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Which 7950?

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Which program did you use to adjust voltage? I have heard nothing but horror stories regarding the voltage lock.
 
lehtv said:
Just wanted to update this.

I originally had bought a 7950 Vapor-x 6+8pin which was unstable with hot VRM's. Sent it for RMA... and more than a month later, I receive a 7950 Vapor-x 8+8. Turns out this card is amazing.

Compared to the regular boost card, it runs cooler, quieter, overclocks better and it's voltage unlocked. Currently running at 1120 / 1450 @ 1.22V - the regular card clocked to 1100 / 1250 @ 1.25V. Temperatures are only 65C for both GPU and VRM, about 10C lower! I've only done limited testing in Heaven and Witcher 2 so these clocks and volts are still subject to minor changes.

I've tried clocking it higher but can't get 1150 stable even with 1.32V. Not worth it.
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Hey Leh, glad you got on the good side of the Vapor-X finally! It is great, isn't it? A pity you cannot go higher in OC, but above 1100 MHz must be considered good. The performance scales really well with the core clock, but the overclocking the memory does not much more than increase the temperature in my case. I have 950/1250/0.95 (stock) giving 54 C maximum but 1175/1250/0.95 still stays under 60 C and I get ~+20% more FPS.
 
bigsnyder said:
Which program did you use to adjust voltage? I have heard nothing but horror stories regarding the voltage lock.
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Both Afterburner and TriXX work fine. It's simply not voltage locked. Afterburner allows up to 1.3V, TriXX can go up to 1380mV. The cooler handles 1.3V admirably well, but I haven't tested higher.
Rikard said:
Hey Leh, glad you got on the good side of the Vapor-X finally! It is great, isn't it? A pity you cannot go higher in OC, but above 1100 MHz must be considered good. The performance scales really well with the core clock, but the overclocking the memory does not much more than increase the temperature in my case. I have 950/1250/0.95 (stock) giving 54 C maximum but 1175/1250/0.95 still stays under 60 C and I get ~+20% more FPS.
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Yeah every specimen is different. But it's an improvement over the dual-X which was already quite good so I'm not complaining. FWIW, ASIC is 60%. Rather surprising, the last one was over 90%.

Only one complaint which I noticed just today: at the lowest speed, the fan whines annoyingly. I have to use a custom profile at 32% speed to even it out and this makes it ever so slightly audible above my low noise case fans. But it's OK, better to have a constant hum than a high pitch whine.

What voltage is your card at 1175?
 
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just got a AT-7950BST unit from superbiiz which ended up being DOA. tried different pcie slots, different monitors, etc... my old hd5850 worked great in the same system.. bummer

not sure how common it is, but word of caution superbiiz is quoating 2-4 weeks to get a replacement.. maybe I should have spend more and got it from newegg/amazon....
 
Just tell SuperBiiz that you want your money back for the faulty product. Then place a new order from SuperBiiz or elsewhere. Yes it'll take a while before they refund you but it'd still get you a new card faster with zero net loss.
 
lehtv said:
What voltage is your card at 1175?
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Set to 0.95 V in Trixx. The reading in RivaTuner (MSI AB to be precise) is higher than that, but I heard that it is not calculating the voltage correctly. Also someone on this forum (lava?) measured it with a voltmeter and found Trixx setting to give the almost the correct value. Since 1175 MHz is fast enough for me, I have no wish to increase the voltage, but I checked and AB cannot change the voltage, while Trixx can.
 
0.95V? My stock voltage is 1.15V 😵. Yours just can't be right, I'm going to assume that 0.95V is the idle voltage... have you actually tried adjusting it, and does it result in a different VDDC reading in GPU-Z? I'm of the impression that the reading in GPU-Z and HWinfo64 is the real voltage after Vdroop, so it should be lower than the nominal voltage set in your overclocking program
 
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lehtv said:
0.95V? My stock voltage is 1.15V 😵. Yours just can't be right, I'm going to assume that 0.95V is the idle voltage... have you actually tried adjusting it, and does it result in a different VDDC reading in GPU-Z? I'm of the impression that the reading in GPU-Z and HWinfo64 is the real voltage after Vdroop, so it should be lower than the nominal voltage set in your overclocking program
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Yes, I also find that strange... What I did to verify that I can adjust the voltage is to modify the 950 mV in Trixx and see its effect on the graph in AB. That works (AB reported voltage decreases and increase as expected), so it is definitely not voltage locked. However the values are different from 0.95 V, which is expected if AB is not reporting the correct voltage. (Changing voltage inside AB does not work however, looks like a bug in AB.) I can see what GPU-Z says later tonight, it might be more accurate. Btw, should we take this in the 7950 owners thread?
 
