Msi tf3 3gd5

[lilvaratep]

So I've been using my card for a few days now, and I keep noticing flickers in games I've played. So far it's been in gw2, d3, skyrim, unigine heaven. I've read online that this is a common problem for the 7xxx series and amd cards in general. Is this normal for the 7950 cards? Should I return and get a new one?

If I were to get an nvidia, what would be the equivalent or better?
as for the unigine heaven flickering, I noticed that it's mostly in the blue sky, or at least the ones i notice.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Jaydip]

Have you tried the latest drivers?

 

[lilvaratep]

I currently have 12.10, which should be the latest drivers in't it?

 

[Jaydip]

Give the latest 12.11 betas a shot.

 

[jacktesterson]

Are you overclocking?

 

[lilvaratep]

Are you overclocking?

It was on stock freqs.

 

[jacktesterson]

Not normal. Ive had my hands on pretty much the whole 7000 series.

Try downclocking the vram a tad and go with 12.11 betas to see if it goes away. If does RMA it

 

[lilvaratep]

also when i turn on the fan to high speeds or 100, i start hearing this high pitched noise that reverberates. is this normal? i still have i think a week to return it to fry's electronics.

 

[Rvenger]

also when i turn on the fan to high speeds or 100, i start hearing this high pitched noise that reverberates. is this normal? i still have i think a week to return it to fry's electronics.

I would exchange it, something seems amiss.

 

[lilvaratep]

alright, will wait a few days tilll i get time to go back there. also, should i just return it completely and get a different brand? i saw many threads complaining about msi's tf3 7950. or should i get nvidia (heard that amd drivers are really bad) or just get a replacement?

 

[Shmee]

I actually hear many good things about the TF3, would recommend a support ticket/RMA.

 

[Dankk]

Can you describe the nature of the flickering?

Is the entire screen flickering out, or is it only in certain areas of the screen? How fast do the flickers come and go? Is it artifacting?

 

[lilvaratep]

For Skyrim, when I overclocked to 1000/1500 at stock volts(993), blocks of black would appear and go away sometimes in the middle of the screen really big, sometimes on sides smaller, but I'm guessing that's because I went too high on the memory. For gw2, I would get VERY thin lines of white at random locations on the screen. For diablo 3, it would be on the top left border would turn white. on unigine heaven, the flicker would be black and I only noticed them being in the sky, the width is about less than a pencil.

These flickerings would be VERY fast and wouldn't stay. I'm not sure what the difference between flickering and artifacting is.


skyrim only flickers when I overclocked to 1000/1500, otherwise it was fine no flickers at all.


I also noticed in unigine heaven that if I did max settings and max tesselation, I would get lines horizontally all the down my screen more apparent at brighter parts of the test, but I'm guessing thats something with the monitor's refresh rate?

 

[jacktesterson]

alright, will wait a few days tilll i get time to go back there. also, should i just return it completely and get a different brand? i saw many threads complaining about msi's tf3 7950. or should i get nvidia (heard that amd drivers are really bad) or just get a replacement?

You've heard wrong

The TF3 7950 is usually one of the better Overclocking 7950s, and I tend to like MSI, Asus or Sapphire the best with AMD cards.

I would argue AMD's drivers are just as good as Nvidia's. I like both companies and use both frequently.


Back to topic, I would send it back for a new card if my prior suggestion did not work.

 

[lilvaratep]

downclocking the vram, just reduce the 1250mhz stock memory clock to something like 1000 right? also when installing amd drivers, do i have to uninstall the old cataclyst with a driver cleaner or can i just install over? if i have to use a driver cleaner, which one would you recommend?

 

[jacktesterson]

downclocking the vram, just reduce the 1250mhz stock memory clock to something like 1000 right? also when installing amd drivers, do i have to uninstall the old cataclyst with a driver cleaner or can i just install over? if i have to use a driver cleaner, which one would you recommend?

