No HW mod for your 7970 DirectCU II Review?

aNoN_ · *Last edited by aNoN_; 03-20-2012 at 16:18.*

Hello. Been on the lookout for a review of this card for a while and found guru3d's. Am just a bit surprised that the overclocking part didnt include the modding, like it was especially designed for:

"Finally, we have VGA Hotwire which is a VGA overvolting solution. Traditionally, if you wanted to overvolt your graphics card, you’d need to solder variable resistors whereas now, Asus has already provided onboard headers to which you link to the graphics card and then you can increase and monitor the voltages through either the BIOS, OS KEY or TurboV EVO utility."

Could you update the review with a worthy overclock result plz? The XPower X58 mobo you have in your current benchsystem should be able to do this modification easy.

sykozis · 03-21-2012, 03:05 | posts: 13,486 | Location: US East Coast

There's no reason to physically modify a graphics card for a review. That "feature" is a case of "use at your own risk" as doing so can damage the card.

aNoN_ · 03-24-2012, 00:05 | posts: 14

Quote:

Originally Posted by sykozis

There's no reason to physically modify a graphics card for a review. That "feature" is a case of "use at your own risk" as doing so can damage the card.

Oh rly? Ofc there's reason to connect those cables, you can easily achieve much higher clock speeds and performance, thats reason enough actually. Also it can't damage the card so long as the temperature is within safe limits, and this DirectCU cooler is very efficient. If you review hardware you should knew a thing or two about overclocking too. So don't try to come and tell me some lousy excuses. Give the card a deservable review with OC like its meant to be done.

Agent-A01 · 03-24-2012, 00:52 | posts: 5,621 | Location: USA

Uhm, doing this mod voids the warranty. It IS at user-risk and if someone blows the card from soldering these wires and overvolting the card, well tough luck, asus wont replace the card. Thats not an excuse, its a fact, as stated by sykozis.

aNoN_ · 03-24-2012, 02:52 | posts: 14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

Uhm, doing this mod voids the warranty. It IS at user-risk and if someone blows the card from soldering these wires and overvolting the card, well tough luck, asus wont replace the card. Thats not an excuse, its a fact, as stated by sykozis.

Nah it doesn't void the warranty, the card is designed for this. And it's quite easy to do be honest.

Agent-A01 · 03-24-2012, 03:21 | posts: 5,621 | Location: USA

Reading the voltage through the wires does not void the warranty but doing a hard-wired voltage mod does. The review cleary states the voltage was maxed and the clock is what they got. Not all cards clock the same..

sykozis · 03-24-2012, 04:23 | posts: 13,486 | Location: US East Coast

Quote:

Originally Posted by aNoN_

Nah it doesn't void the warranty, the card is designed for this. And it's quite easy to do be honest.

Since you obviously paid very little attention to the important parts of the review....

Quote:

Propreitary VGA hotwire allows you to plug and solder wires on the card's voltage regulators and accurately read and control Vcore, Vmem, and PLL voltages from ASUS ROG MBs on a hardware level

Source: http://usa.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/A...D7970DC2T3GD5/

Quote:

Test Environment & Equipment
Here is where we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboard

MSI Big Bang XPower X58

Processor

Core i7 965 Extreme @ 3750 MHz

Graphics Card

ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II

Memory

6144 MB (3x 2048 MB) DDR3 Corsair @ 1500 MHz

Power Supply Unit

1200 Watt

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up to 2560x1600

OS related software

Windows 7 RTM 64-bit
DirectX 9/10/11 End User Runtime (latest available)
AMD Catalyst AMD_Radeon_HD_7900_Win7_64 beta (12.1)
NVIDIA GeForce series latest WHQL 285.62 WHQL

Source: http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-r...u-ii-review/10

According to Asus, hotwiring requires a RoG motherboard as it's a "proprietary feature".

Also, soldering wires to a PCB can very easily result in damage as most people don't even have a clue as to how to properly solder 2 wires together.

Also, Asus's warranty does not cover physical damage caused by the user....nor damage caused by improper operation of the hardware (which includes modification).

Iactus · 07-24-2012, 12:10 | posts: 1

Correct in saying that the Warranty is void on these cards if you cause Physical Damage, But if you simply use the Card in the way it was designed and DO NOT bridge the OCP tabs the warranty will be intact (as long as you don't damage the card when un-soldering the wires)

Spets · 07-24-2012, 12:16 | posts: 1,429

What is with all these forceful/ungrateful requests lately?

GhostXL · 07-24-2012, 16:33 | posts: 4,909 | Location: PA, USA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

Reading the voltage through the wires does not void the warranty but doing a hard-wired voltage mod does. The review cleary states the voltage was maxed and the clock is what they got. Not all cards clock the same..

Bro ASUS backs this up, they created the cards to do this. ANoN kinda has it wrong. It's not a mod, that makes people think it's not supported.

This hardware configuration (better way to put it), is supported and meant to be done by people.

It's plastered all over the box/booklet.

I would say its not recommended to do unless you have knowledge of this sort of thing.