7900GS + GTXBios = 7900GSX - Page 43

$400 is just not a big deal to me for that extra horsepower. And if my buyer comes through, I'll only end up paying $200. If money were no object, the 7950GTX is the superior card of the two, bar none. Would I rather run two 7900GS's in SLI? Hell yes. But I don't have that capability. I am not willing to fork over the cash for an Alienware right now, so I've got to take other avenues. Even if it scores one more point or gets one more frame per second than my 7900GS did, it will still be worth it. Just so you know, this isn't me vs. you, or good vs. evil. It's just a more powerful card.

Hey there, I have a few questions :

A) Since you brought up the voltage question, I run my 7900GSX at 1.01 volt. I started with the suggested 1.24v, and decremented till I could get there.
My question is, I didn't manage to get my RAM higher than 740, wheter it's set at 1.01 or 1.24. Also, I don't notice any performance gain between the two. So what is the impact of voltage ?

B) I saw some of you succeeded in running other drivers than Dell's stock. I tried a bunch of them (TweaksRUS, laptopvideo2go), always going through thorough cleanup procedures before, and none of them worked for me (Windows freeze on startup). How come they work for you. Perhaps it's the fact that I'm running a French Windows. Anyway, did you notice any real and noticeable performance gain ?

C) @TurbodTalon : I see your 3DMark scores are at 1024x768, because of your laptop resolution limitations. Shouldn't real comparable scores be at 1280x1024 ?

My system :
Dell Inspiron e1705/9400 laptop
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16Ghz cpu
GeForce Go 7900 GSX (running at 600/1480 MHz)
2 gigs OCZ DDR2 667Mhz ram
100gigs 7200rpm SATA Seagate HD
Acer AL2223WD 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor

I think you need higher voltage to support higher clock speeds. Undervolting is to keep the card from creating any more heat to do it's job than it needs to. In other words, you want just the right amount of voltage to support your clocks. I've never used anything but 1.24. Zzpulp is much more knowledgeable than myself. I've also tried many different drivers. I hit that 3d mark score with stock Nvidia drivers. If you want my opinion, that's what I've scored the highest with, and all 'tweaked' drivers are derived from Nvidia drivers anyway. Try not to use Dell drivers, as they are dumbed down for safety. Go to Nvidia.com, get the latest driver, and make sure your quality settings are on the highest performance. That's all I do. I tried a couple of modded drivers, but the one I actually got working only worked for a few boot-ups before I got a blue screen of death and Windows wouldn't boot anymore. I had only used Nvidia drivers up until then, and that's probably all I'll use from now on. My resolution limitations are why I am running 3dmark05 instead of 06. It is acceptable to run 1024x768 in 3dmark05, whereas 1280x1024 is acceptable for 06. I mean you can benchmark at whatever res you want...but in the forums here there are certain standards that must be met. F.E.A.R. runs at 1024x768, so benchmarking for that game at 1440x900 doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You will think you are getting poorer performance than you really are. Do you have a dual- or single-pipe? Benchmarking, for me, has been a lengthy process. I started with the 'sweet spot' v600c800.rom. HUGE jump over a stock 7900GS. Of course I couldn't stop there. Most of the roms are in 5-10 Mhz increments, so to get it perfect, I had to make my own roms in 1 MHz increments. It's a lot of trial and error. In the end, the only thing that you may not recover from is a bad flash. If you clock too high, you'll just artifact real bad. I don't know if any of this even helped you. Zzpulp will probably post some more useful info when he sees your post.

TurboTalon, I thought with all the overclocking you have been doing you were using the unlocked bios...an unlocked bios is almost key in finding your highest frequencies. There is a sticky thread here if you want to use it, just be sure to get the one for the rev0 card. If you want to know, all the bios does is change one bit that is interpreted by high-level overclocking utilities.

@savat
A ) The voltage you are changing is the core voltage, not the memory voltage. To change the memory voltage you would have to physically alter the card.

B ) I used to be all into modding drivers and whatnot but now it just bores me. I may just stick with dell stock drivers as I dont game incredibly much anymore and getting 3-5 more fps to me isnt all that important either. However, I will be at LV2G more now, so who knows.

C ) 3dmark05 default is 1024 x 768. 06 is 1280 x 1024

Are you talking about the GTX bios? The vXXXcXXX.rom ROM's? I am using it. So is upping the core voltage dangerous?

Personally, my old card ran 1.38 V stock so it was stupid to think about upping the voltage. Nevertheless, I did try a few voltage mods and the result was running like 110+ core/600+ memory from stock on 0.85 V which obviously cant be right. Provided the voltage is actually changing, I wouldnt recommend going over 1.24 V unless your temperatures were just great/you dont need to use the card for a long time. There is no guarantee upping the voltage will cause the card to die very prematurely but its not unheard of.

