Gigabyte 7970 RMA

[STE\/E]

RMA'ed a Gigabyte 7970 on Jan 2 2014, got a Card back today, 7 weeks & 1 day, ridiculous ... It's not even the 7970 I sent out, it's a Gigabyte R9 28XOC Rev2 Three Fan model, don't know how it will compare to the HD7970, will try it out tomorrow, want to wait for the Pog's Challenge to end in case anything goes wrong installing it & getting it to run, I'll try a few Moo with it as I already have a 7970 running Moo now so I'll be able to compare the 2 Cards ...

[Fire$torm]

Guess they really want to push the new series out wherever they can....

too bad EVGA doesn't do Radeon.

[John P. Myers]

Looks like it should be a decent upgrade and will most likely also run cooler. Not terribly faster than the 7970, but a little bit at least.

[STE\/E]

Looks like it should be a decent upgrade and will most likely also run cooler. Not terribly faster than the 7970, but a little bit at least.

That's good to hear JP, was a little worried I might be getting the short end of the deal, I agreed to accept the switch in cards since they couldn't fix the one I sent in & they didn't have anymore 7970's, what else was I going to do, I did get them to agree to the Rev2 Card though, I had read some bad Reviews on the Rev1 Cards & expressed my concerns to Gigabyte & they agreed to send a Rev2 Card.

I figure it should run cooler to with the 3 Fans, will probably try out later on today & report back on the difference's in times at Moo between the 280XOC & a 7970 ...

[DrPop]

The wait time - oh man, 7 weeks!? :confused: That's crazy. The good news is, that new R9 28XOC Rev2 should easily equal or slightly beat a 7970 GHz edition, so might be a good thing in the end like JPM was saying. :)

[STE\/E]

The wait time - oh man, 7 weeks!? :confused: That's crazy. The good news is, that new R9 28XOC Rev2 should easily equal or slightly beat a 7970 GHz edition, so might be a good thing in the end like JPM was saying. :)

Yeah, 7 weeks is kinda crazy, hope they ask my to do a Review of their Warranty Procedure ... lol ... That's why I picked up a HD7870 that's running @ Collatz & picking up over 700k a day, I didn't want the Box to be down 2-3 weeks let alone the 7 it took to get a card back from them ...

[EmSti]

I have 3 of the GV-R928XOC-3GD REV2 cards running. I even have a 3 fan gigabyte windforce 7970 (GV-R797OC-3GD ). The rx 280x seem no different then my 7970s in performance. I can run all of them (7970 and 280x) at 1200 Mhz clock and 1500 Mhz memory. Only real different is you can't change the voltage on the gigabyte r9 280x without getting a hacked bios. But I haven't run into a need to change the voltage yet. All three running stable at stock voltage and speed stated.

I like the windforce cards; quiet and cool.

[DrPop]

... I can run all of them (7970 and 280x) at 1200 Mhz clock and 1500 Mhz memory... All three running stable at stock voltage and speed stated.

@-) and I thought I was probably pushing it running my 7970 at 1100MHz. :D haha...well, guess it can go a lot higher!

[STE\/E]

@-) and I thought I was probably pushing it running my 7970 at 1100MHz. :D haha...well, guess it can go a lot higher!

I'm doing good to get my 7970's to even run at 1000 Core, they overheat into the 90's if I go any higher, on MOO anyway, and that's with the voltage dropped some ... The 280XOC seem to run okay, run's a lot cooler than the 7970 too, so I guess I made out on the Deal. The Card appears to be a Brand New Card with Original Box & all Accessories included ... :D

I'm 17 Million short on MOO for hitting 250 Million so I think until the next Pog's challenge start I'll leave both cards on MOO to cut it down for what I need to hit 250M, then I'll switch them back over to Collatz if I feel I a couple extras cores for the Challenge, a lot will depend on if I Bunker a lot or a little ...

[STE\/E]

I can run all of them (7970 and 280x) at 1200 Mhz clock and 1500 Mhz memory. But I haven't run into a need to change the voltage yet. All three running stable at stock voltage and speed stated

Are your 7970's Air Cooled ? and if their air cooled what is the Stock Voltage on them ? Also what Brand are they ... Thanks

[EmSti]

All air cooled. Here is my current layout (I just reconfiged the boxes to get 4 gpu engines (3 cards) into Red Dragon).

Blackdragon


GPU Brand
Voltage
Power Limit
Core Clock
Memory Clock
Fan Speed
Temp C


Gigabyte GV-R797OC-3GD
1168
+20
1200
1500
auto
67


Gigabyte GV-R928XOC-3GD REV2
stock (1200)
+20
1200
1500
auto
63


MSI R7970 Lightning
1175
+20
1200
1500
auto
59 (right above bottom case fans)



Red Dragon


GPU Brand
Voltage
Power Limit
Core Clock
Memory Clock
Fan Speed
Temp C


Gigabyte GV-R928XOC-3GD REV2
stock (1200)
+20
1200
1500
auto
72


Gigabyte GV-R928XOC-3GD REV2
stock (1094??)
+20
1200
1500
auto
65


XFX FX-799A-6NF9 HD 7990 gpu1
stock (1165)
+20
1200
1500
auto
74


2nd 7990 gpu (one 7990 card total)
stock (1135)
+20
1200
1500
auto
62 This side of card above bottom fans



Each case has 3 graphics cards, the lower card are mounted in the lower power supply hole and tied in place. The bottom cards are attached by PCI-E extenders. This allows me to have extra space between the cards. Using Sabertooth slots 1, 4 and 6 a.k.a. PCIe 2.0x16_1, X16_3 and 16_4.

