Sapphire 7950 Vapor X advice

EoinHef

I recently built a PC and am new to overclocking.

Coming from playing consoles for the last few years i decided i wanted something different and building the pc was to be a hobby as well (little did i know a very expensive one lol)

Anyway i went for the Vapor X 7950 from sapphire and have the GPU at 1100MHz and the Memory at 1350MHz using Msi Afterburner and max temp of the GPU is 62C and the Vrm temps are 64C and 68C respectively. With a max fan speed of 43%(set to auto),the GPU fan starts to get noticeable around 50% so dont really want it any higher than that.

This is on stock voltage bar setting the Power Limit to +20% in Afterburner.

Ive tested this running Unigine Heaven fo 30 mins in a loop,should i be testing it for longer or with different programs? Not really sure what the minimum test should be for testing stability.

I was thinking that temps of 70C for the GPU and 80C for the Vrms should be acceptable reading other posts here but dont want to go further till i make sure im testing properly so any feedback would be appreciated.

Also i have an i5 3570k that has not been overclocked yet,it runs at 3.6GHz insted of 3.4GHz at stock for some reason(Intel Turbo Boost?) but would like to at least get it to 4.0GHz.
Would overclocking the processor produce enough heat in the case to also affect the GPU,Vrm temps of the graphics card?
I have a Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO as my cpu heatsink

BloodBath

Howdy. I can't remember your complete system so if you could link it that would help.

So far so good with the gpu overclock. 1100 with stock voltage is nice. The ram should be good to go to at least 1500 with it's stock voltage. You should be able to get 1200+ on the core with some extra juice.

Try to stay below 75-80c for temps and 1250mv for the core voltage. Higher temps are still safe but you don't want to be running it hot all the time. I wouldn't touch the ram voltage. There's not much to be gained there. Gradually work your way up with voltage and clock speed while keeping an eye on temps to find a sweet spot at a fan speed you can bear.

I usually just run 1 loop of a benchmark for initial testing. You won't know if it's 100% stable until you test it in gaming over time.

As for the cpu 4ghz is easy and the majority of 3570ks will do it at stock voltage. All you have to do is change the multiplier to 40. It's as easy as that. 4.5 - 4.6ghz should be obtainable with some extra power. I'd try stay below 75c and 1.25v. Pretty much the same as the gpu. Just gradually work your way up.

If your case airflow is good your cpu overclock shouldn't affect your gpu. Air should be flowing from front and bottom to rear and top. More so the gpu heat will increase cpu temps a little.

EoinHef

BloodBath wrote: »

Howdy. I can't remember your complete system so if you could link it that would help.

So far so good with the gpu overclock. 1100 with stock voltage is nice. The ram should be good to go to at least 1500 with it's stock voltage. You should be able to get 1200+ on the core with some extra juice.

Try to stay below 75-80c for temps and 1250mv for the core voltage. Higher temps are still safe but you don't want to be running it hot all the time. I wouldn't touch the ram voltage. There's not much to be gained there. Gradually work your way up with voltage and clock speed while keeping an eye on temps to find a sweet spot at a fan speed you can bear.

I usually just run 1 loop of a benchmark for initial testing. You won't know if it's 100% stable until you test it in gaming over time.

As for the cpu 4ghz is easy and the majority of 3570ks will do it at stock voltage. All you have to do is change the multiplier to 40. It's as easy as that. 4.5 - 4.6ghz should be obtainable with some extra power. I'd try stay below 75c and 1.25v. Pretty much the same as the gpu. Just gradually work your way up.

If your case airflow is good your cpu overclock shouldn't affect your gpu. Air should be flowing from front and bottom to rear and top. More so the gpu heat will increase cpu temps a little.

Cheers for the reply bloodbath,you actually helped me spec the pc so cheers for that as well,delighted with it so far. Just wanted to push it a bit and see whats possible


Heres the build,post 34. I have swapped the 7870 for the 7950 ,bought 2 corsair 120mm high airflow fans and replaced case stock 120mm fan with one and have the other one there if needed:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056852553&page=3


Ill change the memory clock to 1500 and the core to 1150 at stock voltage and run the Unigine loop again and see what temps i get and artifacting if any.
Im a little bit afraid to mess with the voltages yet:o
I presume though im getting into the territory where im going to have to?

