Asus HD6950 max safe voltage?

[vollman1]

New to these forums, so if this post is redundant or in the wrong place, please forgive me and point me in the right direction please.

I am wondering what is the max 24/7 safe voltage for an Asus HD6950 DUII 2GB card?

I have not been able to get a concrete answer to this and I am hoping that someone here can help.

Thanks.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

well there is no concrete answer.
ymmv!
are you trying to oc the card or what?

 

[General Kenobi]

Depends on various factors - we need more info.

 

[MrK6]

Generally the maximum of 1.3V in most software overclocking programs is fine, but this comes with the expectation that you're keeping the GPU and VRM's cool. Keep the VRM's <100C at and the GPU <85C and you should be fine.

 

[vollman1]

KK let me know what info you need

I am OCing the card but don't want to fry it.

I have reached 940/1350 at 1.2V so far and I am wondering two things:

Is this safe for running 24/7?

How much more room do I have before voltage is too high?

The only reference that I have been able to use is the voltage slider in the Asus SmartDoctor OCing tool. It is colored and shows blue, red and yellow as the voltage slider moves to the right (increases).

I know to stay out of the yellow and red, but there is a large area that shows blue before hitting red. I think that yellow is like 1.34V or something.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

if you dont want to fry it, keep it in blue/yellow

keep an eye on the temps and see if it runs stable

 

[vollman1]

How can you monitor VRM temps?

 

[Tempered81]

aida 64 or hwinfo 64 will show you, gpuz sensor tab might too as well as lavalyst everest.

I had your same card and settled at 985mhz/1400mhz with the shader unlock. You arent gonna fry that thing, it has so many hardware protection schemes, throttling, TDP, Powertune, powerplay, overcurrent protection, overvolt protection, tjmax shutdown, etc. you can run it with the cooler off, and it *should* shut down before anything catches fire... although i don't recommend u try! hehe.

What you do by increasing the volts is reduce the long-term lifespan. Go with Mr k6's good recommendation of keeping it around 1.3v, and keep the fan spinning! heheh

 

[vollman1]

KK ty.

May I ask how you OC'd yours?

I am using a combo of:

SmartDoctor for Voltage setting
MSI Afterburner for clocks
CCC for +20% power setting

Is this optimal or is there a better way?

 

[Tempered81]

I flashed to a shader unlocked Asus 6950 bios from TPU and used all smartdoctor. I did my trials in afterburner to log temps and find the best overclock. I could do 1000 core sometimes, but usually settled for 980ish mhz when gaming so i would get an annoying lockup. Powertune +20 for sure, although i read unwinder say that once you start changing voltage and powerplay, powertune becomes irrelevant, although I still did +20 anyway.

I kept my fan at like 68-74% range because at 55ish and 80% it had an off-kilter rattle to it at those rpms. i think 68 it was that i had the best noise to temp ratio that i liked.

also my card was a powercolor 2gb reference, it had coil whine when i first got it for about a week, then it went away... strange. Very nice card though - very fast.

 

[vollman1]

I thought that powerplay and powertune were differtent names for the same thing in CCC?

If you don't mind, what is the difference and how do you adjust them?

 

[Tempered81]

Powerplay = Ati's marketing name for different clock & voltage states. You have about 5 or 6 different states you can check in RBE. They have a clock speed that corresponds with a voltage state for the memory and the core. Zerocore power > idle > 2d > blu-ray > multimonitor > load > overclocking (powerplay off).

Powertune = Ati's marketing name for a throttling mechanism that lowers total board power according to thermal design power by regulating clocks over an amperage and temperature threshold. OCCT or Furmark with a low fan and watching your 3d core speed go from default to a number that is 30% less to keep power in check. +20% = TDPx1.2, -20%= TDPx0.8 in wattage.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I'd just make sure VRM temperatures aren't horrendous. My cards max out at 985mhz at 1.3v. They are water cooled, so VRMs max out at 45C

 

[vollman1]

So Powerplay is adjusted as a bios mod, similar to unlocking the shaders?

Thanks all for sharing your knowledge and advice.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Powerplay as in how much wattage that card can pull I believe is not changeable beyond the +/-20% that is allowable by CCC. The overclocking limits in CCC can be exceeded via MSI afterburner unofficial overclocking or through a registry edit (google RacerX CCC limits)

 

[vollman1]

ahh I see ty.

One more question:

SmartDoctor shows the Memory Clock as '[DDR] 5400' and MSI Afterburner shows Memory Clock as 1350MHz. How do you change from one measure to the other?

Edit:

I see the DDR value is 4x the MSI AB value.