Powercolor 7970 Overclocking

[jonnyfgm]

So now i've whacked a water block on my 7970 I thought it should be time to start overclocking.

So here is the specs of the rig

i7 960 OC to 4.2GHz - XSPC RASA waterblock fitted

ASUS P6X58D-E Motherboard

6GB Kingston Hyper-X 1600MHz

2 x Intel X25-M SSD in raid 0

1 x 2TB and 1 x 1TB HDD

Powercolor 7970 - EK Nickel - Acetal waterblock

Phobyia 1080 Radiator

XSPC dual bay res/pump combo

So, first of all, some benchmarks at stock

Next up, I will push the card up to the maximum on the stock BIOS, and after that I'll try it with the overclocking BIOS to see how far I can push without overvolting, then see how far I can just push the card. My final target is going to be 1300mhz on the core, not really too sure how high i can push the memory though.

Once I get onto the secondary BIOS i will class an overclock as successful if it completes an X run in 3d Mark 11

 

[jonnyfgm]

And here are the maximum I can get on the stock BIOS, I got these without even giving the card any more power in the AMD overdrive.

The speeds I got were 1125 on the clock and 1575 on the memory

now it's time to reboot into the alternative BIOS and start getting fun

 

[jonnyfgm]

Well that took a lot longer than I thought. Got to what I thought was a stable overclock, then ran 3d mark 11 in P mode and it kept failing, d'oh.

After a while I got to 1160 on the clock and 1675 on the memory.

And here are the results

(I had to drop the core clock to 1155 to get the X run to complete in vantage)

So, we can see with this card, even without going beyond the limits of the stock bios you can get a 13% performance increase. And if you do want to go a bit further but don't want to overvolt you can get a 15% performance increase. Not too shabby really.

Next up will be overvolting

 

[jonnyfgm]

Ok so I'm a bit stuck on the overvolting, help!

Running 3d mark vantage I was getting artefacts even with a small over volt, increasing the volts doesn't seem to help, any ideas why i'm now suddenly getting artefacts? :s

edit: i'm now getting the artefacts on stock clocks, worried i've broken something

 

[Master&Puppet]

Ok so I'm a bit stuck on the overvolting, help!

Running 3d mark vantage I was getting artefacts even with a small over volt, increasing the volts doesn't seem to help, any ideas why i'm now suddenly getting artefacts? :s

edit: i'm now getting the artefacts on stock clocks, worried i've broken something

Guesing that you have you been rebooting each time you've played with the settings? Artifacts won't disappear until you do.

 

[jonnyfgm]

Ah I see, so;

overclock

overvolt

test

if get artefacts up voltage and reboot

test again

repeat until artifacts dissapear

like that?

 

[Master&Puppet]

Ah I see, so;

overclock

overvolt

test

if get artefacts up voltage and reboot

test again

repeat until artifacts dissapear

like that?

That looks like a good cycle.

Yea, artifacts are only cleared by a reboot, doesn't matter whether you put the settings back to stock or not it won't clear

Let us know if they don't go away!

 

[jonnyfgm]

no it doesn't appear to be going away even after a reboot and a revert back to stock

At least I think they're artifacts, I certainly never noticed them before, i'll see if i can get a screenshot of them

 

[jonnyfgm]

So here's some screenshots

first of all if you see that glint of white towards the top of the command room type building, sure thats not supposed to be there

Also look at the water in the bottom right, it doesn't look like it's rendering properly?

 

[Master&Puppet]

It's hard to tell from those images but it doesn't look anything like I experience. I.e. Random little blocks of colour constantly flickering.

CLICK ME!

Is something weird happening in all your games?

 

[jonnyfgm]

it's not something I have noticed in games (although i've only actually tried one out), just I hadn't noticed it before when running my previous benches, although it might just have been me being unobservant

 

[Master&Puppet]

It doesn't sound or look like you have them yet - just looks like that is the way the game is made.

Press on!

 

[jonnyfgm]

Ok so i've started hitting artifacts, is this a sign of too much voltage or too higher clock, or both?

 

[I Hunta x]

To high of a clock generally, try a little more volts unless you have already maxed the slider out to see if that fixed it if not just back down 10-25 mhz on the clocks and you should be good

 

[jonnyfgm]

ok thanks, i was getting freezes at 1200mhz so i get bumping up the voltage until it stopped freezing but i was getting artifacts, i'll keep pushing the volts a little higher then, looks like i'm going to top out somewhere near 1200mhz somewhere though