How to unlock Gigabyte HD 7970 OC voltage? - Page 2

I, too, flashed mine with the GHz bios and it raised voltage to 1256mV. At that voltage, I was able to reach 1125MHz (100% game stable) but this overclock to me is pathetic when 7950s for cheaper are running higher... much higher. Gigabyte 7950 here at 1280/1800 and I know of a number of 7950 users well over the 1200 mark. In my opinion, a 7970 that cannot do 1200 or greater is pretty much a dud. But hey, to each his/her own

Got the Matrix and I ain't going back
Edited by Bruennis - 11/8/12 at 3:24pm

The 1,2Ghz bench clock is stable as in looping Heaven/3Dmark stable tho, so quite stable in benching terms. I would without doubt keep the card if i could monitor VRM/VRAM temps like on every other card I've had since like a ATI 9600pro without temp sensors, lol.. The WFx3 cooler is pretty decent and the card was really cheap

I think theres room for more OC if I'd remount the cooler with proper thermal compound, and add more heatsinks. I suspect that the VRM's get really hot on this card. I'm NOT gonna do that tho as I'm returning it.

The 7950's are nice cards, if you settle for second best or are on a budget or something At the same clock 7970 are about 10-11% quicker in real world game performance, not a huge difference.

delete

I can push my 7950 to 1340 with watercooling

You can try to force a voltage from your motherboard. Worth a try, I know i can go up to 1.3 mV and i can go 1.35 mV using mobo settings, great for WC

Try 3-5% at same clocks

But absolutely, best of the best, right now is the 7970. Go big or go home bro!

3-5% in benchmarks, not realworld gaming when cpu/memory etc doesn't make much of a difference.

Sorry myTahiti brotha but you are incorrect... This is commonly accepted. 3-5% at same clock

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/34761-amd-hd-7950-vs-hd-7970-clocks/?page=10

Yeah, back in february on the 11.12 RC1 Launch driver, and on a system that's not fast enough to totally eliminate bottlenecks.

There's obviously bug's and problems with the driver(the launch driver was no picknick) as the 7950 having like 14% shader cores is faster in some tests

Perhaps not the best example to draw any conclusions from

Do you think drivers since then have benefited only the 7970? The 7950 is simply a variant of the 7970. It is basically a 7970 with 4 compute units disabled...

How much experience do you have with Tahiti cards? For what it's worth, I've had a Sapphire 7970 OC, Gigabyte 7970, MSI Lightning 7970 and currently own a Gigabyte 7950 and Matrix 7970 Platinum. I'm telling you that at reference clocks, there is about a 15% difference between the 7950 and the 7970. Per clock, the difference is about 5%. In some instances, it will be lower like around 3%.

Here is another review of an XFX 7950 @ stock 900/1375 vs. 7970 @ reference 925/1375. Difference is there but not 10-11%.
http://hardocp.com/article/2012/03/01/xfx_radeon_hd_7950_black_edition_video_card_review/8

Comparison in four games:
(A) Arkham City: 3%
(B) Skyrim: 6%
(C) BF3: 4%
(D) Deus Ex: 14%
Average: 6.75%

Another 25MHz on the core of that 7950 and the average would have been closer to ~5%...

There's not even a reference to what driver they were using with the 7970, if they re-tested or just borrowed the stats from the initial test. And they're using diffrent settings, 2xMSAA, no MSAA on the other cards. And their performance graphs is just a mess, diffrent settings, clocks. A mess. This is how you make a graph, all tests done with the same driver( Catalyst 8.921.2.0), 10-15runs per test to get accurate numbers and a good mix of tests so no particular card gets any extra advantage.. So here you have the performance index, all stock clocks, game tests only, no benchmarks.

( excuse the non-english language in the graph )


And again, the test rigg does not measure up.

The serious tests I've read, done by serious sites. On a decent test rigg( Intel Core i7 3960X @ +4,0 GHz ), with the same drivers for all cards simply land around 10% performance diffrence. That's all I'm saying, If the 7950's where in fact faster, trust me I would have a couple of those instead.

The biggest physical diffrence between Tahiti PRO/XT is the suffix(ie they're exactly the same). Only 4 compute units disabled sounds great, in practice however that means 1792 shaders vs 2048 shaders, about 15% less for the 7950. Under the same circumstances a card with 15% less raw sader compute perf. can not be faster, it defy's all logic and probably some physics too.

I have had a few cards through the years, atm. I only have two 7970's atm. tho, one xfx and the gigabyte. By tomorrow I'll hopefully have a third tho, (matrix :DD
Edited by twisted1 - 11/8/12 at 11:01pm