Heaven benchmark hd 7970 ref

[R4VANG3R]

Hey,

So I have a reference HD 7970 and did what Tom did in one of his videos,

• Put voltage thing to +20%
• Core to 1125 MHz
• VRAM to 1575 MHz

He said he was able to do this with every card he received, but ofc I have the worst luck in silicone lottery.
So at these clocks in the heaven bench I had some stuttering and black screens etc.
So I put the core clock down to 1100 and vram to 1500.
Now the heaven bench was 100% stable everything was awesome not going over 70C and stable 60 fps through the entire bench.

However while playing games, 3dmark demo, live streaming, I had some driver crashes and instability.

Is the heaven bench that easy on the gpu or am I doing something wrong here?

 

[MrKambo]

probably need a voltage bump on the core, if you have a reference card, then you should be able to do that

im assuming you're using CCC to overclock?

 

[R4VANG3R]

I was using MSI afterburner, should I use CCC?

 

[MrKambo]

nope afterburner is good

enable voltage change and monitoring in the settings page

and restart afterburner, then proceed to overclock, and when the card is unstable bump the voltage until stable

baring in mind the heat is gonna increase, so manually set your fans to keep VRM cool and the core

 

[R4VANG3R]

Ye I use afterburner for the fan profiles so I have that set up, I'll have to look up the voltage change setting when I get home haven't set that yet.

 

[R4VANG3R]

So i tried 3dmark 11 again and it crashed again.


Thats my Afterburner settings, I have the power control enabled but still can't do anything with that top slider.
How should I up my voltage now

 

[MrKambo]

could you download gpu-z from http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

and take a quick screenshot and upload it so i can double check a couple of things

 

[R4VANG3R]

There you go!
Thanks for helping btw much appreciated!

 

[MrKambo]

did you check these 2 options?

 

[R4VANG3R]

Yep I did

 

[MrKambo]

then im pretty sure you dont have a reference 7970, i know XFX changed the PCB and claimed it was reference

somewhere on the card will be the full product code, you can confirm it using that

 

[R4VANG3R]

FX-797A-TDFX-797A-TDFC is what the pcb says and according to Cooling Configurator.com thats a reference card

 

[MrKambo]

that product code states is the DD (double dissipation) im 100% sure this doesn't have voltage control, the PCB is reference but XFX disable voltage control

im sure someone else can confirm this

 

[R4VANG3R]

Man.. just my luck.. that pretty much means I'm not able to overclock it.

 

[MrKambo]

you can overclock it, but just means you hit the limit quicker

tbh 7970 at anything higher than 1GHz is a beast! just try and find a stable overclock and game away!

 

[R4VANG3R]

Ye i'll just have to make best of it.
I just feel a bit cheated, as the rest of the 7970s will be able to go further.. oh well

 

[OmegaStalker]

If your XFX card has the 2 DVIs then its the 2nd revision and is not a reference if it has 1 DVI is was the 1st revision and is a reference card

 

[R4VANG3R]

ye its the DD version with 2 DVIs.
trying to find stability right now, getting closer

 

[R4VANG3R]

1070 MHz / 1575 MHz, stable so far!

edit:


1070 MHz / 1575 MHz stable through 3dmark 11 highest temp: 70 C!
I'm happy.

 

[FTLN]

If you wanna check for stability mate, use far cry 3 with maxed out graphics ... I can pass 3dmark, heaven, valley, furmark etc etc but far cry will crash my drivers everytime without a good 400 - 500 more mv's in trixx ....