RoyalKing 7950 overckock

Andyb41

I recently bought a new gaming PC with a 7950 RoyalKing, and I'm considering overclocking it. Just wondering is it completely safe? And should I use MSI arfterburner?

Thanks

Deano12345

Andyb41 wrote: »

I recently bought a new gaming PC with a 7950 RoyalKing, and I'm considering overclocking it. Just wondering is it completely safe? And should I use MSI arfterburner?

Thanks

Safe as houses mate. MSi Afterburner is the best tool for the job too ! I'd just mirror OC3D's settings if I we're you. Just watch your temps as well

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/club_3d_7950_royal_king_review/3

Andyb41

Thanks for the reply.

Andyb41

I was just going to overclock it when I noticed I cant change the core voltage or the fan speed in Afterburner? http://speedcap.net/sharing/screen.php?id=files/53/b6/53b67e1b09845708cb35ba80d0ebec89.png

Any idea why?

Deano12345

Andyb41 wrote: »

I was just going to overclock it when I noticed I cant change the core voltage or the fan speed in Afterburner? http://speedcap.net/sharing/screen.php?id=files/53/b6/53b67e1b09845708cb35ba80d0ebec89.png

Any idea why?

You just need to enable them, in the settings tab

platinums

I bought one of these purely because OC3d review said it was an ok card at stock, but a demon when overclocked.
It's in the post, so waiting on delivery.

I was worried about the silicone lottery, that being some cards may OC better than others. So ill OC when i get it and see how far I can safely push it.

Haven't done any card overclocking in years soo lookign forward to giving it a go - thanks for the tips.

Deano12345

platinums wrote: »

I bought one of these purely because OC3d review said it was an ok card at stock, but a demon when overclocked.
It's in the post, so waiting on delivery.

I was worried about the silicone lottery, that being some cards may OC better than others. So ill OC when i get it and see how far I can safely push it.

Haven't done any card overclocking in years soo lookign forward to giving it a go - thanks for the tips.

No bother ! Let us know how you get on

BloodBath

Good overclocks for 7950's are around 1100-1200 core.

Great overclocks are 1200+ on the core.

Memory varies a lot depending on manufacturer. They don't all use the same quality ram and most of the coolers don't cool the vrm's well at all. Gains from memory are minimal compared to gpu anyway.

unklerosco

I picked up one of these for my new build and it easily clocks to 1200 on the core... I've been out of the PC gaming loop for a while so not sure how reliable this is but on a 3D mark 11 test on std clocks I was getting around 5500 and overclocked I get just over 8000 which is a sizable jump.

marco_polo

unklerosco wrote: »

I picked up one of these for my new build and it easily clocks to 1200 on the core... I've been out of the PC gaming loop for a while so not sure how reliable this is but on a 3D mark 11 test on std clocks I was getting around 5500 and overclocked I get just over 8000 which is a sizable jump.

Congratulations if you can get yours to 1200+ you have hit the HD7950 jackpot . Its not just artificial benchmarks either, you'll see serious gains in many games. The reviews below are of a different HIS card but with very similar core speeds.

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/his_7970_iceq_xsup2_ghz_edition_7950_iceq_xsup2_boost_clock,13.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_7950_X2_Boost/31.html

unklerosco

Well gaming on it is class, I'm running everything on absolute max @ 2560x1440 and it all runs as smooth as silk.. Got Far Cry 3 and it looks amazing, forgot how much better games look on a PC compared the the Xbox/PS3... + they're a cack load cheaper...

ED E

RK cooler on my 7870 is great, barely has to spin at all to keep her in check

platinums

unklerosco wrote: »

Well gaming on it is class, I'm running everything on absolute max @ 2560x1440 and it all runs as smooth as silk.. Got Far Cry 3 and it looks amazing, forgot how much better games look on a PC compared the the Xbox/PS3... + they're a cack load cheaper...

My far cry drops a few frames when i put it on ultra with an i5 3750 @1920x1200, what cpu you using with this card and do you run the game off an ssd.
I might try and OC it tonight to see what i get.

DO i need to flick the bios switch on the card?

unklerosco

I'm using an i5 2400 oc'd to 3.8ghz. The bios switch was already flicked on my card when I got it. I'm running the games from an SSD.

marco_polo

platinums wrote: »

My far cry drops a few frames when i put it on ultra with an i5 3750 @1920x1200, what cpu you using with this card and do you run the game off an ssd.
I might try and OC it tonight to see what i get.

DO i need to flick the bios switch on the card?