I rearranged a lot in the cases to keep air flowing. Modified the Cool Master HAF 932 side panels to include 200mm fans (cut through the plastic of one panel and added fan grill, replaced the panel on the other). Power supplies are mounted at the top back of the cases, exhausting out the back. Put 2 120 mm fans in the bottom of each case. Mounted the Corsair Hydro Series H100 to exhaust out the top front bays. Change the default case fans; adding high flow 140mm out the back and 200mm intake fan in the lower drive bay. Added 200 mm fan on top of each case, pulling air out; these are external mounted with fan grills on top (they don't quite fit in the case with the PSU at the top). So 4 intake fans in bottom half of the case and 4 exhaust on the top (not including the PSU, count 2 for the H100). I can upload picks if desired. These boxes ended up this way back when I was running Donate as hard as possible and Donate generated the most heat on the 7970s.

Red Dragon pulls too much power for the Antec 1000 mounted in the pc, the power to the bottom 2 cards is supplied by an extra Antec 1200 that has 3V issues, but good 12V rails. I used Add2PSU Multiple Power Supply Adapter to control the power supplies together (too lazy to hot wire it myself). Handy setup, because I can split the PSUs across 2 UPSes.

[STE\/E]

Okay & Thanks for the Info ... :)

I would like to know what the Stock voltage reads on those cards that say stock voltage ... Reason being is I have 6 errrrr 5 now 7970's & the stock voltage is all over the place with them, doesn't seem to be any set stock voltage for them ... :/

[EmSti]

I updated the table with the stock numbers as indicated by TechPowerup GPU-Z when all were under full crunching load. I read that the Gigabyte R9 280x rev2 cards were 1.2V, so I found it odd that the one card is 1.094V. However, it does have a different version of the BIOS. I guess so long as it is running happy I am not going to worry about it.

When it comes to 7970, I seem to recall that the default voltage could vary from card to card even within the same model base of its ASIC number (lower the number, the lower the default voltage and the higher the O.C. potential or something like that). I would not be surprised to see varying voltages on them. When I had a bunch of 7970s before the sell off to move to New York, if took too much time to fine tune to the right voltage level for heat and speed. Using MSI AfterBurner, I would hit the reset and see what the default was for the 7970 cards.

[zombie67]

Pictures!!

[EmSti]

I will as soon as I get a chance.

[Fire$torm]

Pictures!!

^:)^ =P~ =P~ ^:)^

[Tank_Master]

be glad you at least can RMA yours, my sapphire 7970 dies 2 years 1 month after i bought it. Pisses me off...

[EmSti]

1669
1668
1670
1671

I didn't include inside picture of Red because it is basically the same as Black but with an Antec 1000 PSU. Behind Red is the extra PSU, cables going to the GPU and the main cable going to the ADD2PSU module. The picture of BlackDragon is over a year old, but it still looks the same from the outside. I used a dermal type device with a circle cutter attachment to cut the hole in the plastic side panel.

[conf]

Finally my Gigabyte 7970 broke down this week, but its 23 months old and maybe the error is inside guarentee time,
dont know exactly but I send it back to my trader.
My RAC will go down a little but I already bought this ones:

MSI Big Bang-XPower II, X79, LGA2011, DDR3
Intel Xeon E5-2687W, 8x 3.10GHz, Sockel-2011

Hope I have the other parts to make it run. It has 7 PCIe slots and I want to use some Nvidias, but not the
expensive ones, for the projects who need a little bit of Gpu power. Seti Einstein WCG etc.
The 8/16 cores should make me slightly stronger on CPU Projects.
Lets see if I find some good days to assemble this one. Lot of work cause I need my biggest tower for this XL-ATX mainboard
so another system has to move to make place for the new one.

[EmSti]

Good luck on the return and new build.

[Fire$torm]

FYI For anyone that owns a GPU:

Other then top/upper tier models (for most vendors anyway), many of the heat generating components on a GPU's PCB (Printed Circuit Board) are not heatsinked. This is more evident on most open style designs. Their coolers are designed to just blow air over the bare part. But since this air passes through the GPU heatsink before it reaches these little guys, it's already quite warm. IMO this method of cooling circuit components is intentionally done to increase vendors profits. First it reduces parts cost of the finished product and more importantly, shortens the life of said product. Aka designed obsolescence.

Common components/chips that are left bare include VRAM, VReg, PWM Power controllers and MosFets (or other SM high current transistors). To get an idea of what these things are/look like, check out this Extreme Systems post ---> http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?268825-MSI-N580GTX-Lightning-amp-R6970-Lightning-Review

There are steps anyone can take to help extend the life of their GPUs. Use IC heatsinks! For PC hardware, these heatsinks usually have names like VGA RAM Heatsinks and the like. You can find them at most of the mod etailers like FrozenCPU and Preformance-PCs. eBay has a ton of listings though many sellers are in Asia. I've also seen listing on Amazon.

Arctic Cooling made a series of small heatsink kits VR001~VR005. Unfortunately it looks like Arctic Cooling is getting out of the cooling business. Many of their GPU coolers are impossible to find of late. I purchased an Accelero Twin Turbo II last December. Almost a dozen sites had this item in stock. Now they all list it as backordered or discontinued. Same for other AC products. If you troll the Net you might get lucky.

[conf]

They accepted my 7970 though its 1 year and 11 months old.
Think its on the way to Asia and I will get it back in around 3 months.
Maybe I have also luck and they change it to a new one like 280x.