And I'm talking about this thread

OK, I have a 7950GTX on it's way to my residence. Can it be overclocked? If so, would you mind giving me a link?

Its the same link I posted earlier. He probably included the 7950 bios in there too. Its all one boot cd or if you prefer you can just extract whichever bios you need an put it on a bootable flash drive. Personally, I dont flash any roms I dont make myself.

So you just dump the card's original BIOS, and then begin making your ROM's with Nibitor? I use the USB drive method to flash all my ROM's, per your instructions in 'Blind Flashing and You'. I don't even really use optical media anymore. Could the 7900GS's that were rev1 clock as high as rev0?

The rev0 uses better memory than rev0 so it can be OC'd further. Not sure about the core clocks however.

Anyway, yes, I always make my own backups and rom's. I dump the original bios with nvflash (dont ask why) and mod it with nibitor. I'm so used to the days when nibitor didnt support mobile cards though and you had to do everything yourself.

Thanks guy for replying, and clarifying a few things.
I always make my own rom too, I like flexibility. Anyway, I had to in order to use 1.01v.
I didn't know voltage didn't affect memory. My memory seems to be the real bottleneck on my card (it's single pipe by the way). I will get artifacts if I clock higher than 740.
When I benchmarked, comparing 1.01v with 1.24v, I couldn't notice any difference in terms of temperature with ATITool. It would go to 85-90 in less than 10 minutes. Temperature makes me paranoid, that's why I didn't really tackle with clocks higher than 600.
All in all, from your post, I understand that I could set the voltage to 1.24 and get clock speeds higher than 600 without artifacts, at least better than at 1.01v ?

Idk...I'll play with voltage on the 7900 series later. I can tell you it would be pointless for the 6800 series but dunno what to say about your card. I hope I dont get bored enough to start tampering hardware level.

Anyway, memory clocks sure look nice and get you a few points in 3dmark but real life difference between 740 and 800+ is not high.

What he said, plus your shit's probably outdated anyway, so what's the point? Why don't you read a nice book or something?

@TurbodTalon :

I have a hard time deciphering your last post...

My system :
Dell Inspiron e1705/9400 laptop
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16Ghz cpu
GeForce Go 7900 GSX (running at 600/1480 MHz)
2 gigs OCZ DDR2 667Mhz ram
100gigs 7200rpm SATA Seagate HD
Acer AL2223WD 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor

No, no, that comment was for zzpulp. In another thread he is saying that my system is not worth the money that I'm investing in it. I said that to poke fun at him, but he took it too seriously. In fact, your system is pretty sweet. I'll bet it looks awesome on that monitor, man. Seriously, nothing toward you.

Trust me man, I hardly take anything seriously...
I'm just not in a joking mood today so you got my opinion unmitigated

Ok, it wasn't easy to guess
Yeah, the standard matte screen on my 9400 sucks so much I got another screen.
I compared most 22 inches under 500$ last winter and this specific Acer model is the one I prefered.
Now I see that Dell offers a glossy finish for the standard screens... I have a complete care warranty ending in September. Gotta figure a way to work a replacement

My system :
Dell Inspiron e1705/9400 laptop
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16Ghz cpu
GeForce Go 7900 GSX (running at 600/1480 MHz)
2 gigs OCZ DDR2 667Mhz ram
100gigs 7200rpm SATA Seagate HD
Acer AL2223WD 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor

Dell is quite a pushover. A while back I bought an e1501 from them, and straight out of the box it had a dead pixel. After dicking with it for a bit, figuring out it had onboard graphics and such, I called Dell. The guy never offered a replacement LCD or anything, just gave me an RMA to send it back. There's surely some way to haggle them out of one. You may have to s t r e t c h the truth a bit.

From what I understand of the complete care warranty, all accidents are covered. What if something very accidental occured to my screen ? (still haven't figure what though).
P.S. Let us know how the 7950 performs as compared to an o/c 7900GS when you get the chance.

Here's the benchmarks on the 7950GTX VS 7900GSX. The 7950GTX scored something like 9100 not OC'd, but I failed to take a screenshot before I flashed the OC'd ROM. You'll just have to take my word for it.

7950GTX 620/845 = 10,260
7900GSX 630/870 = 9,803 3dmark05
7950GTX Stock = 9,100(ish)

I am currently unable to get the 7950GTX to clock as high as I could get the 7900GSX to without some nasty artifacts. Pretty sure this is due to shit drivers from Dell, and the fact that Nibitor doesn't (fully) support this card. Was $425 shipped worth it? Don't know yet. Haven't done any in-game. BTW, should this be a new thread?