Sapphire 7950 Dual X - 950Mhz

Procrastastudy

Right I will stick some photos up but I had to get it into the machine before the wife got home - long story. EB put me right on this card so a massive thank you! From all reports I've seen it's going to be an awesome clocker.

It's a hard one to find but the HWVS link is in my sig - it comes with a 6 pin and 8 pin connector and is apparently the same PCB as they fit to the 7970 OC edition minus one VRM.

Its also suposadly dual BIOS but on my haste to get it in the machine I've not looked at that yet.

Okay some basic (not overly impressive) Stock benchmarks.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4137014

gooch2k9

You do some dodging of wifey!

Tea_Bag

that'll be about 7970 stock performance id say, and should be good to 1ghz without much work.

Eboggles

Tea_Bag wrote: »

that'll be about 7970 stock performance id say, and should be good to 1ghz without much work.

Have a look at this.

Tea_Bag

on second pass, this thing OC's like nobodys business. im reading of a guy on 1250mhz on air, and 1350mhz on water. sweet.

Procrastastudy

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4139239

1050/1350 not even wanting more power.

Theres an odd noise when its processing 3d though like a fan is clicking ever so slightly but I'm 90% sure its not the fans. Sounds like a component on the board is making the noise.

A 670 out the box: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/3647207 (EVGA FTW I think)

Off to do some gaming for stab testing!

Procrastastudy

WOW couldn't have made the BIOS switch any smaller if they tried - not even sure it does anything.

Eboggles

Procrastastudy wrote: »

WOW couldn't have made the BIOS switch any smaller if they tried - not even sure it does anything.

It's a fail safe, in case you accidentally brick your card. Nice touch IMO.

Sarz91

What kind of scores are you getting in Heaven 3.0?

Sarz91

I'm really confused. How is your physics score so much better than mine if its determined by the cpu?

Procrastastudy

Nice looking bench!

Powered by Unigine Engine
Heaven Benchmark v3.0 BasicFPS: 70.6
Scores: 1780
Min FPS: 37.0
Max FPS: 135.7

Running it as I downloaded it.

Got that voltage regulator or what ever it is is driving me nuts!

My CPU is running at 4.65Ghz - that it?

Sarz91

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Nice looking bench!

Powered by Unigine Engine
Heaven Benchmark v3.0 BasicFPS: 70.6
Scores: 1780
Min FPS: 37.0
Max FPS: 135.7

Running it as I downloaded it.

Got that voltage regulator or what ever it is is driving me nuts!

My CPU is running at 4.65Ghz - that it?

Phew. I thought you were running a stock 3570K like me. What settings were you using for Heaven?

Procrastastudy

That right?

Sarz91

I just maxed everything out. If you want I can test out a non oc stock 670 with those settings and compare them.

Procrastastudy

Can you test at 2560x1440p? Let me know what res I'll try maxed at that res. I dont enable 3D I guess?

What score do you get maxed?

Sarz91

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Can you test at 2560x1440p? Let me know what res I'll try maxed at that res. I dont enable 3D I guess?

What score do you get maxed?

I can only test at 1920x1080. Ill try the default first and the I'll try everything maxed. Eh no I don't anyway. I don't tick multi monitor either.

Maxed it should look like:
Teselletation - Extreme
Shaders - High
Anisotropy - 16x
Anti-aliasing - 8x
Resolution - 1920x1080 (cause I'm poor)

Procrastastudy

Sarz91 wrote: »

I can only test at 1920x1080. Ill try the default first and the I'll try everything maxed. Eh no I don't anyway. I don't tick multi monitor either.

Maxed it should look like:
Teselletation - Extreme
Shaders - High
Anisotropy - 16x
Anti-aliasing - 8x
Resolution - 1920x1080 (cause I'm poor)

2560x1440p because I'm in massive debt!

Sarz91

Gainward gtx 670 stock at 1920x1080 and default settings:
FPS-109.7
Scores-2763
min-26
max-211.7

Now to try maxed settings and wake everyone in the house up.

Sarz91

Gainward gtx 670 stock at 1920x1080 and maxed out settings:
FPS-44.2
Scores-1113
min-20.9
max-114

Procrastastudy

Maxed

FPS: 45.4
Scores: 1143
Min FPS: 12.3
Max FPS: 111.2

Thats 1050/1350 btw.

Sarz91

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Maxed

FPS: 45.4
Scores: 1143
Min FPS: 12.3
Max FPS: 111.2

Thats 1050/1350 btw.

Sorry, useless when it comes to voltages or frequencies. Assuming that means its overclocked?

Procrastastudy

Yep 1050Mhz Core and 1350Mhz memory.

Sarz91

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Yep 1050Mhz Core and 1350Mhz memory.

Ah ok. Was nearly pulling my hair out thinking I'd wasted €40 on a lesser card. Pretty close all the same.

