3 GB card that was on for $336 (CAD) with MIR.

Couldn't be happier with my 7970. For the first time I have everything maxed on my games and I have the CPU horse power and GPU horsepower to do it. LOVE IT!

That was a great price you got it for

So far i'm loving the card seem a max temp of 72c while in the valley demo.

Need to test a render on it to see if is a noticeable difference from the shader unlocked 6950 I was rocking.

 

[UNhooked]

Happy Birthday dude!! I vote for wait, if anything when the new cards come out the 7970's should drop in price.

Update: Enjoy the card

 

[RussianSensation]

79% ASIC? this card should do 1150mhz on stock voltage.

 

[Makaveli]

79% ASIC? this card should do 1150mhz on stock voltage.

It does.

So far i've tested 1150/1500 at 50% fan speed and rock solid at default voltage.

 

[Makaveli]

Happy Birthday dude!! I vote for wait, if anything when the new cards come out the 7970's should drop in price.

Update: Enjoy the card

I was thinking that but AMD isn't releasing anything new until end of the year or Q1 2014 and the only pricing pressure will come from NV and the 770 which may need a few months also.

And due to me needing more compute performance for open Cl rending in Sony vegas the radeon was the obvious choice.

 

[RaistlinZ]

Give us some benchmark comparisons!

 

[Makaveli]

Give us some benchmark comparisons!

Working on it

Right now i'm trying to settle on a good overclock for the card before I start swapping them in and out.

Anything above 50% fan speed on the default cooler is too loud for me and one of the things I loved about the AC cooler on the previous card. So if I decide I really want to push the card the default cooler will still have to go but for now its holding fine at 1150/1500 stock vcore.

Max load is around 78c with gpu fan at 50% and I have a 120mm side case fan blowing in that area.

After doing more research over the course of the night it seems they may cheap out on the thermal compound on these cards. I do have some AC MX2 which I will put on there in abit.

I think I may also push my cpu overclock to 4.2ghz too see if there is any gains there. 4.0 Ghz is my everyday conservative clocks I know I can push this cpu alittle harder.

*Update* I just logged into the AMD site for the never settle bundle and I got 3 games instead of two. So Crysis 3, Bioshock infinite, Far cry Blood dragon.. lol so I only lost out on Tomb raider which I would have prefered over blood dragon but whatever free games...

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Oh yes, the stock thermal paste isn't anything to write home about.

I saw about 9C load difference OC vs stock with IC Diamond 7, that was when I was running 1C = 1% fan profile as well.

Even more when I switched over to liquid pro, which now I don't even do 1C=1% I just cap it around 44% and never worry about it.

 

[tweakboy]

Try ramping up the fan to 100 percent when you enter game,, and play,,, and see if this happens again.

 

[MrK6]

Right now i'm trying to settle on a good overclock for the card before I start swapping them in and out.

Anything above 50% fan speed on the default cooler is too loud for me and one of the things I loved about the AC cooler on the previous card. So if I decide I really want to push the card the default cooler will still have to go but for now its holding fine at 1150/1500 stock vcore.

Max load is around 78c with gpu fan at 50% and I have a 120mm side case fan blowing in that area.

After doing more research over the course of the night it seems they may cheap out on the thermal compound on these cards. I do have some AC MX2 which I will put on there in abit.

I think I may also push my cpu overclock to 4.2ghz too see if there is any gains there. 4.0 Ghz is my everyday conservative clocks I know I can push this cpu alittle harder.

*Update* I just logged into the AMD site for the never settle bundle and I got 3 games instead of two. So Crysis 3, Bioshock infinite, Far cry Blood dragon.. lol so I only lost out on Tomb raider which I would have prefered over blood dragon but whatever free games...

Good man on getting a stable overclock out of the way early. What's stock vcore for your chip, 1.25V? Try pushing the core only at first and leave the vRAM at stock. If your stock vcore is 1.25V, I wouldn't go higher on air as your VRM's will probably get too hot. Still, looking great so far and glad you're enjoying your card.

 

[Makaveli]

Good man on getting a stable overclock out of the way early. What's stock vcore for your chip, 1.25V? Try pushing the core only at first and leave the vRAM at stock. If your stock vcore is 1.25V, I wouldn't go higher on air as your VRM's will probably get too hot. Still, looking great so far and glad you're enjoying your card.

Switching to the MX 2 thermal compound drops loads temps by 5c to 73c from 78c.

If I look when I leave valley running in a window see the vcore there but do I need to also install msi afterburner?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Is that after it's been running? If so it looks like your cpu is bottlenecking, perhaps try another gpu test?

 

[24601]

Is that after it's been running? If so it looks like your cpu is bottlenecking, perhaps try another gpu test?

His CPU is probably going to bottleneck the GPU in any real world scenario.

Also, those synthetic tests don't stress the ROPs, which will lead to very optimistic clock to voltage ratio.

I know I can run 1150 @ 1.1v (1.05v or lower with droop) if I was just testing non ROP bound scenarios.

 

[Makaveli]

Is that after it's been running? If so it looks like your cpu is bottlenecking, perhaps try another gpu test?

The load is less here because valley is running in a window and at a lower res than native and with 8X AA off.


Here is a proper screenshot.