"HD7970 & HD7950 Results Thread - Torture Your Card, Post It Here!"

[hokiealumnus]

That's odd, I could set any speed I wanted with the ASUS utility on our reference card. It was angry and crashed, but the speed was set. :p

If you're stuck though, the match-up of ASUS BIOS + ASUS software should certainly increase your clockspeed ability.

[aussie-revhead]

Will trixx handle it all for me? It's going to be hard to wait ......

How do I restore back to original bios? That way it can be an Asus card for the weekend and a sapphire again when trixx comes out .... lol

[hokiealumnus]

I think (not positive) you can save your original BIOS with ATI Tool. The command to extract and save it is not something I'm familiar with unfortunately. GPUz even has a BIOS save tool, but I'd caution against that. I know with a GTX580 BIOS I worked with, you had to use NVIDIA's tool to extract it for the BIOS to be editable. GPUz's didn't work for whatever reason.

Presumably TRIXX will work just fine and you only have four days to wait. It's over a weekend though and I know how hard that wait can be....and predict you'll be googling soon to figure out how to extract your stock BIOS.

[aussie-revhead]

Yeah mate in the first few hour of tentative benching I have already smashed all of my PBs and they were with a water cooled and vmodded gtx580 .... I can't wait to water cool this baby....
So far, with CPU running easy at 5ghz on air I got:

P8898 3D11
37400 vantage gpu and 36xxx overall score
3D06 needs more CPU clock

So I will hit these again next week when I move the gpu to my single stage m4E .....

[Splave]

when will these be available?

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

when will these be available?

hopefully January 9th

expect slight gouging

[Gaul]

max oc on def BIOS

[[XC] Oj101]

Slight? Retail is going to be around US$1050 in South Africa for the first few weeks.

[aussie-revhead]

Gaul your gpu score is a fair bit higher than mine but when I even bump mem clock up I lose points, I might try a more aggressive mem overclock like yours.

Has anyone seen one with the cooler off? Does it come apart like a 580 cooler? Ie heat pipe assembly comes off seperately to the fan and backing plate so they can be left on to cool the ram and power components? Is the metal frame around the gpu taller than the ihs? I might have to machin the corners of my
Mcw80 for it to touch the ihs....

Cheers.

[Gaul]

Gaul your gpu score is a fair bit higher than mine but when I even bump mem clock up I lose points, I might try a more aggressive mem overclock like yours.

Has anyone seen one with the cooler off? Does it come apart like a 580 cooler? Ie heat pipe assembly comes off seperately to the fan and backing plate so they can be left on to cool the ram and power components? Is the metal frame around the gpu taller than the ihs? I might have to machin the corners of my
Mcw80 for it to touch the ihs....

Cheers.

any screen shoot ? 4 compare ?

Correct, no DOS bootable; you run it from Windows. Run command prompt from the GPU Tweak folder (shift + right-click in Win7). Make sure the BIOS is in the same folder (copied from the package you downloaded) and run the command shown in the .jpg.

than..... ?
after run command we need need restart or reinstall cat ?

[hokiealumnus]

Yes, that's correct. You'll have to restart and reinstall catalyst. It won't recognize the card as the same after rebooting.

[aussie-revhead]

I will try it in a few hours, pushing for 10k 3D11 and 40k vantage, all with stock cooler then push harder later with water !!

[Gaul]

Yes, that's correct. You'll have to restart and reinstall catalyst. It won't recognize the card as the same after rebooting.

thanx, last question........ how to get it back stock BIOS ? save with GPUZ first or ?

I will try it in a few hours, pushing for 10k 3D11 and 40k vantage, all with stock cooler then push harder later with water !!

i look forward 4 u'r score

[Andrea deluxe]

http://www.techpowerup.com/158128/AM...1.12-CAP2.html

[Gaul]

7970 still can't play this games !!



and........this one



only 11 FPS on MENU GRAPHIC OPTION not on GAME !!
AGRHH !

