All Sapphire 7950s (11196-19-20G) are not suitable for mining?

[miaviator]

In two weeks my card become dead since I have first started mining. I used it every day except half an hour break (2 times). Most of people says that they burnt their cards. I think this cards are problematic and not suitable for mining?

Did you have the same problems?

7950 is the worst card ever created.

(* If I had a satoshi for everytime I've posted that comment)

[XbladeX]

In two weeks my card become dead since I have first started mining. I used it every day except half an hour break (2 times). Most of people says that they burnt their cards. I think this cards are problematic and not suitable for mining?

Did you have the same problems?

My one is ok... i just don't oc it to much

[alimkanani]

I bought six of these cards, two of them have already gone.  What I noticed is that they sparked near the PCI-Power connector after I found my system randomly shut down.  I think some of these are definitely defective, these were the batch from early January.  I feel like it could be the power supply I used so I am trying with different power supplies and seeing if anything happens.

[deathkill]

sparks?? really?

OMG...

one would expect Sapphire to recall all affected cards.. but no statement on their website or anything..

[alimkanani]

sparks?? really?

OMG...

one would expect Sapphire to recall all affected cards.. but no statement on their website or anything..

Yup sparked when I hit the power on it, I feel like it may be that the card had the voltage turned up on it (1.256) but I never overvolted it at all and can't change it unless i flash the bios, I tried to turn it down but it wouldn't change values.  I'm worried about the rest of the cards but I am getting a new power supply and it is a platinum corsair so it shouldn't be a problem.  If it sparks or dies i know it would definitely be the defective cards and I would have to do another RMA.

[SaRmY]

Yeah sparks i don't put in doubt.
One day, I saw very good the little sparks in one of my dead gpus.

When i said this issue to Sapphire forum, a mod insinuated me that i must have a quality hardware above all the psu.
And I said her that the gpu showed me sparks because i had a bad hardware such as a mobo of 200€ and a Platinum PSU (Fractal Design Newton R3 1000w) and that if I had a Diamond PSU with 110% eficiency  i'm sure that i wouldn't see any spark. Sapphire, Sapphire... 

[alimkanani]

Yeah sparks i don't put in doubt.
One day, I saw very good the little sparks in one of my dead gpus.

When i said this issue to Sapphire forum, a mod insinuated me that i must have a quality hardware above all the psu.
And I said her that the gpu showed me sparks because i had a bad hardware such as a mobo of 200€ and a Platinum PSU (Fractal Design Newton R3 1000w) and that if I had a Diamond PSU with 110% eficiency  i'm sure that i wouldn't see any spark. Sapphire, Sapphire... 

Yup, I'm sure many have had problems with their sapphire 7950's of the most recent batch.  Something tells me they were created in haste to sell to miners without doing proper quality assurance.  The problem is most people don't/won't see this thread but the issue is really bad.  Hopefully sapphire issues us new better cards instead of the crappy problematic cards we currently have.

[jamesc760]

Yep, I have the exact model Sapphire 7950, got it as a bundle deal with a Kingwin 750 W PSU from TigerDirect in December'13, and it's dead. Saw spark near the PCI-E power ports. It won't POST. Emailed and got RMA, it's delivered back for RMA and now waiting for them to confirm.

I also have an older model (11196-16-20G) and that one's been working perfectly since early last year!

Something's definitely wrong with the 11196-19-20G model.

[Edited for clarity and spelling]

[BernoulliS]

Yes, can confirm this too, Sapphire 7950 Dual-X aren't suitable for mining.  
Had 8 cards of this type of which 7 died within weeks, one after another. Bought them new from pixmania.co.uk, about £150 per card, ... was thinking that it's a bargain but it was a total waste of money and time.

The last one still works (after about 2 months of usage) but isn't stable anymore and I'm afraid that it may die soon as well. Serial numbers of the cards were  A13500003XXXX.


The way they fail is:  PC shut down randomly  then at one point it doesn't start anymore, the screens goes black after windows start up logo. Some cards fail with sparks, one actually burned out filling the room with smoke, that was really scary, thanks God I was nearby to switch it off.


BTW: don't overclock them at all (use default settings only) and don't use more than 1 card of that type per miner, that appears to save them for a longer period of time, but it's still not guaranteed.


I'm trying to avoid all Sapphire GPUs were possible after this experience.

[maehhh]

I bought six of these cards, two of them have already gone.  What I noticed is that they sparked near the PCI-Power connector after I found my system randomly shut down.  I think some of these are definitely defective, these were the batch from early January.  I feel like it could be the power supply I used so I am trying with different power supplies and seeing if anything happens.

Thats exactly what happened to my Sapphire 7950s. 2 out of 4 were fried this way within one month.  Beware they were undervolted to 1.036, running below 60C and powered by a Corsair Platinum PSU.

Still waiting for a replacement.... I am done with Sapphire for sure

[omgbossis21]

I run a 7770 @ 17 intensity   xfx brand 200kh stock.  Also a xfx 7790  intensity 18 both 24/7 run a little hot but flawless.