As for the cpu ive just finished changing all the settings in the bios to start overclocking as per this guide,which you pointed me in the direction of as well (cheers again:D):

http://www.overclock.net/t/1198504/complete-overclocking-guide-sandy-bridge-ivy-bridge-asrock-edition

Ive just changed the bios settings,i left the multiplier at 34 and ran prime for 10 mins with no errors.
So was going to change the multiplier to 40 for a start and run prime again.
I did try setting just the multiplier to 40 without changing any other setting and ran prime but the voltage seemed to fluctuate quite a bit(fairly steady at stock and in some video guides ive seen) so wasn sure and decided to use the settings in the guide and see what happend. Is the voltage jumping normal?

The temps when i did change the multiplier to 40 were were about 58C so that seemed ok

BloodBath

No bother.

Only change either the memory of the voltage. If it's not stable after changing both you won't know which 1 caused the instability. Nearly all of those cards will do 1500+ on the memory at stock voltage though. 1100+ on the core usually needs more voltage.

Yes the voltage will fluctuate. There is a setting in the BIOS to keep this more stable which may be needed for the higher overclocks. Speed increase will raise temps a little. It's voltage that really raises it though. It's pretty easy to get to 4.4 - 4.5 It might only need +0.05 to get there if it's a good chip. Past this point though usually requires larger increases and that's where temps start going too high. You still have 15-20c to play around with.

EoinHef

Cool,ill set the memory to 1500 and test again.
Ill leave the voltage changes till another time,been at this all day and need sleep!!


Set the multiplier to 40 with the changed bios settings and ran prime again for 10 minutes.
Voltages were between 1.232v and 1.256 and the highest core temp was 72C. Does this sound right? The highest voltage was over the 1.25v you mentioned?
I can increase cpu fan speed,currently at level 6 and target cpu temp set to 50C but fan can go to level 9.

Again though noise would be an issue so if that clock was stable at 4.0GHz with the current fan speed that may suit me.
If higher fan levels are not too loud i could maybe go a little further with 75C being the limit temp wise?


Ran prime again for 25 minutes with the cpu fan set to 8 and the temps were the same,72C hottest core,voltages also stayed within the previous range 1.232v to 1.256. Im also running the custom test described in the overclocking guide to do the tests with prime.

BloodBath

I don't find the 212 evo to be noisy at max speed but we all have different tolerances.

Your voltage shouldn't be that high unless you set it that high though. You should be able to raise the clocks higher at that voltage. 4.5 should be possible at those voltages.

tuxy

BloodBath wrote: »

Your voltage shouldn't be that high unless you set it that high though. You should be able to raise the clocks higher at that voltage. 4.5 should be possible at those voltages.

I don't think that voltage is unusually high. Every chip has a different VID. For example my 2500k has a 1.39 VID @ 4.5 GHZ. I have a -.03 offset to bring this down to 1.36 because thats what is needed for it to be stable at 4.5.
Many CPUs will have a lower VID, mine is higher than most but not unheard of.

EoinHef

BloodBath wrote: »

I don't find the 212 evo to be noisy at max speed but we all have different tolerances.

Your voltage shouldn't be that high unless you set it that high though. You should be able to raise the clocks higher at that voltage. 4.5 should be possible at those voltages.

Ye there must have been a setting that i changed,i followed the guide but i must have missed something:o I definitely didnt set the voltage,the only change i made for the voltage was to set the offset voltage to +0.005v and Additional turbo voltage to 0.004v as per the guide

Reset to default (thank god can save profiles for the settings!) cpu configuration in the bios then just changed the multiplier to 40 then prime again for 10 mins and voltages were between 1.184v 1.208v and max temp was 67C. So definitely something wrong with the settings i changed

BloodBath

The voltage offset is increasing the voltage, that's how you do it

I'd say you would be fine for 4.4 or 4.5 with what you had it set to.

EoinHef

Changed the Memory clock on the gpu to 1500 and left the core clock at 1100 and ran unigine again with everything on max except tessalation(Normal) at 1080p and got a max Fps 80.7 and min of 20.7 and average fps of 44.5. With a max temp of 60C. Also gave a score of 1121,does that sound respectable?

