7970 GHz Vapor-X Voltage Locked?

[leoweisman]

That's basically it. I'm looking to get a 7970 GHz that will stably OC to 1.2GHz, more if possible. The Vapor-X will be my choice if it is unlocked voltage, but I have seen some people say that the newer ones are locked. Does anyone know if the current (May 2013) cards are unlocked?

Thanks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202001

 

[leoweisman]

Can someone please answer this? I will be buying this card in a day or so if it is unlocked, if it is locked I need to find an alternative.

 

[Hakumisoso Terror]

It is locked. You should still get maybe 1.2 ghz off it though.

 

[Hakumisoso Terror]

I think only the vapor x version is locked.

 

[The Indomitable]

My Vapor-X 7970 voltage is locked. However, I can get 1220mhz stable off it and 1600 on the memory.

 

[leoweisman]

My Vapor-X 7970 voltage is locked. However, I can get 1220mhz stable off it and 1600 on the memory.

Is it still worth it, for $430 with a rebate (plus the free game promotion), knowing that it is locked? Is there another card that I can get around $450 or less that will perform better?

Thanks

 

[The Indomitable]

The promotion pretty much did it for me, and as for the locked voltage, I could care less, since 1220 and 1600 is much more than enough.
The card sounds like a hair dryner under load though, if you want quiet you're gonna have to liquid cool it.

 

[leoweisman]

The promotion pretty much did it for me, and as for the locked voltage, I could care less, since 1220 and 1600 is much more than enough.
The card sounds like a hair dryner under load though, if you want quiet you're gonna have to liquid cool it.

Thank you! I'll hopefully order mine this weekend

 

[The Indomitable]

Also, it uses a non reference PCB, so if you want to water cool it, you might want to get a reference card instead.

 

[leoweisman]

Also, it uses a non reference PCB, so if you want to water cool it, you might want to get a reference card instead.

Probably won't be water cooling. I've heard some not so good things about the Arctic coolers and I dont have the $$$ for a custom loop. Thanks though.

 

[MyNewRig]

I had the 7970 VAPOR-X GHz edition until yesterday which i returned it because it was producing an annoying coil whine and also could not overclock past 1080Mhz stable (i will explain what i mean by stable)

Let me share with you my whole experience with this card because i have been testing it everyday for one month, so i know it by heart .. lol

First of all, the card looks decent and its cooling solution is the best thing it has, i could play Crysis 3 or BF3 on 3 Monitors 4K resolution and temps stay below 70c while fans are around 60% which is really quite for the performance i was getting.

The card was voltage UNLOCKED BUT and that is a big BUT, overclocking is not only about voltage flexibility, for me it was the silicon lottery and the poor quality ill cooled VRM on this card that were stopping me from reaching above 1080mhz.

Now here is what happens, the card comes factory clocked at 1050Mhz with a factory volt of 1.256v .. now via Trixx utility you can up the volt until 1.3 but that does not do any good.

Here is why, 1st of all even though people claim to reach stable clocks of above 1200Mhz, that is for the card i had is unrealistic, what people call stable is that they can run 3DMark or BF3 for few hours without the machine crashing and this is what they call stable, for me stable means that the card can run without producing any Artifacts at all by means of an Artifacts scanner, the one i used is EVGA OC Scanner which is awesome, i set the software to stop stress testing after it detects ONE or more Artifacts and this software stresses the crap out of the card, it is the most demanding stress test that puts stress on the card like 1.5X what the most demanding game does.

Anyways at 1080Mhz the card starts producing Artifacts no matter what voltage or power you give it, also above 1100Mhz the card gets really hot and the fans cross the 70% speed threshold which makes it annoyingly loud, also the VAPOR-X cooling solution does not cover the VRM and that makes it get really hot, it gets too close to 100c degree.

Also the card can not hold its 1050Mhz clock speed and clocks itself down to 1000mhz when running these demanding tests,.

