- May 6, 2004
- 6,285
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Hi guys, long time no see!
I just picked up a used 8pin+8pin Vapor-x 7950 to replace my aging 5850. 1080P is all it has to handle ftm, but I thought I would be doing it injustice by leaving it at stock clocks and started gathering info to overclock the hell out of it.
On the 5850, all I ever used was MSI afterburner. Some posters over at overclock.net suggest TriXX tends to be more stable at the cost of the excellent real time monitoring features of the AB. A fair enough trade-off for me, so I am with the TriXX now. Hacked the registry entries to raise power limit to 50%+ to prevent throttling at load. Got it up to 1100/1250 (working on the core first) stable in furmark 1080P burn-in benchmark with the max temp @74C.
Should be able to go higher with voltage tweaking, but I figured it would be a good place to stop and see how well it fares in unigine heaven/valley tests. For some odd reason, they are stuck at the stock clocks of 850/1200. I've confirmed with GPU-Z to make sure the card is at 1100mhz at the core. Increased temp/noise during furmark is a further proof to the correct core clock. Doesn't look like either of the unigine benches come with hidden settings to fiddle with. What am I missing here? Tried googling and searching the boards here and came up with nothing. Valley Extreme HD netted 1430 score /w min @14.5, probably about right for stock clocks.
On an unrelated note, I still have a working accelero twin turbo 1 that I was using on the 5850. The shroud had been removed to accommodate a 120mm gentle typhoon for better cooling, and some parts of the fins in the rear were sheared away to deal with physical conflict with the bracket. Would I be able to fit this on the 7950 with the custom PCB and all? If so, would this at least be on par with the stock vapor-x cooler for cooling capacity at load? Provided they can break even with core temps, quiet load operation would be a definite upside with the latter.
In retrospect, maybe I should have picked up a dual-x. I just learned the vapor-x lacks the sensors at the VRM for temp monitoring (correct me if I am wrong). A slightly better cooler is probably a moot point if I decide to go with an aftermarket cooler.
EDIT: I guess I spoke too soon. With the furmark running and reporting 1100/1250, GPU-Z "GPU clock" in the graphics card tab reads 1100; "GPU core clock" in the sensors tab is at 850. Doesn't look like throttling either, it is stuck since the very beginning when 3d clock kicks in (goes straight to 850 from 500). Catalyst overdrive is OFF (never enabled it)
If anything the bios is a tad old it seems: 113-210P2EL-V05
I just picked up a used 8pin+8pin Vapor-x 7950 to replace my aging 5850. 1080P is all it has to handle ftm, but I thought I would be doing it injustice by leaving it at stock clocks and started gathering info to overclock the hell out of it.
On the 5850, all I ever used was MSI afterburner. Some posters over at overclock.net suggest TriXX tends to be more stable at the cost of the excellent real time monitoring features of the AB. A fair enough trade-off for me, so I am with the TriXX now. Hacked the registry entries to raise power limit to 50%+ to prevent throttling at load. Got it up to 1100/1250 (working on the core first) stable in furmark 1080P burn-in benchmark with the max temp @74C.
Should be able to go higher with voltage tweaking, but I figured it would be a good place to stop and see how well it fares in unigine heaven/valley tests. For some odd reason, they are stuck at the stock clocks of 850/1200. I've confirmed with GPU-Z to make sure the card is at 1100mhz at the core. Increased temp/noise during furmark is a further proof to the correct core clock. Doesn't look like either of the unigine benches come with hidden settings to fiddle with. What am I missing here? Tried googling and searching the boards here and came up with nothing. Valley Extreme HD netted 1430 score /w min @14.5, probably about right for stock clocks.
On an unrelated note, I still have a working accelero twin turbo 1 that I was using on the 5850. The shroud had been removed to accommodate a 120mm gentle typhoon for better cooling, and some parts of the fins in the rear were sheared away to deal with physical conflict with the bracket. Would I be able to fit this on the 7950 with the custom PCB and all? If so, would this at least be on par with the stock vapor-x cooler for cooling capacity at load? Provided they can break even with core temps, quiet load operation would be a definite upside with the latter.
In retrospect, maybe I should have picked up a dual-x. I just learned the vapor-x lacks the sensors at the VRM for temp monitoring (correct me if I am wrong). A slightly better cooler is probably a moot point if I decide to go with an aftermarket cooler.
EDIT: I guess I spoke too soon. With the furmark running and reporting 1100/1250, GPU-Z "GPU clock" in the graphics card tab reads 1100; "GPU core clock" in the sensors tab is at 850. Doesn't look like throttling either, it is stuck since the very beginning when 3d clock kicks in (goes straight to 850 from 500). Catalyst overdrive is OFF (never enabled it)
If anything the bios is a tad old it seems: 113-210P2EL-V05
Last edited:
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