That was with the cpu running at 4.0GHz just changing the multiplier,max temp of 67C.

Considering that was set at 8x AA and id normally leave it on 2x in most games i should be getting pretty good Fps in most games id imagine?

BloodBath

Use max tessellation for testing stability. That benchmark isn't remotely stressful without it.

Sounds about right though. I find 2 x SSAA to be superior to even 8 x MSAA but it doesn't work with a lot of games sadly. It does give better frame rates with those cards though as well as AAing transparent textures. Something MSAA doesn't do.

EoinHef

BloodBath wrote: »

Use max tessellation for testing stability. That benchmark isn't remotely stressful without it.

Sounds about right though. I find 2 x SSAA to be superior to even 8 x MSAA but it doesn't work with a lot of games sadly. It does give better frame rates with those cards though as well as AAing transparent textures. Something MSAA doesn't do.

Re ran with extreme setting for tessalation and everything else to max and Fps dropped to min 18.9,avg 36.4 and a max of 70.1. Gave a score of 915!
Temps at 60C for the gpu and 46C on the cpu

Yeah ive noticed certain settings in games killing Fps,AA and the like.

Still at those clocks id say there be a big improvement from the sapphire boost bios which was 950MHz on the core and 1250GHz on the memory.
Also the cpu to 4.0GHz so happy with that too:)

So a good start,gonna play a few games for a week or so at these clocks and see how it goes.

Arma 3 alpha already runs a lot smoother!!

EoinHef

I decided after getting up today that i wanted to figure out where i was going wrong with the cpu so took note of a few settings to see if i could figure it out.

The voltage being up at +1.256v when an overclock is applied seems to be the additional turbo voltage setting raising it to that level,i have the additional turbo voltage set to +0.004v which is the lowest setting it can be set too.
I also set the offset voltage to -0.010v(helped with temps when i did) and started increasing the multiplier by 1 from 40 and testing 10 mins with prime each time i raised the multiplier.
This worked fine till i got to 4.4GHz (44 multiplier)and the second i start prime either i get a bsod or a short freeze then a bsod.
I raised the offset voltage to -0.005v and got the same result,bsod.

Now at this point i presume this is where id have to either increase the turbo voltage above +0.004v or the offset voltage to to a positive figure ie +0.005v instead of -0.010v? Would that be right?
The guide in above posts does say vcore voltages can go as high as 1.5v with that being the limit.
Now i wouldnt want to go anywhere near that limit of course but my understanding is max voltage im getting with oc'ing at my settings is +1.256v with turbo voltage set at +0.004v and offset voltage set to -0.010v and that should be safe at 4.3GHz?

With the above voltage settings and the other settings in the guide(Spread spectrum:disabled,Internal pll voltage:disabled etc etc) i ran prime95 for an hour with the custom test described in the guide with the the multiplier set to 43 (4.3GHz) and i got the following results:
Max core temps being:
Core #0 : 68C
Core #1 : 76C
Core #2 : 76C
Core #3 : 72C
Below was displayed in prime95 when i stopped the test:
Torture test completed 105 tests in 1 hour- 0 Errors 0 Warnings


Those core temps at 4.3GHz are at about the limit that id want to go to based on advice ive gotten here so i presume ive ran out of thermal headroom? So im guessing 4.4GHz would require more voltage which in turn would raise my temps past levels id like to go?
Would that 4.3GHz oc be safe to run with for the moment or is there anything i have missed?

To be honest i reckon 4.3GHz would be plenty of speed for what i want i want it for (Gaming) just like to know im doing it safely.

Sorry for the wall of text and some probably stupid questions but just trying to understand overclocking.
Cheers for any advice that can shed some light on this for me and thanks for advice already given:)

tuxy

Yeah that's perfectly safe. You are well within voltage and heat safety limits.
It gets to a point where you need lots of volts for only small gains, every chip is different and you can only find out by trial and error. At this point it's usually not worth the extra heat generated unless you have an expensive cooling solution.
Some CPUs will only reach 4.2GHZ stable while another can do 4.8 on the same voltage it really is luck of the draw.
Your temps will be a little lower while gaming than in prime.
I think you still have a small amount of room for increased temps. Personally low 80's while running prime is ok for me but I wouldn't be happy with anything higher. You don't want you system crashing just because the ambient temp is a bit higher in your room than normal.

