The 7970 Thread. Post your overclocks and experiences here:

Only two ATI cards I have had have been Sapphire and they have been perfectly fine.

I have the same exact 7970 and the custom cooler is so much better than the reference cooler. Mine overclocks pretty well too. I have it at 1210/1620 @ 1.2v (I'm not pushing the clocks or voltage any further but it could definitely keep going)

 

Heaven X bench mark X5105.92
http://hwbot.org/submission/2283004_


Thought I'd post my set up for reference:
Asus Rampage IV Extreme i7 3930K @5020 water cooled
16GB Gskill ripjaw X 2133@2008
two Intel Cherryhill Sata III Raid O
2 X HD 7970 CF Visiontec @1133/1536 1.185 v

I do get hard locks when over clocking too high in Sapphire trixx(with work around). I think anything past 1.2v on the GPU locks it right up.

 

Got up to 1250/1700 now. I could bump my processor past 3.65 but I don't really feel the need. Plus, I'm on air even though its a Coolermaster V8 and might be able to give 3.8

 

What voltage do you need for those settings?

 

For 7970 it's at 1.23v and my i7 940 is at 1.218 for 3630mhz w/ ram at auto voltage because it is only at 1654

Thought it was 3650 just 20mhz lower almost right haha

@1.23 I had some artifacting in BF3 (I know BF3 is buggy but I never used to get anything like that with my old standard stock voltage oc) No artifacting in Crysis 2 and Skyrim. I might try Metro in a bit. Also look a couple of cycles of heaven, benching the 2nd cycle, didn't crash or anything but the temps got up to around 80 and the fan was around 85-90. Not surprised at the temps though considering my ac isn't hooked up yet and it's in the 80's and humid. Great benchmarking weather...

On a side note, I did the Heaven loop with 1.242v.

 

81.2% ASIC
7970 Sapphire reference(XFX flashed)+acceleroX@1900rpm
13k single card

 

Im having issues trying to Flash my HIS to as Asus to see if it will help.

How did you flash yours?

Also FFFUUUUUU !!!!

 

Use latest version , supporting Tahiti
atiflash_395.zip
Boot dos, place you bin/rom file in atiflash folder and use -f command
that's all.

 

Nice overclock with your 7970!

Mine simply wasn't staying stable without giving it a ton of volts.

I'm fine just leaving it at 1125/1600 at default w/ overdrive just for the stability.

 

Ahhh I was trying the Winflash method.

When I get back home next week Ill have another go, cheers.

 

Tempeture spike

Hi guyz,got my new Asus Directcu 7970 1gig edition yesterday...what a mamoth...its hugh.

This was the first part of my system upgrade to arrive so of coarse i had to play with it but installation was`nt without hurdles,
i knew fitting this card in my TT mozart tx case was going to be tight but oh boy,yes i cound of got a bigger but i chose the mozzart because it can accomodate 2 boards it has plenty of room for my planned dual loop water cooling setup,
i finaly get the card fitted with 4mm gap between my card and my front fans.

Having looked at various 7970s and found most of them to be powered with 6+8 pin i thought im fine there having 2x6+8 and 1 6+6 pin power cables...ahh...next problem,this card has 8+8 pin so ive used 8pin from one set and 8 from the second set of pci-e power cables...problem solved until i want to add a second 7970.

last problem which gives me cause for concern,after i installed my card i installed the asus tweak software to see if it had anything that msi ab doesnt,on monday everything was ran cool and quiet with settings on stock and fans on auto control while bench marking and some gaming but tuesday i found an issue,after playing on Avp 2010 for 30mins or so i alt/tabbed to check something on the internet and my gpu fans started to spin up for a second and return to the default 10% fan usage so i checked the temps of my card and asus tweak was reading 93c,i closed asus tweak then restarted it and temps returned to normal,so now im wondering if i have a dodgy bios,software or gpu that needs rma`ing

has anyone else had this issue while running asus tweak

thx in advance

 

The user defined fan profile button and general setup are not brilliant I hope they tweak them in later releases. However, using the Asus utility I haven't had the same issue as you had. Try setting a fan profile and see if that resolves the issue.

 

just d/l latest gpu tweak it seems to be more stable than the 2077 version that came with the card,im also wondering if asus run a burnin test before the cards are packed away ,that might explain the peak in temps,has done it since i wrote the original post

 

Got my 7970 up to 1200/1800 @1.23 and ran it through 3 loops of Heaven benching it once. No artifacts or anything. Temps maxed 70c w/ dual-x fan running at 65%.

I got 83.6 an with my i7 940 running at 3.63ghz. I recently bumped it to 3.81 with the vcore at 1.28. So I'll probably run a few loops of heaven again to see if that 83.6 bumps up to 84, but mostly to see what temps will be under a gaming load.

 

Despite benching on Heaven stable at 1200/1800 w/1.23v, the driver still occasionally crashed as well as sometimes games would not start. So I bumped the voltage up to 1.243 and so far so good. I really don't want to bump it up higher but I really don't want to sacrifice the 4xMSAA in BF3 which the card can't really do smoothly under 1200 core...

EDIT: My monitor just randomly didn't wake up from power saving mode...Not sure if that is from the overclock. Computer was running and the hdd responding just the monitor didn't want to wake up. Might just be my monitor, I bought it in 2009 and it's sure to have taken a few bumps from moving from Germany to New Mexico and then to Massachusetts on top of the heavy use. My good ol' Acer!

 

try dropping your memory drop some that might help you run lower voltage. I have the same core speed a 1.225 stable if that helps.

 

Just been running Heaven at 1200/1750 looped for about half an hour. No artifacts its just the fan noise on my reference card! lol

 

My monitor just went into power saving mode again while I was in use and wouldn't wake up! Happened while the card was actually at its default settings, so the overclock doesn't matter. I'm starting to wonder if the 1 month old 7970 is bricking.

 

I finally settled on 1225/1650/1.187v and leaving it there.

Max temp in Heaven Settings on high 74c.
Low fan noise even maxed.

Later

 

^Wow nice OC really low voltage for those clocks.