Bitcoin Forum

I'm looking at getting a 7970,mainly for gaming,but I would like to kow what model you have & your hashrates & wattage use please.

I've looked through the forum,but info is soooo scattered ::)

Thanks  ;)

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

(about 2/3 down the page)   ;)


Anyways, I have mine at 1010/170 undervolted to 1.0v, get 596 Mh/s, and pull around 146W (each).

The higher the ASIC value, the lower the power consumption.  And keeping it cooler helps too.  I have one of mine water cooled and it shaved 50W off the total power.

Very nice   8)

Yeah,I know about the wiki,but it is generic,no branding,Sapphire,XFX,Diamond,Powercolor,Visiontek,etc....

What model? So I can compare & make a good decision.

Besides the branding, all reference cards are the same (PCB, circuitry).  It comes down to the silicon lottery.  You may get lucky and acquire a card with a high ASIC value (80%+).  But don't think that spending $100 extra for a Lightning, DirectCU, or Windforce will yield a better card.  They will have better cooling than a reference card but some are voltage locked (most current Asus DC2 7970's are locked) meaning that you can't underclock them and save a few more watts or overclock them higher to get a higher hash rate.

I'm using a ref Sapphire 7970 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102961) (water cooled), non-ref Sapphire 7970 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131468), and a ref MSI 7970 OC (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127652).

I'd recommend anything from MSI, Asus, PowerColor, Sapphire, and Gigabyte.  I use to buy XFX exclusively because of their double lifetime warranty but they've cheapened and put a 2-year warranty on their "Core" cards and changed the double lifetime to just lifetime so you can't transfer it to the second user.  I have heard horror stories with Visiontek and Diamond.

My ASUS 7970 DC2 is pulling 700 MH/s at stock voltage. It takes up 3 slots so you have to be willing to part with the space, but it does a really good job at keeping the thing cool, which goes a long way to stability. I'm looking at about 165W.

Great info guys ;D

Exactly what I'm looking to hear (or read) :D

Thank you!!

Keep em coming  8)

Anyone get a Visiontek?? Diamond?? HIS???

I have a visiontek 7970

stock volts 1100 mhz, 650 mh/s

I have visiontek and powercolor and they both will do 1100Mhz on 1124mV even with sub 70% ASIC quality.

That is a very nice average. Is this the "TOP" factory overclocked version or the ref/directCU II?

165W also sounds significantly less than what I have seen benchmarked. Did you change anything?

I have found that flashing the default ATI 7950 Bios to any 7970, reduces the power consumption substantially, of course at 925MHz clock rates. I have noticed using a DMM that he 7950 Bios reduces the VDD to around 1.02V and is useful for Linux based mining rigs, since I could not find a software to control voltages of Tahiti based cards in Linux.

How is the success rate on 7950 flashing?

100% success on XFX Double D 2 cards
100% .. on Reference 7970 4 cards
0% .. on MSI Twin Frozer III  (ATIWinflash crashes midway, tested 5 times using both Win 7 and Win XP)

Visiontek 7970 (reference):
- 1000 core voltage
- 1050 core clock
- 340 memory clock
- 575 mhash/s
- 152 watts
- 59 degrees with 27 ambient

I used to run stock volts at 1150 core clock, was at 75 degrees, but 112 more volts for 100 more core clock wasn't worth it.

I've been looking at the Visiontek,never bought one thier cards,mainly XFX & Zotac.

Is this the card ? It has good reviews:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129204

I do like the lifetime warranty & reference design & the "no logo" mounting bracket is wide open (I hate twin or more fans,blows hot air around inside my case).

Anyone had to use the warranty  ???

Also,if you flash the bios "down" to 7950,does it affect gaming?? A secondary reason for getting a 7970................

Since you mentioned games, I am assuming your setup will be windows based.
There's not much of  a point to flash it down to 7950 for a windows PC, since there are tools like MSI afterburner which can control voltage, and clock speed easily. The problem arises in Linux setup, where voltage control for Tahiti is not available but clock control is.

Ah,I missed that  :-[ Thanks  8)

Yep,running Win7 64 bit & playing BF3,my 6970 crossfire setup seems to be a bit off since the last patch or so.Hoping one 7970 will give smoother results & lower power consumption as a bonus.

If not,I'll sell it later & get a Nvidia 680 or 690,when I can get up the diff in BTC  ;)