I would uninstall.

I generally do this

1) Uninstall from Add/Remove
2) Reboot in Safe Mode
3) Run Driver Cleaner/Sweeper
4) Reboot
5) Install new Drivers.

Never an issue doing this.


I would try small changes to your Frequency, like 1200 first, then 1150. It sounds like a Vram Stability issue to me.

 

[3DVagabond]

You should start off stock clocks. When you start O/C'ing set the power slider in CCC to Max (+20% I believe). Then start by raising your GPU clocks only until you've found the max stable clocks, or CCC is maxed out, whichever occurs first. Then start increasing youe memory clocks. Not all cards can do 1500MHz on mem. I think this might be your problem.

 

[thilanliyan]

Overclocking to 1000mhz at 0.993v could be a problem. Up the volts to say 1.037v, which is the stock voltage on many tf3s and see if that helps.

 

[lilvaratep]

weird. why did mine come with 993 volts then?

Alright, I set it to the voltage you told me to and after about 5 mins playing d3 my temp was 80 already...

how hot should this card be getting?

i have the nzxt phantom 410 with stock fans(3)

 

[lilvaratep]

i start hearing this high pitched noise that reverberates.

???

 

[thilanliyan]

weird. why did mine come with 993 volts then?

Alright, I set it to the voltage you told me to and after about 5 mins playing d3 my temp was 80 already...

how hot should this card be getting?

i have the nzxt phantom 410 with stock fans(3)

Some of them DO come with 0.993v...it's nothing to worry about. 80C is not bad for the card, but it will probably become a bit loud.

If you're getting artifacts at STOCK voltage and STOCK core speed, I would RMA the card. If the artifacts are only at overclocked speeds, that's the luck of the draw.

 

[Face2Face]

I would say 80c is pretty hot for this card in that case. Mine runs at 0.993 volts stock as well and I can obtain a 1050Mhz core clock with no issues. I would RMA the card.

I would recommend getting a case fan for the side panel to blow cool air directly on the 7950.

 

[jacktesterson]

that temp is way too high to be anywhere near normal.

RMA it.

 

[Plimogz]

weird. why did mine come with 993 volts then?

Alright, I set it to the voltage you told me to and after about 5 mins playing d3 my temp was 80 already...

how hot should this card be getting?

i have the nzxt phantom 410 with stock fans(3)

Ouch. That's 80° Celsius, correct? at 1.037 VGPU and stock core clocks? that's pretty hot, to be sure. Temperatures could be the culprit. It's all quite hard to say without knowing exactly what voltages/frequencies we're talking about. Assuming stock clocks/voltage, proper airflow and sub-25°C ambient, I would say that the core shouldn't be going past 70.

In any case, 100% fan-speed is for all intents and purposes unusable due to the annoyingly loud and high-pitched noise it generates. You can call it reverberation or whatever you want -- I call it keep the fan-speed under 65%.

I've removed the heatsinks from both my cards and found the thermal interface material was fine on the GPUs, but haven't checked the memory/VRM thermal pads yet, because I don't have any replacement for those on hand. However, some TF3 7950 owner's have posted to the effect that their cards came with unsatisfactory application of the TIMs. Resulting in poor temperatures.

And I would get a thin white line around the edge of Diablo 3 back when I was playing -- I seem to remember that it had something to do with anti-aliasing. Mind you, this was on a 6950, but the drivers might have some similar bug across both families of cards. Just a thought.

Finally, like somebody else pointed out, big black triangles sound more like a VRAM issue than a GPU one.

I hope some part of this can help a little in troubleshooting the problem.

 

[Rvenger]

also when i turn on the fan to high speeds or 100, i start hearing this high pitched noise that reverberates. is this normal? i still have i think a week to return it to fry's electronics.

I had a chance to run my 7950 TF3 at 100% fan speed and it does vibrate a good bit to the point where the shroud starts to rattle.