AMD: R9xx Speculation

[gongo]

Doing some tests....it seems Cayman is more sensitive to core clocks than memory bandwidth..dropping ma Cayman XT mem by 50 and upping core by 50...i got 70 more 3dmark11 points.

Cayman XT seems a lot more toastier than RV770...either that or the fan is not exhausting fast enough...any one else felt the same? I touched the sides...and i got burned...or is the the Vapor Chamber working?

 

[swaaye]

The funny thing is, if they leave this alone, this will probably gain AMD about 10X as many sales as they would have got otherwise.

-Hardcore PC gamers love to mod/twiddle with things (same reason there is overclocking)
-They love to feel like they got a "steal" by overclocking/modding

Hell, I bet a lot of people would go out of their way to do this even if Nvidia offered a card with better performance at the same price, just so they can feel like they pulled one over on the man, or are "elite".

I mean this is the first time people are actually excited about the 69XX series.

Honestly it would be a good sneaky marketing idea to build this in on purpose.

Ain't it the truth. $300 gets you a pretty sweet card now if you get one that unlocks fine.

The ease of unlocking these cards makes me wonder about how much planning there really was to the 6950. This BIOS unlocking is a rare deal that hasn't happened in many years. I also wonder if there isn't more to the chip than even the 6970 BIOS shows.

 

[Blazkowicz]

this often happens on pre-release or early cards sent to reviewers, they didn't have time to waste building a real specific 6950 inventory and the next batch will be laser blown, my guess.

 

[dizietsma]

The funny thing is, if they leave this alone, this will probably gain AMD about 10X as many sales as they would have got otherwise.

-Hardcore PC gamers love to mod/twiddle with things (same reason there is overclocking)
-They love to feel like they got a "steal" by overclocking/modding

Hell, I bet a lot of people would go out of their way to do this even if Nvidia offered a card with better performance at the same price, just so they can feel like they pulled one over on the man, or are "elite".

I mean this is the first time people are actually excited about the 69XX series.

Honestly it would be a good sneaky marketing idea to build this in on purpose.

I agree totally. Everyones a winner (almost)

 

[Rangers]

Hey Rangers...any thoughts of upgrading your 4890 to a 5970? I think you will like it....at around twice the perf and a quieter cooler...games are so fluid now....better grab one before Dave strikes back and laser those pesky undead SIMDs!

Ehh I considered it...but by now my Q6600 is probably going to be a bottleneck to any upgrade anyway. Maybe I could fuss with OCing the 6600 to help out but I dunno, never been a overclocker. Also $300 is still a lot of money.

 

[compres]

Ehh I considered it...but by now my Q6600 is probably going to be a bottleneck to any upgrade anyway. Maybe I could fuss with OCing the 6600 to help out but I dunno, never been a overclocker. Also $300 is still a lot of money.

Overclocking the Q6600 is easy, even if you have a bad sample. Mine sucks and has been running at 3.2ghz with 4x400 bus, 2x800 memory for 2 years.

Now the big question is, is the quad overclocked like this still a bottleneck? I have no idea. I am still happily running on my 4870.

 

[gongo]

I did more tests and the stability is perfectly there...however..there is something i noticed which i didnt before...im not sure if its because of the flash...but ma CaymanXT seems to whine and hiss a lot more than before the flash...i did turn up the fan speed so is it a loose fan? But it sounded more like the capacitor whine of RV700 series...which supposedly got fix with Cypress....but it is back with Cayman and got worse with bios flashing?

 

[swaaye]

Overclocking the Q6600 is easy, even if you have a bad sample. Mine sucks and has been running at 3.2ghz with 4x400 bus, 2x800 memory for 2 years.

Yeah well mine sucks more because my motherboard (P35-DS3R) undervolts the chip due to crap VRM. The only way I can do 3.2 GHz stably is by upping the CPU voltage in the BIOS and, in effect, killing Speedstep. So I run 3.0 GHz instead (333x9).

I've also had problems with the 4 pin CPU power connector becoming scorched. I think it is a poor connection and due to oxidation it eventually overheated. I had to go in there and needle file it to clean up burnt plastic and crimp it a bit. So I don't really recommend overclocking a Quad unless you have a 8pin power connection...

I did more tests and the stability is perfectly there...however..there is something i noticed which i didnt before...im not sure if its because of the flash...but ma CaymanXT seems to whine and hiss a lot more than before the flash...i did turn up the fan speed so is it a loose fan? But it sounded more like the capacitor whine of RV700 series...which supposedly got fix with Cypress....but it is back with Cayman and got worse with bios flashing?

It's probably inductors making the sound. I've seen this happen with quite a few bits of PC hardware. Capacitors don't whine. Capacitors usually just explode instead of wimpy whining.

Higher power draw is most likely the cause. Whether or not you should be concerned, I don't know.

 

[Babel-17]

I did more tests and the stability is perfectly there...however..there is something i noticed which i didnt before...im not sure if its because of the flash...but ma CaymanXT seems to whine and hiss a lot more than before the flash...i did turn up the fan speed so is it a loose fan? But it sounded more like the capacitor whine of RV700 series...which supposedly got fix with Cypress....but it is back with Cayman and got worse with bios flashing?

Choke noise?

