About to pull the trigger on a 7970, any final thoughts?

Based on what?
An initial 5~20% seems very likely for just a "simple" refresh. Probably some more later on with improved drivers.

 

Well thats not bad, at least its not red lol I'll still get the Heatkiller backplate for it though, they look sweet!

Its decision time, do I go for one aswell lol

 

based on the rumors ( shader core numbers and also higher clock speed due to mature fab process).

 

That will NEVER happen. The "real deal" from Radeon,will be some time in 2014. Bet on it!

 

Agreed. Not going to happen with a refresh.

 

Time will tell. Lets see.

 

As we all know HD 8900 releasing mid next year ! , plus we r getting good deals with present HD 7900 , so do u guys think 7950 crossfire will justify the performance, rather than waiting for half year to get single HD 8900 ???

m aware of the fact dual gpus always face many issues with drivers and games support ! but fixes do come late ?? :3eyes: , but wont 7950 crossfire >> single HD 8970 ?

good suggestions r welcome !

 

There's really no way to know until cards are released, personally though I would not recommend two weaker cards against a single more powerful alternative from a newer generation.

 

I just received my MSI 7970 OC and it has an ASIC quality of 75%. That should in theory mean good overclocking results with a balance between good air cooling and water cooling, haven't tried to see how far it overclocks yet.

I did notice that there's noticeable coil whine. I also read somewhere that it may go away after a few days? In any case, some benchmarks at the graphics card's stock clocks.


Unigine Heaven 3.0

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3dmark 11 - Default settings

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3dmark 11 - HWBot (Modified tessellation)

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3dmark Vantage

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3dmark 06

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3dmark 05

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3dmark 03

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Good stuff dude! Nice bench run, gonna submit to the bot? Whats all this ASIC business?

I'm so close to ordering one of those cards right now!! I take it the PCB didn't turn out red then?

 

The PCB is black, and yes, they have been submitted to Hwbot. I haven't overclocked the card yet so not going to get many hardware points, just a few global points mostly.

Here's an ASIC quality explanation from w1zzard.

 

So looking at that chart, a higher ASIC quality chip under Water or colder will yield "potentially" a worse Overclocking experience!? That seems odd to me lol I wonder why that is.

 

It's about the chip you get. Higher ASIC means the chip has low stock voltage, is power-efficient, doesn't leak much, and doesn't heat up much, but it can't take much voltage and thus hits a wall at a certain point.

Lower ASIC means the chip has high stock voltage, draws more power, is leaky, and heats up more. This means that it can't OC much at its stock voltage, as when you hit higher temperatures, you need higher voltages to keep the chip stable. So you OC some amount for the stock voltage, then each step you OC further requires more and more voltage. These chips can really take voltage well.

This means that a high ASIC chip would be best suited for air cooling which is enough for the chip. A low ASIC chip would be best suited for water cooling since you could potentially achieve same OC for lower voltage (less heat) so higher OCs for same / higher voltage. A low ASIC chip with air cooling, clocked heavily would heat up too much to be stable and require a whole lot of voltage. BOOM

I've seen both. My Gigabyte 7970 OC with a 60% ASIC, OCs to 1125MHz @stock volts (1.175V), 1150 @1.2V, 1175 @1.25V, and almost stable at 1200MHz @ 1.3V. (Waterblock on the way )

A friend's 7950 with 90% ASIC won't budge above 1100MHz @1.1V. It literally hits a wall.

Stability testing is done by OCCT. This tool is bulletproof. With the low ASIC 7970, each time I raise voltage, it spits out less errors, until it's eventually stable. This implies it can go further on water.

With the high ASIC 7950, I try even 1125MHz @1.2V, it simply won't budge. I'm going to try it on water anyways and tell you what I get. I don't believe I can get much more than 1100MHz. 1100MHz @ 1.1V seems to be the limit for this card.

Will post temps for each later on, with ambient temp and fan config / speed.

Cheers.

 

Very nicely put, yasamoka. Looking forward to hearing about your findings.

I'll just add a little to above. The ASIC quality seems to be related directly to leakage and, continuing from there, leakage is related directly and inversely to chip temperature.

The higher ASIC/lower leakage chips don't seem to respond to voltage increases that well, possibly due to circuit limitations, making them colder brings little benefit. The lower ASIC quality/higher leakage chips require higher stock voltages and, by extension, handle them relatively better.

This in turn allows lower ASIC quality chips to scale clocks and voltage with cooling in use. As you increase cooling quality, leakage drops, allowing for better responsiveness and higher potential clocks.

For e.g. this card has an ASIC quality of 75% and in turn a default core voltage of 1.112v, this sits nearer the centre of the stock voltage spectrum, and with moderate leakage, this should potentially allow for better scaling with cooling.

 

Spot on. And congrats for your 7970!

EDIT: About the coil whine...well some say that leaving the card on a menu where it can achieve a very high framerate (like Crysis 2 menu) will reduce or eliminate the coil whine.

I've had my 7970 since August, and the coil while is still there. Not a biggie when you cap your framerate however. The buzz when the card is running is there, in comparison with my older GFX card, a GTX 260, which was silent under load and only whined when on a game menu, stress testing, or Folding@Home. Even then, it was a very minute coil whine.

Happens with most if not all newer gen cards that are reference, it seems. Also on GTX670/680s.

 

Yes, I've had a certain amount of coil whine with most cards, this one however seems to sound slightly different and can be more noticeable with a very silent system. I still haven't had a chance to do a long burn-in session, will have to see if that helps at all.

 

It goes away. It was a little loud at the beginning but it then stopped. Sometimes I hear it when I start Crysis ...lol.

 

Nice one, cheers for the explanation guys.

Didn't buy the MSI 7970 in the end, decided I had other priorities to take care of first, no matter how much I wanted it Though I see the HIS 7970 is now down to 299.99 so I've got another week to maybe change my mind lol

Anyway, looking forward to seeing how both of you get on with your cards

 

Very sensible, Matt. You already have a pretty capable system, no point in rushing into a purchase. I only had a single card or might have held off, too.

 

Yeah the 6950's can hold there own still, I can easily wait for 8000 Series tbh no way I'm waiting for the 9K Series though lol

Want to OC them again, been running stock for months now, I did however have issues with MSI Afterburner 2.3.0, think it might be because I'm running 12.11 BETA 11 drivers. Not researched it yet. Still running my 3570K at stock too, think I'll have a play with that over the weekend, need to play with memory voltages, only way I could post at 4.6Ghz+ was by dropping the memory divider which is annoying.

Done any overclocking on your 7970 yet? Or you just been enjoying some games?