So, I went with a replacement Sapphire card after my IceQ arrived as junk. So far no crashes thank God. I'll be running some benches tonight! I ran FC2 and it didn't perform as well as my IceQ did getting 85 FPS instead of 90 but we shall see. It runs REALLY cool though through that bench it topped out at 45 degrees!!! Holy crap!!! More to come..... EDIT: In game or bench it stays permanently at it's boost clock of 925, is that normal? Also I hit 1000mhz without any voltage adjustment even though it only has an ASIC value of 52%.
Settled on this one. Vapor X was out of stock and imagine it's available now.... but still happy so far. This card is so much nicer with the smaller size though. The IceQ was huge-ish. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202026
It's still a solid card, glad you're getting good results with it. With that ASIC rating I'd be tempted to slap on a waterblock =p Still, you should get some decent clocks on air, it's a great cooler.
It certainly is a great cooler. Like I stated, only 45 degrees and that was OC'd to 1000mhz! Very impressed so far. Here's a question for the Sapphire card owners that I couldn't find and answer to, what is the 1 and 2 button for on the side of the card? Is that the bios switch or voltage switch? Also, in afterburner, this card is voltage locked. I did read in the review on the posted link that with the Sapphire OC software the voltage can be controlled.
The little switch? Dual bios mate, makes flashing a non-issue. I've got a Sapphire Flex and absolutely love it. The non-Vapor X coolers for Sapphire are a little under-rated in my opinion. Voltage locks on Sapphire cards are bios only. In fact, you might have an unlocked bios on the card. Try flicking the switch to see.
Ok, so I pushed the button in and fired up my PC. It started to look for drivers like the card wasn't installed and shortly after BSOD.....
Check the Bios revision and whether or not you're voltage locked, then go back to the old one and try to cause the BSOD in the same way. I'm guessing the voltages are set differently in the currently used bios, but that could also mean they're unlocked. Don't see it as a bad thing, it's the secondary bios after all. As long as things are stable in the primary you're good.
Things are stable in the primary after I switched back. How do I go about checking which bios is which and how do I flash it?
You could always try booting into Safe Mode with the second bios, or try with a live disk/usb. I'm guessing Windows hard crashes when you're using the second? Regardless, if you can't run Windows with it, flashing might be the better option anyway. For flashing check out the Gigabyte thread, Deathchild goes into depth regarding it so I wont reiterate here.
Yeah, here. I'll give you the link. http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=373744 Check out post #6. It's most likely BSODing because you have some settings in the desktop that interfere with the changed values of the other bios, it would be best to remove all drivers first and then flip the switch and see what happens. Anyways, a flash should fix it yeah.
Thanks DeathChild. How do I know which atiflash bios to download from that website link? Do I just use the latest one and it will know what card I have? Last question, I'd like to get the voltage unlocked on the second bios so how will I know what to change the file name to? Sorry, I am new to this and absolutely hate dealing with software.
No worries at all. We'll look into everything. First of all, yeah, get the latest atiflash. This is the program you'll use to flash your card. Secondly, the file name (file name of the bios, yes?) doesn't have any relevance to what bios get's unlocked and which doesn't. It's just a normal file type, and you can rename it to anything you want. Just as long as the ending is .rom (a bios file) and it is 7 characters or less. So if you get some blablaBIOS.bin from the website, when you download. Then just change it to newbios.rom.
So how do I know I'm not flashing the BIOS to a 7970 if there's no file specifically for my 7950? For example, if I want a BIOS that isn't voltage locked, how do I know that's what I'm getting?
You have to read up on the bios. You won't know until it's confirmed to you by other people or if the information is available there on the website.. whatever bios you're downloading. Use google. Here. http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/...r=Sapphire&model=HD+7950&interface=&memSize=0 Here you have a list of Sapphire 7950 bioses.
good pick , im soon getting myself also a 7950 from gigabyte , windforce 3 i was aiming for a his iceq x2 boost but is a lil more expensive. and i doubt that 2/3 fps difference will bother me that much. honestly i would keep the card at stock bios , just overclock it , 7950's are overclocking monsters.
There's no fps difference between the Gigabyte or the IceQ X2, it's just how much one clocks and so on. They're equal performers. So no worries about that.