BloodBath

You're getting near your limits now alright but I'd say you have a little more wiggle room. I don't bother with that turbo voltage at all. It only works with 1 core and you are already past the max speed that it goes to.

What's your voltage at while benching? I'm at 4.5ghz and it hovers around 1.25v @ 70-75c load but like Tuxy says every chip is different and case ventilation can make all the difference.

You might only need a tiny bit more juice to get to 4.5.

EoinHef

tuxy wrote: »

Yeah that's perfectly safe. You are well within voltage and heat safety limits.
It gets to a point where you need lots of volts for only small gains, every chip is different and you can only find out by trial and error. At this point it's usually not worth the extra heat generated unless you have an expensive cooling solution.
Some CPUs will only reach 4.2GHZ stable while another can do 4.8 on the same voltage it really is luck of the draw.
Your temps will be a little lower while gaming than in prime.
I think you still have a small amount of room for increased temps. Personally low 80's while running prime is ok for me but I wouldn't be happy with anything higher. You don't want you system crashing just because the ambient temp is a bit higher in your room than normal.

Cool cheers tuxy.
PC is in the sitting room so noise is a issue for me aswell,have two monitors running one being my HDTV and use it to watch movies so dont want a jet engine in the corner when im watching a flick:p Water cooling something i wont be looking at for awhile,jus not at the point i feel i need it yet.
I was able to get the overclocks with the case fans set to 6 with the max being 9. Also thought that gives me a bit more headroom in the warmer summer months to increase case fan speeds to help cooling i wont have to mess around with the clocks,like you said dont want it turning off for the sake of a degree or two.
I do have the cpu fan at full though,nessacery evil i guess although its not too bad!

Was thinking can go for higher oc's as my pcs age becomes apparent,only four months old and already dealt well enough with games ive thrown at it with stock speeds to be honest
Be a shame also though to get a 7950 vapor x and i5 k series and not try to overclock at least a bit though ha

I would've thought with the CPU at 4.3GHz and the GPU at 1100 for the core and 1500 on the memory i should see better fps and performance in games?

Obviously not the biggest overclocks but definitely in double figures in terms of increased speed on each part?

EoinHef

BloodBath wrote: »

You're getting near your limits now alright but I'd say you have a little more wiggle room. I don't bother with that turbo voltage at all. It only works with 1 core and you are already past the max speed that it goes to.

What's your voltage at while benching? I'm at 4.5ghz and it hovers around 1.25v @ 70-75c load but like Tuxy says every chip is different and case ventilation can make all the difference.

You might only need a tiny bit more juice to get to 4.5.

The max voltage was again at +1.256v and the lowest was +1.232v and that was with the offset set to -0.010v in the bios and turbo volts at +0.004v. Should i disable the turbo voltage or leave it auto if its not needed?

Its actually the same voltage (+1.256v) i was getting at load with the offset set to +0.005v. What i dont understand if the Offset reduces or increases voltages the difference between -0.010v and +0.005v should be +0.015v but its the same,between +1.232 and +1.256v?
Thats probably a dumb question,not sure if the relationship between the two is that direct??

I do have room to increase case fan speed and have an extra corsair 120mm fan i could side mount on the case but not sure i want to go into the territory of constantly,depending on what i want the pc for,having to adjust fans speeds and clock profiles in bios because of temps depending on what i want the pc for.

Would a fan controller help in this regard?
Wondering if it would make it easier to just set up fan profiles for each clock i want to run at

BloodBath

I'd throw the side fan on if you have one. It should help the gpu temps especially.

I know what you mean. I backed down from 4.6 to 4.5 as the extra voltage and temps for that 100mhz just wasn't worth it. Likewise I backed down from 1200 core on the card to 1100 so I could drop the voltage and fan speed. It got pretty noisy in some games at 1200.