Not to mention that the card produces annoying coil whine that Sapphire consider normal and not grounds for RMA

Long story short, even with unlocked voltage, in my case overclocking was a hopeless case, due to poor silicon quality and very poor VRM quality and cooling that you would hit before you hit your voltage limits.

For me i really hated this card .. and i am talking about the GHz edition here, if you happen to buy it and your experience is different please let me know.

I plan to get the Gigabyte card instead as i feel that Gigabyte is in general a better company (even though Gigabyte cards are voltage locked, as indicated above voltage unlocking did not do me any good in the Sapphire's case) plus they give 3 years warranty. but i will wait anyway for the Rumored GTX 780 due two weeks from now to see if the market changes enough for me to change my mind.

Hope i helped.

 

[slamer80]

I had the 7970 VAPOR-X GHz edition until yesterday which i returned it because it was producing an annoying coil whine and also could not overclock past 1080Mhz stable (i will explain what i mean by stable)

Let me share with you my whole experience with this card because i have been testing it everyday for one month, so i know it by heart .. lol

First of all, the card looks decent and its cooling solution is the best thing it has, i could play Crysis 3 or BF3 on 3 Monitors 4K resolution and temps stay below 70c while fans are around 60% which is really quite for the performance i was getting.

The card was voltage UNLOCKED BUT and that is a big BUT, overclocking is not only about voltage flexibility, for me it was the silicon lottery and the poor quality ill cooled VRM on this card that were stopping me from reaching above 1080mhz.

Now here is what happens, the card comes factory clocked at 1050Mhz with a factory volt of 1.256v .. now via Trixx utility you can up the volt until 1.3 but that does not do any good.

Here is why, 1st of all even though people claim to reach stable clocks of above 1200Mhz, that is for the card i had is unrealistic, what people call stable is that they can run 3DMark or BF3 for few hours without the machine crashing and this is what they call stable, for me stable means that the card can run without producing any Artifacts at all by means of an Artifacts scanner, the one i used is EVGA OC Scanner which is awesome, i set the software to stop stress testing after it detects ONE or more Artifacts and this software stresses the crap out of the card, it is the most demanding stress test that puts stress on the card like 1.5X what the most demanding game does.

Anyways at 1080Mhz the card starts producing Artifacts no matter what voltage or power you give it, also above 1100Mhz the card gets really hot and the fans cross the 70% speed threshold which makes it annoyingly loud, also the VAPOR-X cooling solution does not cover the VRM and that makes it get really hot, it gets too close to 100c degree.

Also the card can not hold its 1050Mhz clock speed and clocks itself down to 1000mhz when running these demanding tests,.

Not to mention that the card produces annoying coil whine that Sapphire consider normal and not grounds for RMA

Long story short, even with unlocked voltage, in my case overclocking was a hopeless case, due to poor silicon quality and very poor VRM quality and cooling that you would hit before you hit your voltage limits.

For me i really hated this card .. and i am talking about the GHz edition here, if you happen to buy it and your experience is different please let me know.

I plan to get the Gigabyte card instead as i feel that Gigabyte is in general a better company (even though Gigabyte cards are voltage locked, as indicated above voltage unlocking did not do me any good in the Sapphire's case) plus they give 3 years warranty. but i will wait anyway for the Rumored GTX 780 due two weeks from now to see if the market changes enough for me to change my mind.

Hope i helped.

What about the MSI 7970 Lightning?

 

[leoweisman]

I had the 7970 VAPOR-X GHz edition until yesterday which i returned it because it was producing an annoying coil whine and also could not overclock past 1080Mhz stable (i will explain what i mean by stable)

Let me share with you my whole experience with this card because i have been testing it everyday for one month, so i know it by heart .. lol

First of all, the card looks decent and its cooling solution is the best thing it has, i could play Crysis 3 or BF3 on 3 Monitors 4K resolution and temps stay below 70c while fans are around 60% which is really quite for the performance i was getting.