Sarz91

Strange. My card is stocked at a memory clock of 3005Mhz and a core clock of 1084Mhz.

Procrastastudy

I'm pretty sure the effective clocks on a 670 are around 1100Mhz on the core and 6000Mhz on memory (1500x4). That said most 670s are voltage locked so don't overclock as well as something like this sapphire that's unlocked.

Obviously they are different GPUs but some people have 7950s runling at 1250Mhz core 6800Mhz effective memory

srsly78

Heaven benchmark at default settings, i5 3570k @ 4.65Ghz, 2xstock 6970, 1600p = 1885. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4436079/unigine_20120817_0920.html

Tea_Bag

the 670 also cripples itself when it reaches 70°C

under water though I've seen 1300Mhz+

srsly78

Maxed settings as above, but at 1600p: 920

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4436079/unigine_20120817_1034.html

Procrastastudy

Don't get me wrong I'm not slagging the 670 or 680 they are epicly good cards.

Sarz91

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Don't get me wrong I'm not slagging the 670 or 680 they are epicly good cards.

No but for less money the 7950 overclocked is pretty beastly.

Sarz91

Trying to see if I can return my 670 and get a 7950.

Eboggles

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!

If it's anything like the Dual-X, it'll be a monster!

Dcully

Hmm i was considering a getting a GTX 660ti to replace my hd 6950.
I might go for one of the Catleap monitors too, ill have to see.

So are you people saying this saphire 7950 Dual X outperforms the GTX 660 ti? since i see someone above wanting to return their 670 for one.

Sarz91

Dcully wrote: »

Hmm i was considering a getting a GTX 660ti to replace my hd 6950.
I might go for one of the Catleap monitors too, ill have to see.

So are you people saying this saphire 7950 Dual X outperforms the GTX 660 ti? since i see someone above wanting to return their 670 for one.

I'm not returning it because of performance. Just the noise out of the thing is pretty irritating. Performance is outstanding. All scores posted by me are of a stock card. No overclocking.

Procrastastudy

The 660ti wouldn't stand a chance against a 7950 even at stock - neither should it. There's a premium on the cards at the moment because they are new. At stock speeds its:

7870 -> 660ti -> 7950 -> 670 -> 7970 -> 680 -> 7970Ghz

Its slightly different if you are running insane resolutions where thA<D cards tend to shine because of a 384 bit wide memory bus and 3Gb of DDR5.

When the card drops to the price it should be c.€250 it will be the one to buy based on bang for buck at 1080p.

Sarz91

Procrastastudy wrote: »

The 660ti wouldn't stand a chance against a 7950 even at stock - neither should it. There's a premium on the cards at the moment because they are new. At stock speeds its:

7870 -> 660ti -> 7950 -> 670 -> 7970 -> 680 -> 7970Ghz

Its slightly different if you are running insane resolutions where thA<D cards tend to shine because of a 384 bit wide memory bus and 3Gb of DDR5.

When the card drops to the price it should be c.€250 it will be the one to buy based on bang for buck at 1080p.

This. If you're running a single a single 1080 monitor the 660ti and 670 generally outperform the AMD counterparts. The opposite is true when it comes to multi monitor gaming. This is where AMD begin to shine. At least from my limited knowledge.

Dcully

Well im thinking single display.
How do things fair if i went for a catleap or similar monitor with res of 2560X1440?

Procrastastudy

Dcully wrote: »

Well im thinking single display.
How do things fair if i went for a catleap or similar monitor with res of 2560X1440?

The 192bit memory bus of the 660ti would be a bottleneck at the resolution.

Sarz91

Dcully wrote: »

Well im thinking single display.
How do things fair if i went for a catleap or similar monitor with res of 2560X1440?

There was precious little to choose between AMD and Nvidia in our Very High quality Crysis test, with the GTX 660 Ti scoring 66fps and the AMD HD 7950 falling two frames behind. The gap widened in the same test at 2,560 x 1,440, with the GTX 660 Ti’s 48fps score leaping six frames ahead of its rival. The roles were reversed when we hooked up three screens – at 5,760 x 1,080, the recent BIOS update helped the Radeon to score 35fps compared to the GTX 660 Ti’s 26fps.

That's from pcpro.co.uk. No idea how accurate it is but its something. If you're looking at a 670 It's only of bf3 though.

Dcully

Well explained thanks.

Just reading that the 660ti outperforms the original Radeon HD 7950 but is similar to the refreshed Radeon HD 7950 with Boost.

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-660-Ti-Round-Up-MSI-EVGA-Gigabyte-Zotac/?page=12

Procrastastudy

@Stock: I stand corrected the 660ti will be a bit quicker.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-660-ti-benchmark-review,3279-17.html

Hmm or perhaps not.