Your not going nuts with MSAA X8 are you?, because that will bring almost any cards to its knees in Far Cry 3 even at an medium resolutions like 1920 X 1200.

BloodBath

Or SSAA. There's lot's of things that will kill frames.

CCC settings have a huge impact on your frames.

AA method;

Super sampling -> best picture - lowest performance (especially at high res and high AA levels)

Adaptive MSAA -> middle ground for picture quality and peformance (I'm using this on my 7970 with 4xAA@1080p)

Standard MSAA -> Lowest picture quality - best performance (Doesn't AA transparent textures unless you use morph in combination with it)

Then you have morphological filtering. It's another AA method that is supposed to be easy going on resources and gives you close to SSAA levels using Standard MSAA with a higher frame rate. Unlike the others it's a post process method. I'm still playing around with these settings myself but they do impact performance a lot.

I'd never use SSAA.

It's a toss up between Adaptive MSAA or MSAA with Morph filtering. 8x MSAA + morph will look about the same as 4x Adapative MSAA without morph which again will look around the same as 2xSSAA. How they all perform and look is a different story.

Bit of a head wrecker really.

BloodBath

Ok I stand corrected on this based on my own tests.

Testing with the first minute of the Unigine's Heaven benchmark I noticed a massive increase in fps using 2xSSAA over 4x AMSAA or 8xMSAA. I went from 26-36 fps in the opening scenes to 38-65.

This was at 1080p, max settings, 16af, max tessellation.

The morph filtering made little impact at any of these setting performance wise. Since it's a post process effect though it may have an impact on frame latency which I can't test. 4xSSAA is a no go though. A massive drop from 2x.

The picture quality didn't look much different but it's hard to tell without checking transparent textures like chain link fences ect. For now I'm switching to 2xSSAA with or without Morph filtering. That 3gb of vram may be useful after all.

platinums

I was playing Arma there tonight and decided to up the GPU Clock and Memory clock using the AMD Overdrive built in to the Catalyst. GPU up to 1100 and memory up to 1300 I noticed a marked improvement in performance.
I also had to boost the fans to 80% to keep temps around 50C.

What is the max temp you should run this card at, Id like to lower the fan speed as its quite noisy, 75 - 100% sound the same. Quite loud.

Are there any adaptive overclockering software that will control the fan rate based on the temp?

And lastly, does anyone have a clue of GPU Clock speed has any correlation to the Memory speed. Is there a correct ratio to use?

BloodBath

Get Sapphire Trixxx or MSI afterburner for overclocking and fan profiles.

I'm using Trixxx at the moment. Afterburner is great software though which includes game recording software that performs better than fraps for free.

Trixxx is very user friendly and a good place to start.

Disable the catalyst overdrive completely.

Install Trixxx or afterburner.

Turn up the board power to +20% (max) This just allows the card to use more power when it needs to.

Restart.

If you want to overclock without increasing voltages just up your gpu clocks first and test until it becomes unstable. I'd start at 1100 and go up in 25mhz increments.

Once you have your max gpu clock start doing your memory clocks and testing until it becomes unstable. 1300 is very low for the memory. You should be able to do at least 1450.

Too high on the gpu usually results in the display driver crashing or the pc crashing completely. Too high on the memory usually results in artifacting in games/benchmarks.

Use HWmonitor to monitor temps. You want to keep the gpu below 70c as it tends to be unstable at high clocks over that. High clocks are 1200-1300. VRMs should be kept below 80c.

You will get a max of about 1100-1150 at stock gpu voltage which is around 1100 I think or 1.1. To get higher you will need to increase the gpu voltage.

I have my voltage (VDDC) at 1300 but you want to work your way up to this gradually while monitoring temps and adjusting the fan profile to keep it below 70c. My fan goes to 50% max to maintain these temps for this overclock. I'm currently at 1200/1550 clocks on a sapphire 7970.

If you are adjusting the voltage restart after doing so. Don't forget to set options to restore these settings on system startup. If you run into stability problems, artifacting in games, ect, you will most likely need to reboot to fix them.

I'd use a stressful benchmark test like unigine heaven or firestrike on 3dmark 13 to test stability.

platinums

I eventually maxed everything, going up slowly and keeping a close eye with Afterburner, the fan profiles on this are just what I was looking for.
Max temp on unigene was 65, fans@ 100%, 1920x1200
Core 1200, Memory 1575.
Score was 1258 although I have no bearing on how good this actually is for a score.

Artifact wise, not a hitch.
Looks like I'm a silicone millionaire.
Happy Days

BloodBath

Good stuff. Now get that fan speed down

What voltage was that at for 1200 core?