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Reference AMD &900 Series "Tahiti" with 768 Shaders????

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9.6K views 34 replies 15 participants last post by  Syclopse  
#1 ·
Anyone ever seen anything like this? Is this card a fake, or is it a defective chip or something?



edit: was sold to me as a 7970, unbranded, no labels denoting HD 79XX...
 
#3 ·
Well, I have it folding at 1000Mhz, and it is getting about 1/4 the ppd as my other 7970....I think the shader count on GPU-Z must be accurate.

I have already contacted the seller for a refund, but I still am confused as to what this is? FAH recognizes it as a Tahiti PRO, which is a 7950, but it still is folding at about 1/3 of what I would see from a 7950.
 
A
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by gboeds View Post

Well, I have it folding at 1000Mhz, and it is getting about 1/4 the ppd as my other 7970....I think the shader count on GPU-Z must be accurate.

I have already contacted the seller for a refund, but I still am confused as to what this is? FAH recognizes it as a Tahiti PRO, which is a 7950, but it still is folding at about 1/3 of what I would see from a 7950.
Click to expand...
The Device ID 1002 679A is 7950, probably why F@H recognized it as such.

Very odd indeed. Does it look like a reference 7970?
 
#10 ·
Sounds also that it might be a 7790 flashed to a 7970 BIOS.

Definitely interesting, can you maybe post some pictures of the card itself?

Edit: OP, it might be a kind of 7850 type card, read here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Pitcairn-radeon-HD-7850-768-shaders-gpu,15524.html

Sounds like you have a 7850 768 shaders edition, and unreleased card, or possibly an early model of a 7790.

But OP, if you don't mind me asking, didn't you notice right off the bat? 7850's and down all have a single PCI-E power connector, unlike 7870's or higher with dual power connectors. That is if this card turns out to be this 768 core 7850.
 
A
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by cam51037 View Post

Sounds also that it might be a 7790 flashed to a 7970 BIOS.

Definitely interesting, can you maybe post some pictures of the card itself?

Edit: OP, it might be a kind of 7850 type card, read here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Pitcairn-radeon-HD-7850-768-shaders-gpu,15524.html

Sounds like you have a 7850 768 shaders edition, and unreleased card, or possibly an early model of a 7790.

But OP, if you don't mind me asking, didn't you notice right off the bat? 7850's and down all have a single PCI-E power connector, unlike 7870's or higher with dual power connectors. That is if this card turns out to be this 768 core 7850.
Click to expand...
I don't think that is the case, because it's not Pitcairn, it still shows as Tahiti, but it could be something similar to the card in that article. Maybe an ES 7950 with only 768 shaders.
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by anubis1127 View Post

I don't think that is the case, because it's not Pitcairn, it still shows as Tahiti, but it could be something similar to the card in that article. Maybe an ES 7950 with only 768 shaders.
Click to expand...
But couldn't you flash the BIOS so it says that it's a different card?

Like I know you can flash a GTX 680 to a GTX 770, which is a GK110 card (if I'm not mistaken) and adds extra features to it like a temp target, couldn't that have been done here as well?
 
A
#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by cam51037 View Post

But couldn't you flash the BIOS so it says that it's a different card?

Like I know you can flash a GTX 680 to a GTX 770, which is a GK110 card (if I'm not mistaken) and adds extra features to it like a temp target, couldn't that have been done here as well?
Click to expand...
You could flash a Pitcairn with a Tahiti bios, but I doubt the card would work after that.

GTX 770 is GK104, same as 680.
 
#14 ·
it is now packed for shipping and taking it to UPS to ship back this afternoon, have already gotten agreement from seller for 100% refund (bought on E-Bay)

Definitely looks like a 7970/7950, it not having the model on the card is what made me open GPU-Z immediately on installing the card, and I found what I found....



HWInfo says it's a 7950, too....

 
H
#16 ·
The 7950 (Tahiti Pro) has two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. I see that yours has one 6-pin and one 8-pin - this is consistent with the 7970 (Tahiti XT). It may have been flashed with a 7950 bios?