Bipedal Humanoid said:
ASIC is only 56.2 on my Dual X. I'm wondering if I should get a new one. But that would be lottery all over again.
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IMHO, from what clocks people are reporting here my conclusion is that ASIC does not seem to be the most important thing. If it works fine, it is fine.
 
Only played with the clock a little, got it to 1050 with no issues at all but haven't tried pushing it any further (yet).

EDIT: Actually I take that back... I just ran Heaven Benchmark back to back with stock clocks and with clock set to 1050 and realized that at 1050 there are noticeable lags now and then.
 
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Did you remember to set power limit +20? Also be sure to monitor GPU use and clocks when running a test
 
Uhm... No (set power limit). I guess I should a bit more homework before I start overclocking. I do monitor temps and clocks though! I use Afterburner OSD.
 
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Ok, so I ran Heaven benchmark at stock clocks a few times now and notice that the screen flashes white from time to time. Could those be artifacts? I'll try posting a youtube upload here in a bit.

EDIT: Ok here's the video. Are those artifacts? It shouldn't be artifacting at stock clocks though unless I have a faulty card. There was another anomaly in one of the previous benches I ran (at stock clocks) that was far more severe, like black and white triangle shaped anomalies that appeared only that one time and lasted for a split second. I wasn't able to reproduce those on the run through I recorded though.

What's weird though is that I haven't seen this in any of the games I've played since installing the card. When overclocked to 1050, I did notice the screen briefly freezing up for a split second here and there when playing a game.
 
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Bipedal Humanoid said:
Ok, so I ran Heaven benchmark at stock clocks a few times now and notice that the screen flashes white from time to time. Could those be artifacts? I'll try posting a youtube upload here in a bit.

EDIT: Ok here's the video. Are those artifacts? It shouldn't be artifacting at stock clocks unless I have a faulty card. There was another anomaly in one of the previous benches I ran (at stock clocks) that was far more severe, like black and white triangle shaped anomalies that appeared only that one time and lasted for a split second. I wasn't able to reproduce those on the run through I recorded though.

What's weird though is that I haven't seen this in any of the games I've played since installing the card. When overclocked to 1050, I did notice the screen briefly freezing up for a split second here and there when playing a game.
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Uhmm, that looks really bad. I do not have that bad performance ever, and those white flashes should not be there. Are you by any chance alt-tabbing out and back into Heaven? You have some crazy stuttering that I only get if I alt-tab like I just said. Also check that you have no other process taking up CPU or HDD resources.
 
No alt-tabbing. At one point I was uploading a video, it does appear that I had more of those flashes while uploading. But even when not having anything running in the background I had those flashes, just not as frequent. What's weird though is that this happens only in Heaven, not any of the games I've been playing (Future Soldier, Metro 2033, Total War Shogun 2). What I did notice in the games is that the screen will briefly freeze/ lag from time to time. I thought it was the drivers though.
 
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Bipedal Humanoid said:
No alt-tabbing. At one point I was uploading a video, it does appear that I had more of those flashes while uploading. But even when not having anything running in the background I had those flashes. What's weird though is that this happens only in Heaven, not any of the games I've been playing (Future Soldier, Metro 2033, Total War Shogun 2). What I did notice in the games is that the screen will briefly freeze/ lag from time to time. I thought it was the drivers though.
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You got the never settle bundle, right? Can you try the benchmark in Hitman:Absolution? It is quite demanding and probably more like what your actual gaming experience will be like.
 
Ran the Hitman Benchmark with zero issues. Those white flashes only appear in Heaven Bench. Other games will sometimes freeze for a split second, as if loading.

I'm still running this in my old rig (Q8300, 2x4GB DDR2, P43-UD3L board), everything else is in what's in my sig below.
 
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New rig with 7950 Gigabyte windforce 3. Got from Superbiiz with the 3 game Never Settle Bundle. Thought it be stock 900mhz but came w/ new FZ1 bios and 1000mhz stock. No complaints about that :thumbsup: Slowly pushed it up stock volts to 1150mhz. Just lil past that it'll hang or artifact. Only tried memory to 1400mhz last nite, no prob BF3 multi. Not sure memory OC big deal at 1080p?

Coming from 6870, I'm real happy with upgrade at 1080p. Probably just run it 1100/1400 stock volts and call it a day.

 
1.1GHz at stock volts with a Gigabyte WF3 is quite nice. Usually they require overvolting to reach 1.1+, at least that's the impression I've got from the web. Your voltage is so low and temperatures so good that you should be able to OC it more. I would not be surprised if you got 1200MHz with 1.2V or so.

Memory OC doesn't matter much but if it overclocks, why not do it. Free performance anyhow.
 
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