You could disable the turbo voltage. I'm not sure if it will make a difference or not. I'm not sure why your voltages aren't being effected by your voltage offset. It should be making some difference. There are other settings though that might be having an impact on that. Your load voltage in windows should match your max voltage setting in the BIOS.

This is the setting you might need to change.

CPU Load-Line Calibration: Level 2 or Level 3 (whichever one will get you closest to BIOS Vcore)
~When a CPU increases to max speed, the Vcore usually tends to drop down. This is known as Vdroop. If the Vcore drops down too much, it can lead to stability issues. To combat this, CPU LLC was made to offset this loss. Level 5 (0%) will net you the least compensation, Level 3 (50%) an average compensation, and Level 1 (100%) the most compensation. You want to find the setting that will get you the same Vcore that is says in BIOS, during load in Windows as reported by CPU-Z.
~Level 1 seems to spike your Vcore up really high during load, so I do not recommend using that.

I think it's % based with those pro boards. I think mine is around 75%.

No need for a fan controller really. Your overclock should have enough headroom for changes in ambient temps of around +5c. You could make BIOS profiles with more aggressive fan speeds if you wanted for hot days.

Snowie

I just oc'd mine today

I dunno if there good clocks but

My core clock was 850 and I got a stable clock of 1120mhz
My mem was 1120 mhz and i got that to 1495 mhz


I used this method here just wondering can i push the gpu further with cooling and voltage increase?

EoinHef

Snowie wrote: »

I just oc'd mine today

I dunno if there good clocks but

My core clock was 850 and I got a stable clock of 1120mhz
My mem was 1120 mhz and i got that to 1495 mhz


I used this method here just wondering can i push the gpu further with cooling and voltage increase?

Ye snowie they sound about right, what temps are you getting on the gpu?
There is a possibilty to push the card further but you would need to be careful around this point.
Have you changed the voltage yet?
Well done so far anyway, if the temps are good you should be fine with that overclock

Snowie

EoinHef wrote: »

Ye snowie they sound about right, what temps are you getting on the gpu?
There is a possibilty to push the card further but you would need to be careful around this point.
Have you changed the voltage yet?
Well done so far anyway, if the temps are good you should be fine with that overclock

I didn't touch the voltage and the temps it stayed under 60 54 and or 58 no higher then that i did adjust the fans on the gpu and I got a higher and more stable clock but I wasn't sure if that was ok so I reset, and went back to stock.

I ran GPU Stability test on 1120 core and 1495 mem for 30 mins and it seemed fine, no overly high temps fans speed at the moment aint that high under 50%

I'm running kombustor and more or less the same results

EoinHef

Those temps sound low for them clocks. I use Unigine Heaven with everything set to max bench mark and the temps on my card were pushing over 70C at 1150 and 1500,not sure how severe kombuster is.
Id imagine in some games (Crysis 3, Far Cry 3) you would get higher temps than your getting now but the your temps do sound good.
You may only need a small bit more voltage to get 1150+ and a little more on the memory.

I left the fans on auto and the highest they go is 44% at 1100 and 1500, any higher and the fans get to noisey for me but if you can stand the louder fans aswell you have good enough temps there to play around a bit.

Be careful though, even small voltage increases can make the temps rise rapidly.

EoinHef

Snowie wrote: »

I didn't touch the voltage and the temps it stayed under 60 54 and or 58 no higher then that i did adjust the fans on the gpu and I got a higher and more stable clock but I wasn't sure if that was ok so I reset, and went back to stock.

I ran GPU Stability test on 1120 core and 1495 mem for 30 mins and it seemed fine, no overly high temps fans speed at the moment aint that high under 50%

I'm running kombustor and more or less the same results

Heres a link to get Unigine Heaven for free,its the basic edition. Just get the right version for your OS

http://unigine.com/products/heaven/download/

Set everything to max tessalation,AA etc. Can leave 3d and multi monitor disabled and run it for 20 minutes and see what temps you get.

I just ran it there for 20 mins and got a max temp of 63C

Snowie

Hi every one,
I'll down load the above at again thanks

I am having one problem I'm getting lag It was running boarder lands 2 really well at high everything but keeps on dropping form 60 to 30 fps and under tempritures seem ok 59 figured it was the voltage but again i aint touching anything with out some pointers so Im here asking. It was fine when I did all the tests booth gpu tool and kombuster the second I bring it in to boarder lands two the frame rate has more orless become unplayable. any ideas

BloodBath

What are your pc specs?