EDIT: The P/N is difficult to make out but it looks like 102C386#### which is Tahiti. Also, it has 3GB of SDRAM which was only available on Tahiti boards as far as I know
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by PontiacGTX View Post

OP check this

http://www.techpowerup.com/165334/production-radeon-hd-7850-packs-768-stream-processors.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/768-shader-pitcairn-review,3196.html

it is a ES of 7950
tongue.gif
Click to expand...
Quote:
Originally Posted by healey33 View Post

The 7950 (Tahiti Pro) has two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. I see that yours has one 6-pin and one 8-pin - this is consistent with the 7970 (Tahiti XT). It may have been flashed with a 7950 bios?

EDIT: The P/N is difficult to make out but it looks like 102C386#### which is Tahiti. Also, it has 3GB of SDRAM which was only available on Tahiti boards as far as I know
Click to expand...
or an ES 7970 flashed with a 7950 BIOS!
biggrin.gif


That makes sense, right?
tongue.gif


Well, it is shipped off and I will get my refund when it gets there.....now to find a REAL 7970
 
H
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by gboeds View Post

or an ES 7970 flashed with a 7950 BIOS!
biggrin.gif


That makes sense, right?
tongue.gif


Well, it is shipped off and I will get my refund when it gets there.....now to find a REAL 7970
Click to expand...
Yes, most likely! The only strange thing is the sticker. That is a production sticker - the engineering samples have different ones (they say engineering sample on them amongst some different numbers). ES's do not have a S/N :S

Anyways, it doesn't matter anymore. Good luck finding another!
smile.gif
 
W
#20 ·
___

Sorry first post got lost in the ether, posting this for the crawlers:
Note the cards I have had "MONICA" in place of where the model number should be... on the bottom was the following part number : 7121A10000G On the back of the card was: 102C3861000 000001
___

UPDATE!!!!!!

OK! Well perhaps some of the mystery has been solved...

So according to the guy I bought these 7 cards off of, they were salvage from a dead games developer... So this led me to go back to my old AMD Developer account and poke around... The current working theory is these cards were early developer samples which were available to dev's to test aspects of the new architecture before the final PCB/chip design on the production cards were settled. IE they aren't internal engineering samples, but rather partner developer samples which were "my guess is" under an NDA (which may or may not have expired.) Regardless I suspect that ATI never meant for these cards to get into the wild and were probably supposed to be scrapped at end of life. So if you happen to have one of these cards either it "fell off the truck" OR maybe there was a bankrupcy auction or some such thing and some poor sap ended up buying a bunch of cards thinking they were "real."

never the less a few more points...

They show 768 shaders and ~38Gtexel/s out of the box..... I flashed 2 of my 7 with the 7950 Bios Boost update found here: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33993264 which increased my shaders to 1536 and boosts the fillrate to what it should be for the REAL pre update 7950 IE ~80Gtexel/s... however if your using these cards for Scrypt mining.... sorry to say I "think" your out of luck. Iv been screwing around with clocks and voltages all day and cant seem to pull much more than 230 Kh/s (compared to the ~700 Kh/s a real reference 7950 pulls).

Anyway I JUST figured this out so hopefully the dude from ebay I got these from plays nice, although If he ended up picking up a giant pile of these things being told they were all 7950s I do feel bad for the guy...

Anyway my suggestion is if you DO end up reading this thread is to get rid of them, plenty of REAL 7950s/7970s out there.

I also think there may be a few more people out there who may find themselves in the same boat as I JUST received a PM from someone with the exact same issue not more than 18 hrs after bumping this 3+month old thread...
 
W
#21 ·
And yet another PM from someone who got some cards from an AMD employee claiming they were reference 7970s..... The big boom in LTC going on right now may be bringing a lot of *********** out of the wood work seeing how the price of 7950s/7970s have effectively doubled over the past 2 weeks.

Chances are if your reading this thread you've already been screwed, but be careful folks, lots of jerks trying to make a quick buck by unloading bogus cards...
 
B
#22 ·
Actually, I just bought 15 of these. They were advertised as 7970 reference, but the specs were way off and default hash rate was only about 50KH/s.
frown.gif


It turns out that this card is the base development card at AMD. The hardware is supposed to be physically the same as the 7970. The default settings have all of the clocks and shaders minimized for this vanilla 7900 series card. Then, developers can make their own BIOS and they can load on whatever they want. Since the 7900 series is "retired", these cards aren't used anymore so AMD is perhaps giving them to employees.