I think very little to chose between them is the bottom line. Probably continuing the the vein of AMD for High Res and nVidia for 1080p. I think 1440p they are almost identical. The 660ti should win on price when it sorts its self out in europe.

I'd be very interested to see one OC'd as THW reckons some cards can clock to 1325Mhz - now that would be quick.

Procrastastudy

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4146049

Newest Benchmarks 1100/1500 (6000 effective)

I have an odd issue though - I though Trixx showed Mv (under VDDC) - it seems to be undervolting my card when overclocked. I assume it should read 1156 - its reading 1050 and thats after I've manually increased it.

H Scores

Powered by Unigine Engine
Heaven Benchmark v3.0 BasicFPS: 48.4
Scores: 1218
Min FPS: 19.6
Max FPS: 119.0

HardwareBinary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
CPU flags: 3399MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series 8.982.0.0 3072Mb

SettingsRender: direct3d11
Mode: 1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation: extreme

Eboggles

A few things to prospective 660ti/7950 buyers, as we need to clear things up.

What games do you play? Nvidia cards fare extremely well on BF3, and also on games such as Dirt 3, Tom Clancy HAWX and other games such as strategies.

AMD cards fare best in games such as Alien VS Predator, Metro 2033, Total War:Shogun 2 and other FPS' (I'm actually not sure where that apostrophe goes) that are known to be fairly brutal (BF3 being the exception).

Here's a comparison between the 660ti against the HD7950B and the older version in BF3 at different resolutions:



The 660ti at 1280x1024 wipes the floor with both 7950s, but when we move to 1600x1200 (do people use this anymore?) and 1920x1200 it's lead vanishes to just a nose ahead. Finally, at 2560x1600, the 660ti is level with the older 7950 but just about beaten (only 1 frame) by the 7950B.

Now, onto Metro 2033:



This is an AMD favoured title (I think, it actually uses NVIDIA PhysX so I'm not 100% sure). The 660ti is comfortably beaten at all resolutions past 1280x1024. And nobody really plays at 1280x1024, so I'd call that an AMD victory.

Finally, Crysis 2 (I think that's pretty fair)



The 660ti at 1280x1024 is right up there, but as the resolution is increased it starts to falter. This could be attributed to it's 192-bit memory bus... This benchmark is using the High-Res texture pack which takes up a ton of graphics memory, expect more in Crysis 3.

So, where does that leave us? If you BF3 at 1920x1080, get a 660ti. If you play games at 2560x1440, get a HD7950. If you play BF3 only at 2560x1440, get a GTX 670!



Also, if you're into overclocking, have a look at this:



I think that settles it!

Procrastastudy

Prettiest post I've ever seen without a picture of Penelope Cruz in in.

Eboggles

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Prettiest post I've ever seen without a picture of Penelope Cruz in in.

Much appreciated .

Procrastastudy

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4148478

Haven Scores Inc Now @ 1200/1600 - this card is insane!

Heaven Benchmark v3.0 BasicFPS: 52.6
Scores: 1325
Min FPS: 27.7
Max FPS: 130.5

HardwareBinary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
CPU flags: 3399MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series 8.982.0.0 3072Mb

SettingsRender: direct3d11
Mode: 1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation: extreme

Sarz91

Procrastastudy wrote: »

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4148478

Haven Scores Inc Now @ 1200/1600 - this card is insane!

Heaven Benchmark v3.0 BasicFPS: 52.6
Scores: 1325
Min FPS: 27.7
Max FPS: 130.5

HardwareBinary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
CPU flags: 3399MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series 8.982.0.0 3072Mb

SettingsRender: direct3d11
Mode: 1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation: extreme

Is that 3d mark on the performance setting? That's a pretty disgusting card.

Procrastastudy

It's hitting 80C and I have the fans set up so 1:1% (so 80% fan. I've paired it back a bit to 1150/1550 and am going to keep lowering the voltage until I can get temps to stay below 80C.

Think I've reached my top OC now though - gotta make sure it's game stable.

Eboggles

Must. Not. Buy!

If anyone is interested, you could order it from Komplett now at €359.99 and have it in two working days...

How are temps and noise levels?

Edit: didn't see last post.

By the way, at 1200 core it's a 50% OC

Sarz91

How well do reference cards overclock?

Procrastastudy

If you don't go bonkers with it it's very quiet - mines stuck on 70%+ fan so not quiet but to be fair not insanely loud either.

I dont even know what the reference clock for one of these is lol. Even at 950 out of the box its amazing.

Good to see they're back on Komplett - they've been sneaking up in price of HWVS.

Eboggles I can't thank you enough for putting me on to this card. I thought my 4870 was an amazing buy back in the day but this thing takes the cake. Utterly insane performance. I'm not sensitive to frame rate so it could be as low as 30-40 FPS but I'm playing BF3 at 1440p with everything maxed.