Do you have vsync enabled?

What level do you have physx at?

EoinHef

Soory man, didn see your post yesterday. No notification for some reason.

I play borderlands 2 aswell and it can be just about maxed out on the boost bios on the vapor x and still get 60fps so I cant see it being that if youve overclocked the card

If I remember correctly the physx option in this game was not changeable and is greyed out if your using an amd card. So it should be at the default setting of
low.

I think I left V-sync off in this game, as far as I can recall it has issues with refresh rate of the monitor/hdtv depending on what your playing it on. Think it was detecting hdtv as 30Hz instead of 60Hz. Are you playing on a Hdtv or a monitor?

How are you measureing your fps?

BloodBath

You can still use physx through the processor. You just have to install it. However there are areas where the cpu will struggle with physx. Liquid simulation needs the parallel processing power of a graphics card. It will grind a cpu to a halt.

I know there are levels in borderlands that have heavy liquid physx simulation. You can get away with about medium physx settings on these levels and high on the rest.

If you have an Asrock board or another board that supports lucid virtu mvp you should download it and install it. It's very handy software that has a feature that allows you to leave vsync on in all games.

Basically vysnc limits how many frames the card renders to match the monitor. Without vysnc if you are rendering more frames than the monitors refresh rate it will display screen tearing. However if you have it enabled and cannot render at the refresh rate (60hz / 60fps) it has to drop down to multiples of 60. So it goes from 60 to 30, then 30 to 20.

Virtual vsync in lucid's virtu mvp software dynamically changes the vsync setting so you get the best of both worlds. If you are rendering more than 60fps it will turn on vsync, if you drop below 60 it will disable it.

No screen tearing and no drastic frame frame rate drops.

Snowie

My pc specs are

My cpu is a stock FX8350 , Asus sabertooth 990fx mobo, psu 500 watt superflower 8 gigs of of Patriot viper3 1866mhz ram...


Setting from last time I played are

Vsync On
Frame rate unlimited I usually capped it to 60
Resolution: 1280x720
Ambient occlusion: on
depth of field: on
anisotropic filtering: 8x
Bullet decals: High
foliage Distance: far
texture quality : high
Game detail : high
view distance: High
Physx Effects: medium
FXAA: on


Lads I am knew to pc gaming I don't want o mess things up to much so any help would be great my monitar is kinda old.

When it starts lagging the screen gets a line in the middle and sucks down to about 29 fps and lower its jumpy when grenades go of in metro 2033 to and just because intolerable. I don't know if there's anything else. just ask

BloodBath

I would say you dropping below 60 fps even slightly is causing the jump down to 30 fps. Disable vsync and see how it goes. Look into getting lucid virtu mvp if you can get it working. You can use anisotropic filtering x16 as well. It doesn't use much resources and cleans up the textures a fair bit.

EoinHef

BloodBath wrote: »

I would say you dropping below 60 fps even slightly is causing the jump down to 30 fps. Disable vsync and see how it goes. Look into getting lucid virtu mvp if you can get it working. You can use anisotropic filtering x16 as well. It doesn't use much resources and cleans up the textures a fair bit.

I cant see how he would drop below 60fps with a 7950 if hes playing at 720p though?

Think I saw the lucid mvp you were talking about onyme motherboard driver page, ill download that and get it going.
Ive found V-Sync to be a bit of a pain in the a@#$, it seems to work very well with some games and is terrible witb others!
When I play a game for the first time, like crysis 3 or far cry 3, I usually use fraps and mess around with the settings till I get a solid 60fps so when I do play I know I shouldnt be getting many fps drops.
Usually find if I only turn the AA down a bit and ill get a solid 60. Bar the very heavy games, like Crysis 3, AA usually goes to 2x on them

BloodBath

He only has to drop to 59 to get drops to 30 fps with vsync enabled without the likes of virtu mvp. Amd still haven't put this feature into the drivers sadly.

He shouldn't be dropping below 60 fps at 720p but the physx on certain levels could be bringing him below 60.