Upgraded to the 7970M!

So finally after a very long wait, my Dell AMD 7970M came.

Definitely a very "plug and play" install for anyone considering the upgrade. So I'll post my thoughts and findings and any questions here...

The only modification I needed to do was file the x-bracket down a bit. I did a lot of test fitting with both my original 5850 and new 7970 cards removed from the system; until I felt they both fit the same I was satisfied. Alternatively I read I can replace the screws with shorter ones.

Otherwise drop in, and booted up.

System has been at idle with some web browsing for forty minutes, consistently sitting at 38-40C... Comparatively my 5850 ran at 50C at idle. About to run Heaven Benchmark and see how it goes.

One question I have, does anyone know why HWiNFO only shows me the thermal diode temperature and not the memory etc? Also what are good thresholds?

 

Sigh.... Thermal shut down... Removed heat sink, reapplied thermal compound and I managed to get through one beanchmark... It slowly climbs 1 degree at a time until it got to 83*C....

 

83 isn't that bad under heavy load. You could try a different brand of thermal compound or a cooling pad.

 

Perhaps, when I think about it, my 5850 would run 85* C at a peak during very heavy loads. I for some reason have lower numbers as an expectation here...

I just finished under volting it... I tried 1.000V... Found it creeped to 80*C after one benchmark, so I decided to run 0.950 as I see a lot of people do and suggest. Anyone that is concerned about flashing your video card BiOS, honestly don't be. Following the provided material by some of these awesome communities it's truly a joke instead of a daunting task.

Went through four back to back benchmarks... It will hold a 75-77. After about the fourth consistent run through the software it creeped to 80, but seems to hold a temp and bounce off it, only increasing by a degree every so often. I know the software is designed to push and load the system to stress test it and it likely won't behave this way in games but I still feel concerned.

What are the safe margins here?

New selection of thermal compound and thermals pads on the way with that all being said....

 

Anything under 75 I'm generally happy with. I run mine at 1.00v and 900/1400 but I have, like a few others, undertaken a cooling mod that allows the GPU to stay under its thermal shutdown temperature. Did you apply thermal pads to the VRAMs and capacitors? This is very important!

 

Indeed.. Don't forget thermal pads or your GPU will die.. Make 100% sure you have applied those pads and don't use your GPU anymore till you do so if you haven't already..

 

I have thermal pads on the Vram exactly like my 5870 did. Noticed the "scorching" done to the heat sink by the capacitors on the 5850, so I added a small pad to the them.

 

If you aren't using a proper 7970M x-bracket then that may be the problem. I had to buy some longer screws than the short stubby ones attached to the heatsinks.

 

It's the original 7970M bracket. I just filed down the bracket to tighten down the pressure.

I just did some tunning to it, ran my benchmark again, highest was 78*C... During gaming last night, although it reached 80*C in my benchmark, none of my games made it go over 76*C... So interested to see how tonight goes with the tweaks.

 

Getting occasional boots were my first two lights on the left flash and the right one is solid... Scroll, Num flash, Caps on. Only noticed this issue since flashing the video card. Goes away upon power cycling?

 

Resolved. Re-seated my GPU and Memory. Installed a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 as well.

Having issues with getting Battlefield 4 to run anywhere worth a damn. My 5850 would run the game 80-110 on low settings at 900P, but I can't get this card to do that. Every other games from Crysis 3 to Bioshock Infinite runs exceptionally awesome at max settings.

 

Strange. The 5850 is about 3 times less powerful.. 7970M should always perform better than the 5850M! Very strange.

I can only imagine you are getting throttling. There is a well documented to fix for that.

 

Hmm not sure to be honest. Clocks all run consistent. Temps are solid.

Contemplating if my power supply is the key factor here. I know I'll need a bigger one should I overclock or something but figured it wouldn't be this bad. LOL

 

make sure stealth mode is of , check on gpu z what the clocks are need to me 850/1200....i had that in the beginning as well.

 

Unigene Heaven at 1920/1080 should be around ...... depending on what kinda processor you have (mine is i5 430 at the moment) temps are idle 39 (cel) and on full load some where between 74 and 84....... hope this helps.