The card was voltage UNLOCKED BUT and that is a big BUT, overclocking is not only about voltage flexibility, for me it was the silicon lottery and the poor quality ill cooled VRM on this card that were stopping me from reaching above 1080mhz.

Now here is what happens, the card comes factory clocked at 1050Mhz with a factory volt of 1.256v .. now via Trixx utility you can up the volt until 1.3 but that does not do any good.

Here is why, 1st of all even though people claim to reach stable clocks of above 1200Mhz, that is for the card i had is unrealistic, what people call stable is that they can run 3DMark or BF3 for few hours without the machine crashing and this is what they call stable, for me stable means that the card can run without producing any Artifacts at all by means of an Artifacts scanner, the one i used is EVGA OC Scanner which is awesome, i set the software to stop stress testing after it detects ONE or more Artifacts and this software stresses the crap out of the card, it is the most demanding stress test that puts stress on the card like 1.5X what the most demanding game does.

Anyways at 1080Mhz the card starts producing Artifacts no matter what voltage or power you give it, also above 1100Mhz the card gets really hot and the fans cross the 70% speed threshold which makes it annoyingly loud, also the VAPOR-X cooling solution does not cover the VRM and that makes it get really hot, it gets too close to 100c degree.

Also the card can not hold its 1050Mhz clock speed and clocks itself down to 1000mhz when running these demanding tests,.

Not to mention that the card produces annoying coil whine that Sapphire consider normal and not grounds for RMA

Long story short, even with unlocked voltage, in my case overclocking was a hopeless case, due to poor silicon quality and very poor VRM quality and cooling that you would hit before you hit your voltage limits.

For me i really hated this card .. and i am talking about the GHz edition here, if you happen to buy it and your experience is different please let me know.

I plan to get the Gigabyte card instead as i feel that Gigabyte is in general a better company (even though Gigabyte cards are voltage locked, as indicated above voltage unlocking did not do me any good in the Sapphire's case) plus they give 3 years warranty. but i will wait anyway for the Rumored GTX 780 due two weeks from now to see if the market changes enough for me to change my mind.

Hope i helped.

What about the MSI 7970 Lightning?

I would love one of those but I can't find it in stock anywhere!

 

[MyNewRig]

Well the MSI 7970 Lightning should be "theoretically" better when overclocking is the focus here, as the company advertises it as overclocking-ready or that sort of thing.

After i sat my mind to returning the Sapphire card i was considering the Lightning and have researched it. What made me stay away from it is that for me here in Europe the card has a 100+ Euros price premium over its equivalent Sapphire, Gigabyte and XFX, and i did not think that it would be a good deal to pay 100+ Euros to get an extra 50 or 100 Mhz again "theoretically", because even in their overclocking-ready environment, if they put a low quality silicon chip on the card you are done, and no amount of cooling or voltage control will better the situation.

One more problem i had with the Lightning is that it does not have a native HDMI port on it, the card has 2 DVI and 4 Displayport, you can only get HDMI output by means of conversion from DVI, using an adapter they supply with the card, and that in turn causes this converted HDMI port to output video only without Audio, so if you even wanted to connect your HDTV or 3DTV to this card via HDMI you will not get Audio and will have to connect the TV to your motherboards Audio which is in my opinion a show stopper, because in this case you are also unable to utilize the audio interface in the Radeon chip via this card.

For me the Gigabyte was the right mix of connections, 4 screens, Native HDMI with Audio, a cooling solution that is said to be good, 1100Mhz out of the box, so if you can not overclock it at all, you are at least guaranteed to get your 1100Mhz or else can RMA it on that bases if it can not operate stably at that frequency, The downside of course is that it is voltage looked (i don't think this even matters) and that it has some negative reviews, but every other card i researched still have massively negative reviews of some kind, the XFX being the king

I really don't know what else you could buy, it seems that there is no single card that everyone is really fascinated with and happy about, so it is best that you buy and try, and if you are not happy then return it.