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Should I go for a 7950 crossfire setup

cdawall

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Awesome. I just purchased the Gigabyte 7950. Once I get some money for the 6970's then I'll get another.

Why the GB card?
 

cdawall

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cheap, 900 MHz stock, might come with 1000 MHz BIOS stock on second BIOS. Also has better PWM than other cards.

Good reasoning I was just curious I looked at that one as well as the Sapphire one that I ended up with. The shorter card is nice to deal with in my smaller midtower. :toast: Has voltages open to 1.3v on mine so I think it was an ok choice.
 

cadaveca

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Good reasoning I was just curious I looked at that one as well as the Sapphire one that I ended up with. The shorter card is nice to deal with in my smaller midtower. :toast: Has voltages open to 1.3v on mine so I think it was an ok choice.

There aren't as many custom PCBs with the 7950's, so overall the experience is pretty level for everyone. There's a few cards with BIOSes that prevent volt control, but I think they can be avoided. Eventually, I suppose that's all that'll be left.

NOthing wrong with going with Sapphire either, same 1000 MHz BIOS lottery, but they have one left MOSFET per phase. IF ya get older stock, you might get 7970 PCB, and of course, those clock the best, since that PCB has higher TDP limit.
 

cdawall

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There aren't as many custom PCBs with the 7950's, so overall the experience is pretty level for everyone. There's a few cards with BIOSes that prevent volt control, but I think they can be avoided. Eventually, I suppose that's all that'll be left.

NOthing wrong with going with Sapphire either, same 1000 MHz BIOS lottery, but they have one left MOSFET per phase. IF ya get older stock, you might get 7970 PCB, and of course, those clock the best, since that PCB has higher TDP limit.

it still gets up to 1200mhz with 1.27v. I never tried higher since it gets rather hot here I chose to stick with 1150 and 1.26v on the card as temps were best.
 

cadaveca

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it still gets up to 1200mhz with 1.27v. I never tried higher since it gets rather hot here I chose to stick with 1150 and 1.26v on the card as temps were best.

My one GB Windforce card does 1300 MHz with that voltage. It's just luck of the draw. Getting 1200 MHz, with new-stock cards, IMHO, is pretty darn good. Many cards won't even bench at that(and by bench I mean it artifacts, but doesn't lose scores in benchmarks).

Technically, when oyu think about it, that 1200 MHz is 400 MHz over the stock 800 MHz clocks the original 7950 shipped with, while the new BOOST GPUs are 925 MHz stock (those GPUs tend to come with the 1000 MHz BIOS).

I think many people forget that the 7970 was already "refreshed" with the GHz edition, and that these are actually a different chip (XT2 vs XT). That makes hitting those higher clocks less impressive overall, since I feel that this process from TSMC overall is capable of 1100 MHz with decent voltage. XT2 chips ship with 1.25 V and 1050 MHz for the 7970s... so that voltage you use, for a XT2 chip, is fine...stock, even.

The problem is that some cards will have pretty noisy VRM at those clocks. It's almost like all chips are capable, and OEMs are binning on VRM noise. :p That's not really the case, but...funny.
 

cdawall

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Stock on my card was 1.25v it is a boost version I have not tried the second bios to see what it stocked with just installed trixx and kicked it up to what was normal floating around online. I am curious if it could hit 1300 with 1.3v, but since I am overseas don't really want to risk smoking anything even if it is a minor risk.

my card if your curious link non-reference PCB that's .6" shorter than OE. Not much, but keeps it out of my HDD's.
 

cadaveca

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That looks like "reference" analog 7970 GHz PCB, maybe, the dual 8-pin gives it away, MOSFET config would fill out the rest.

You might be good using 7970 GHz BIOSes, even.

You can run GHz BIOSes on original non-BOOST cards, but they don't clock as well as they do with the stock BIOS for some reason. It's like there is a different TDP limit, almost, but maybe that's just the boosted voltage.

I feel 1.3V should be fine for BOOST cards, especially if that's a 7970 PCB. Would have to see the PCB naked to know. My 7970 Matrix does 1.3 V with the buttons on the card, and you should know how tight ASUS is with that stuff now. :p 7970 DCUII TOP max voltage for them is 1.125 V, 1.175 V for non-TOP. :roll: Pretty stupid for a card that has built-in solder points for volt mods to only allow +0.01V with that soldering, but that's how it is.
 

cdawall

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It only has dual 6 pins installed...I know it has the dual 8 pin solder points however. It is shorter than the stock 7950 no idea if they just removed things or not. I will have to try 1.3v and see how it does. Hopefully I can kick some more out of it with good temps. Considering in crysis 3 it doesn't break 55C I feel like it will be fine as long as the VRM's stay cool.
 
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That looks like "reference" analog 7970 GHz PCB, maybe, the dual 8-pin gives it away, MOSFET config would fill out the rest.

You might be good using 7970 GHz BIOSes, even.

You can run GHz BIOSes on original non-BOOST cards, but they don't clock as well as they do with the stock BIOS for some reason. It's like there is a different TDP limit, almost, but maybe that's just the boosted voltage.

I feel 1.3V should be fine for BOOST cards, especially if that's a 7970 PCB. Would have to see the PCB naked to know. My 7970 Matrix does 1.3 V with the buttons on the card, and you should know how tight ASUS is with that stuff now. :p 7970 DCUII TOP max voltage for them is 1.125 V, 1.175 V for non-TOP. :roll: Pretty stupid for a card that has built-in solder points for volt mods to only allow +0.01V with that soldering, but that's how it is.