[SaRmY]

Yes, can confirm this too, Sapphire 7950 Dual-X aren't suitable for mining.  
Had 8 cards of this type of which 7 died within weeks, one after another. Bought them new from pixmania.co.uk, about £150 per card, ... was thinking that it's a bargain but it was a total waste of money and time.

The last one still works (after about 2 months of usage) but isn't stable anymore and I'm afraid that it may die soon as well. Serial numbers of the cards were  A13500003XXXX.


The way they fail is:  PC shut down randomly  then at one point it doesn't start anymore, the screens goes black after windows start up logo. Some cards fail with sparks, one actually burned out filling the room with smoke, that was really scary, thanks God I was nearby to switch it off.


BTW: don't overclock them at all (use default settings only) and don't use more than 1 card of that type per miner, that appears to save them for a longer period of time, but it's still not guaranteed.


I'm trying to avoid all Sapphire GPUs were possible after this experience.

It's curious because my dead gpus were bought also in Pixmania (Pixmania.es)
   

[sgggassfg]

I've had 3 of those cards in my system.

Of the first 3 one cards smelled burnt as soon as I turned it on. About a month later it stopped working. Got it RMA'ed.

A few weeks after that another card broke down. RMA'ed that too.

Now that I just received the 3rd card RMA I installed it and it smelled burned again from the very start (only when under load though). Furthermore another card that I had received a s replacement also died a few days later. That's 4 cards burnt in less than 3 months.

No overclocking, no cheating with voltages, no alternative bioses. Intensity at 18. Cards run very cool probably at like 40% fan speed. wtf is this?! Until what point will this shop keep sending me new cards?! They must see this happening with gamers as well?

How the card burns out: it's mining along fine. All of a sudden the screen freezes, all inputs stop working. After restart it hangs right before where it's supposed to show the windows desktop (even when no monitor is plugged in to the burnt card). Weird thing is, you can still get it to load windows correctly when using the second bios (using the bios switch next to the crossfire link connector) but as soon as you run a game or start mining it freezes everything up again. This is definitely seems like a hardware problem. Something on their ASIC wired up wrong, bad cooling paste or some other low-quality problem.

Why did they even come out with this new revision? The previous revisions worked really well as far as I'm aware. So dumb...

Latest burned card:
PN 299-1e249-100sa
SKU# 11196-19
Serial: A13510003xxxx

MADE IN CHINA go figure

List of brands to avoid at all cost:
club 3d
sapphire
powercolor
XFX

[AzN1337c0d3r]

Why did they even come out with this new revision? The previous revisions worked really well as far as I'm aware. So dumb...

It's called cost reduction. Newer revisions typically make it cheaper for the manufacturer to manufacture so increases the profit margin. The unfortunate problem is that these cheaper components often have a higher variance in their spec (or simply, revised incorrectly under spec) making all your GPU blow up.

[ilpirata79]

I had 4 out of 5 burned (2 of them sparkling and burning almost to the ground ).

At the beginning they fail and they make the system freeze when you start Xorg. Then if you insist in using them they start sparkling and even burning.

The last one is still working (1020 core, 1250 mem and 18 as intensity, giving me 610kh/s).

My idea is that the room temperature should be kept low to avoid these issues.

Best regards,
ilpirata79

[SaRmY]

On the side that I saw the sparks is where the capacitors are, near to the 6pin PCI-E connectors.
Were your sparks also near to pci-e connectors?

[dgross0818]

On the side that I saw the sparks is where the capacitors are, near to the 6pin PCI-E connectors.
Were your sparks also near to pci-e connectors?

Gigabyte WF3 7950's have the same issue with the small power ripple capacitors for the VRAM blowing up... Usually trips the short-circuit protection on the PSU and shuts the rig down... on restart you get an explosion. Has happened to me probably 4 or 5 times already since I started in November...

[hercules1600]

I have had 3 of the sapphire 7950 vapor x's running flawlessly for about 5 months now. Overclocked but keeping temperatures at 75 degrees.
Maybe there was a bad batch, I must be lucky but anyone effected are you keeping an eye on the HW column in cgminer?

Getting the fastest speed is always great but I know a couple people who burnt out cards because they had tons of hardware errors.

[sgggassfg]

Found something that could maybe help:

The problem is that the VRM are blowing on the cards. And the reason is auto fan. The VRM have their own heat sink which is cooled by the main fans. However as auto fan adjusts the fan speed for the GPU temp and not the VRM temp the VRM can over heat and the fans will not rev up. I have my cards under volted and they run at about 68c so with a target temp of 70c the fans are running at only 20%. Make sure if you have these cards (or any other without VRM temp control) that you set your fans at 100%. They are rated for 30,000 hours (3.5 years) at that speed.

http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/1w6wo2/two_dead_sapphire_7950_dualx_oc_in_one_month_and/

[phreakk]

SAME PROBLEMS HERE. Same model #.

I bought 6 of these last year, 1 returned, 1 rma, 1 taking a shit right now, and EVERY CARD had TERRIBLE FANS, I replaced some fans.

They started dying about a month after use, only ran them at 60%.

Temps NEVER above 75C, except when fans both died on one card, temp hit 95C, card still works though.