Twin Frozr also uses the latest SSC (Solid State Choke). The form-in one design of SSC effectively eliminates the unwanted high frequency noise caused by vibration of traditional chokes.

http://service.msicomputer.com/index.php?func=newsdesc&news_no=832

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I did more tests and the stability is perfectly there...however..there is something i noticed which i didnt before...im not sure if its because of the flash...but ma CaymanXT seems to whine and hiss a lot more than before the flash...i did turn up the fan speed so is it a loose fan? But it sounded more like the capacitor whine of RV700 series...which supposedly got fix with Cypress....but it is back with Cayman and got worse with bios flashing?

There are some new BIOSes available at Techpowerup that instead of being 6970 BIOSes are 6950 BIOSes with all the cores unlocked (from about post 343 in this thread). This allows you to keep the 6950 memory timings and simply overclock from there using Powertune and CCC as you would normally. It's solving any problems for those few people that were seeing instability or overheating with a straight 6970 BIOS. You might want to try one of those and see if it solves your whine issues.

Edit: There's now also a tool that will take your 6950 dumped BIOS and mod it to unlock the extra cores, so you can DIY it if you want.

 

[digitalwanderer]

There are some new BIOSes available at Techpowerup that instead of being 6970 BIOSes are 6950 BIOSes with all the cores unlocked (from about post 343 in this thread). This allows you to keep the 6950 memory timings and simply overclock from there using Powertune and CCC as you would normally. It's solving any problems for those few people that were seeing instability or overheating with a straight 6970 BIOS. You might want to try one of those and see if it solves your whine issues.

Edit: There's now also a tool that will take your 6950 dumped BIOS and mod it to unlock the extra cores, so you can DIY it if you want.

Sweet! Thanks for the linkage.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Sweet! Thanks for the linkage.

Yes, but note you only get 6950 voltages with the modded 6950 BIOS, which is safer and keeps power/heat down, but limits overclocking.

RBE will be updated at some point to handle higher voltages, or you can flash to the Asus BIOS and use their Smartdoctor utility.

Or if your card can handle it, got the whole hog and try a 6970 BIOS.

 

[Squilliam]

Its funny we now have all this bios unlocking at the same time they give us selectable bios switches, coincidence?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Nah, bios unlocking has been around a long time now...just hasn't been a good one in a while.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Nah, bios unlocking has been around a long time now...just hasn't been a good one in a while.

But when have we seen a graphics card with a dual bios switch that allows it to be done painlessly and safely? And chips that haven't been laser cut/fused?

 

[eastmen]

I got my 6950 in and I must say... its friggen heavy. Going to install it tommorow. Need a mini to reqular display port plug.

 

[Sampsa]

Swiftech CEO Gabriel Rouchon revealed in XS Forums that AMD is planning to update Radeon HD 6900 series PCB design including VRM design and location of a few cooler mounting holes:

"We are now in a position to explain some of the design elements that we couldn't discuss earlier due to Non Disclosure Agreements with AMD.

The 6970 and 6950 series Radeons are coming in 2 flavors. I am not sure I am allowed to use the same terminology as that used by AMD, so let's call the first batch of boards released and available on the market right now the "initial release", and the upcoming revision the "revision"."

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4684752&postcount=85

If you take a closer look of the Swiftech water block pics,old design has smaller cooling pads for driver-MOSFETS than new one which might suggest a component change in design:

My wild guess would be changing Volterra VT1636SF driver-MOSFETs to Texas Instrumentsin 59901M -driver-MOSFETs (which was rumored to be a cause of 6900 series delay), more with pics at Muropaketti.com (Google Translate):

http://translate.google.com/transla...on-hd-6950-ja-6970-naytonohjaimien-piirilevyt

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I got my 6950 in and I must say... its friggen heavy. Going to install it tommorow. Need a mini to reqular display port plug.

Interesting, I had assumed that all 69xx and 68xx cards would come with a mini-DP -> DP adapter. But reading this combined with someone's comment that not all video cards now come with molex -> PCIE power adapters made me go looking. And...

It looks like for the 6950's, Sapphire is the only company to provide ALL of the following.

2x molex -> PCIE power adapters
MiniDP -> DP adapter
HDMI 1.4a cable
DVI -> VGA adapter

Seems not all cards come with the MiniDP adapter and some cards only come with 1 PCIE adapter and some don't come with any PCIE adapters. And none of the others include an HDMI 1.4a cable.

Interesting. And despite those differences all cards are 299 USD except for XFX which is 309 due to double lifetime warranty.

Regards,
SB

 

[hoom]

I may have missed it being previously posted but David Kanter has a Cayman Architecture article up with a bunch of juicy tidbits
http://realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT121410213827

 

[eastmen]

Interesting, I had assumed that all 69xx and 68xx cards would come with a mini-DP -> DP adapter. But reading this combined with someone's comment that not all video cards now come with molex -> PCIE power adapters made me go looking. And...

It looks like for the 6950's, Sapphire is the only company to provide ALL of the following.

2x molex -> PCIE power adapters
MiniDP -> DP adapter
HDMI 1.4a cable
DVI -> VGA adapter

Seems not all cards come with the MiniDP adapter and some cards only come with 1 PCIE adapter and some don't come with any PCIE adapters. And none of the others include an HDMI 1.4a cable.

Interesting. And despite those differences all cards are 299 USD except for XFX which is 309 due to double lifetime warranty.

Regards,
SB

my gigabyte was $300 with a $20 rebate so $280