Can you go over 1.3V with your Matrix card? I recall someone getting 1.4v with Sapphire Trixx on some cards.

I might be mistaken though.
 

cadaveca

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Can you go over 1.3V with your Matrix card? I recall someone getting 1.4v with Sapphire Trixx on some cards.

I might be mistaken though.

Oh yeah, no problemo with that, but that's what it does stock with HARDWARE, not software. The Matrix cards have voltage that is adjustable using buttons on the card itself, goes from 1.25 V to 1.3 V, in like 8 steps or something. I suppose it might be possible to get that programmed for higher, I actually haven't had much time to play with stuff recently and just got that card a little while ago. I'll have more time coming up real soon though, spring break next week. :)

Anyway, you can "burn" higher settings into the BIOS apparently, I'm eager to get playing with it on the Maximus V Extreme, since it plugs into that board for hardware control of the voltages, too. I'll be posting more about that alter though, in a thread I have already going. Eventually we'll see about LN2, that's more about having the time right now. I got the ram, board, VGA...and maybe a good chip...
 
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Received one of the Gigabyte 7950's yesterday and I guess Rev 2 has a 8+6 PCI-E power setup compared to the pic that was on Newegg. Not a big deal but hopefully I'll get some playing time this weekend, after putting more interior doors up.
 

cadaveca

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Received one of the Gigabyte 7950's yesterday and I guess Rev 2 has a 8+6 PCI-E power setup compared to the pic that was on Newegg. Not a big deal but hopefully I'll get some playing time this weekend, after putting more interior doors up.

That's a down-binned 7970, with 7970 PCB. Nice buy, really, lucky guy!
 
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That's a down-binned 7970, with 7970 PCB. Nice buy, really, lucky guy!

Hopefully the 2nd one is like this. I'll find out tomorrow.
 
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That's a down-binned 7970, with 7970 PCB. Nice buy, really, lucky guy!

Both of my 7950's are on the 7970 PCB with 6+8pin, though i dont think its quite so lucky anymore, as most of the XFX DD 7950's have come with them. You have to buy an older second hand model to get a dual 6 pin pcb version.
 

cadaveca

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Hopefully the 2nd one is like this. I'll find out tomorrow.

Don't forget I'll take your second coupon! ;)

You'd get real lucky to get two 7970 PCBs. Make sure to chec kboth BIOSes, as there is good chance you got 1000 MHz BIOS on second BIOS.

Both of my 7950's are on the 7970 PCB with 6+8pin, though i dont think its quite so lucky anymore, as most of the XFX DD 7950's have come with them. You have to buy an older second hand model to get a dual 6 pin pcb version.

XFX cards are different.


I know, for a fact, that all of the recently arrived Gigabyte cards at my local retailer are dual 6-pin, actually. So what kenkicker got was either old stock, or really really new. Gigabyte doesn't have 100's of models of the same card like XFX does. They have five models only. 2x 7950(stock and windforce OC), and 3x 7970(stock, windforce OC, and super OC).
 
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Don't forget I'll take your second coupon! ;)

You'd get real lucky to get two 7970 PCBs. Make sure to chec kboth BIOSes, as there is good chance you got 1000 MHz BIOS on second BIOS.

It does have the 1Ghz bios and I haven't forgotten buddy:toast:
 
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Received the 2nd one today and yet again it's 6+8. Apparently after reading a bunch last night this is the new boost 7950 windforce.
 

cadaveca

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Awesome stuff. When we gonna get some pictures and benchmarks ?

:p


:laugh:
 

brandonwh64

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Mine came in today as well ken! Thanks to dave he helped me with the card and I got it cooling good and clocked at boost clocks!

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/458055
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6295342

 
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Received the 2nd one today and yet again it's 6+8. Apparently after reading a bunch last night this is the new boost 7950 windforce.

Pics please? I ordered a Windforce 7950 2 months ago and it was a 1.0 (dual 6 pins) with a 1000MHz non-boost BIOS (which I sent to cadaveca), default voltage was 1.25v (I think) and it overclocked like crap (literally needed 1.25v at 1125MHz or it would freeze up with the "stripes of death"). Interestingly, I flashed my XFX DD 7950 with the BIOS from that card and it was still defaulting to 0.975v unless my Afterburner was screwed up.
 
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looks really awesome.
 
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That's a down-binned 7970, with 7970 PCB. Nice buy, really, lucky guy!

wait what? both my GB windforces that just arrived are 8+6, is that the only qualifying factor? you convinced me to upgrade without even trying ;)
 

cadaveca

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wait what? both my GB windforces that just arrived are 8+6, is that the only qualifying factor? you convinced me to upgrade without even trying ;)

:p


Cards have dual BIOS, good cards will have 1000 MHz GPU/ 1250 MHz ram BIOS and 900 MHz GPU/ 1250 MHZ ram BIOS. Not all cards get that BIOS 1000 MHz, so the "free upgrade" simply requires a switch be flipped.
 
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Sorry it took awhile but here is pics of the card and some benchmarks in crossfire @ 1150/1450.




I believe this is the voltage control since I can't find a single Chil chip
 
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