[aussie-revhead]

I would really like to save the original bios before I wipe it, I found this command :

atiwinflash.exe -s 0 backup.rom

Is this right?

Any help would be great.



Edit: Never mind , Im an ATI/AMD n00b, atiwinflash is running now, how long does a normal flash take?



Edit: Now I get an error that says no valid adaptor found, flash not completed, what does this mean and how do I get around it?

[Falkentyne]

You're supposed to use ATIFLASH, right? ATiwinflash is the windows flasher and I don't know if it supports those cards yet. I always put atiflash on a USB disk formatted as fat or fat 32, with Dos/windows 98 startup disk, and the bios file and flash that way. The above posted mentioned atiflash directly....I don't think atiwinflash was mentioned.

[Falkentyne]

7970 still can't play this games !!



and........this one



only 11 FPS on MENU GRAPHIC OPTION not on GAME !!
AGRHH !

Eh? What two games are those?

[aussie-revhead]

Correct, no DOS bootable; you run it from Windows. Run command prompt from the GPU Tweak folder (shift + right-click in Win7). Make sure the BIOS is in the same folder (copied from the package you downloaded) and run the command shown in the .jpg.

You do this with the BIOS you want to flash active, no switching over. The only time you use the backup BIOS is when you bork the original. This is an 'official' BIOS so you aren't flashing any potentially flawed settings (i.e. those you tried with a BIOS editor). Chances of borking it are slim, just don't do it with an unstable system.

No idea on the MCW80, sorry.

EDIT - FYI, there is a new version of TRIXX for Sapphire cards expected to be released on the 9th if you really don't want to flash. Our editors have a beta but we're not allowed to share that one, sorry. I haven't had the chance to use it yet.

Op said to run is from command prompt in windows, so it has to be atiwinflash, right?

:/

EDIT: ALL GOOD - FLASH DONE - THANKS GUYS

Back soon with results ....

[Gaul]

Eh? What two games are those?

#1 Metro 2033 ( all full max )
#2 Take on Helicopters ( all full max )

atiwinflash.exe -s 0 backup.rom

atiwinflash.exe -s 0 backup.BIN

[Andrew Moore]

Has anyone got or found a BIOs editor that works with the 7970s??

Clock walls hit here and need to get around it. Need to remove "upper limit GPU" and "Upper limit RAM". Also want to increase max Vcore threshold from 1.25v to 1.4v.

Any help on a tool or a modified BIOs with those parameters would be appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT: used Asus tool and Asus Bios, memory seems to max out artifact free without going above 1.6V hence requirement above.

EDIT2: Was an issue with the bios flash it would seem, reflash and clocks opened up along with further voltage adjustment. Would still like facility to create own Bios though so any help appreciated

[aussie-revhead]

Guys, I did a bunch of testing last night before touching the card and again tonight after the Asus flash and I would like to point out my findings:

Benchmarks lost score - 3D11 lost 300 points and vantage lost 400 points (on gpu and total scores)

Poor performance - both benchmarks seemed to show dips in fps that werent there last night, like laggy sections but the fps also reflected a drop in output, very easy to see

I switched back to the spare bios (thank you AMD) and scores went back to last nights highs and fps is smooth again, so beware.

Vantage screenshot as requested:

[Andrew Moore]

Hello

The asus monitoring software causes the lag. Once overclocked, close the monitoring software leaving the clocks intact and your scores should increase again.

[hokiealumnus]

I never experienced any loss in score but I also never left the monitoring software running. Remember guys, this is a beta. If Shamino wouldn't have posted it publicly I'd not have shared it. There are kinks to work out for sure.

[aussie-revhead]

Ok cool, I noticed that when the Asus software was running the CCC clock limits were also raised , I will test these tonight.

New afterburner is out too, had it come out a few hours earlier I wouldn't have flashed my card, oh well I will test that too...