I tried to load all of the 7970 BIOS's that I could find, but none of them seemed to work. I believe the card needs a BIOS that matches one with a device ID of 679A. If someone has a reference 7970, then I would love to try to load it, but I am skeptical.
It turns out that there is a BIOS with device ID of 679A... an ATI 7950:

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/124572/ati-hd7950-3072-120706.html

This one loaded fine. Default speeds are 925 GPU / 1250 Memory. It allows overclocking up to 1200 Mhz GPU / 1575 Mhz Memory.

I ran cgminer with just some rough setings. Just with the stock frequencies, it was pulling in 480KH/s. I am relieved. If the other cards work like this then I will be a happy camper. It was still a good deal even if advertised as a 7970.

I would love to load a 7970 BIOS, but I am not sure it will work. In any case, until someone posts one with an ID of 679A (ATI reference), we may never know.
Card has been stable for the past 4 hours. I hope to get this thing up to 600 with some tweaks to cgminer and overclocking.

I am curious if we can edit the BIOS just to change shaders to further increase performance.

Other note: The fan wins for being the most annoying fan I have ever heard on a video card.
 
Z
#23 ·
ive flashed this card to 7970 and stream processors remains unchanged at 1536. I have a 7950 bios on it right now... but the 800mhz one. what do you mean that it wont work without the right device id bios? Im looking @ my 7970GE and board layout is identical.

anyways.... here is the link to the 7970 bios with same id...
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/116539/ATI.HD7970.3072.111220.rom
 
R
#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by bravedog View Post

Actually, I just bought 15 of these. They were advertised as 7970 reference, but the specs were way off and default hash rate was only about 50KH/s.
frown.gif


It turns out that this card is the base development card at AMD. The hardware is supposed to be physically the same as the 7970. The default settings have all of the clocks and shaders minimized for this vanilla 7900 series card. Then, developers can make their own BIOS and they can load on whatever they want. Since the 7900 series is "retired", these cards aren't used anymore so AMD is perhaps giving them to employees.

I tried to load all of the 7970 BIOS's that I could find, but none of them seemed to work. I believe the card needs a BIOS that matches one with a device ID of 679A. If someone has a reference 7970, then I would love to try to load it, but I am skeptical.
It turns out that there is a BIOS with device ID of 679A... an ATI 7950:

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/124572/ati-hd7950-3072-120706.html

This one loaded fine. Default speeds are 925 GPU / 1250 Memory. It allows overclocking up to 1200 Mhz GPU / 1575 Mhz Memory.

I ran cgminer with just some rough setings. Just with the stock frequencies, it was pulling in 480KH/s. I am relieved. If the other cards work like this then I will be a happy camper. It was still a good deal even if advertised as a 7970.

I would love to load a 7970 BIOS, but I am not sure it will work. In any case, until someone posts one with an ID of 679A (ATI reference), we may never know.
Card has been stable for the past 4 hours. I hope to get this thing up to 600 with some tweaks to cgminer and overclocking.

I am curious if we can edit the BIOS just to change shaders to further increase performance.

Other note: The fan wins for being the most annoying fan I have ever heard on a video card.
Click to expand...
Any new information on these? I bought 3 of these on ebay as well and they were advertised as 7970 even though HWinfo shows them as 7950. Should I flash them with 7970 Bios or return them?

What kind of hash rate were you getting on the 7970 bios?

EDIT: it also looks like the ID is 6798 not 679a
 
R
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by bravedog View Post

If your ID is 6798 then you should be able to flash with most any 7970 bios. The cards are very stable at 1090/1500 clock rates, but I have not been able to get shaders above 1536. How many shaders do you show with gpus?
Click to expand...
It is 679a like I said above unless that is the same as 6798 and doesn't make a difference. I was referring to the 7970 BIOS that was posted, it shows 6798.



I am showing 768 shaders like the OP.

I also just found this 7970 BIOS. It does have the correct ID.

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/126754/his-hd7970-3072-120816.html
 
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