What we know about upcoming AMD products...

schmuckley

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Next year...however..It would be grand if they dropped some new tech right before Sept :D
le sigh..It's just wishful thinking I guess
 

cowboy44mag

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Man I hear you, every day I have to stop myself from getting the FX-8350 and tell myself my current processor is "good enough" for now.... I'm really hoping that since we have to wait till next year for Steamroller (Kaveri APUs may still emerge December 2013...) we have Steamroller FX by like February 2014 at the latest.
 


I hear ya buddy, in the same situation with my i7 920.
 

cowboy44mag

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Hope you guys don't mind me "picking your brains" and this is a little off topic (sorry) but I'm having a little trouble I can't see to figure out. I would never post this on the main page as I don't want the Intel fans jumping all over it. I've been having a problem that just started out of the blue about two weeks ago. I'll be running my computer, sometimes just Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, and it will just freeze, and sometimes have a BSOD. When it freezes it will sometimes recover and sometimes it doesn't and I have to hard restart. I have also been having some trouble with some games. I'll be ingame, have a crash to desktop and then I'll see my desktop widgets "artifacting". If I continue to run the computer in this state it will eventually freeze with a loud buzzing sound from the speakers. I also have noticed the computer hang for a minute or two while doing mundane tasks and then I get a message saying my video card driver stopped working and has recovered. I'm not sure, as I update everything a lot, but all this started happening close to a windows update and I updated my video card drivers around the same time too. I'm beginning to think my video card is dying.

System Specs:
Sabertooth 990FX Gen2
Phenom II 965 BE @ 4.5GHz (had it at 5.0 but downclocked for the summer) 1.475 Vcore
Hyper 212 EVO with 2 delta fans in push/pull configuration
Crucial Ballistix RAM (16 GB - 2 8GB)
OCZ 1000W 80+ Gold PSU
2 1TB 6Gb/s SATA hard drives
AMD Radeon 7970 GPU
Windows 7 64 bit operating system

I've tried to upgrade everything so when Steamroller FX releases I'll be ready for it.

note system temperatures are well in check (processor hasn't exceeded 45C during gaming, GPU stays cool), I've already tried re-installing my video card drivers (ran driver fusion first), I've also checked my memory with mem check, both chips together and tested each individually too, my overclock passes prime95 24hr with no problems. I'm at a loss and beginning to think that my video card is dying.
 


If you have a spare card (we all know you have a 5870 and a BIOS flashed 6950 hiding in your closet :whistle: ) use it and test if your 7970 is the culprit, if so, RMA it and use your backup cards in the mean time :3. Also, attempt to downclock to 4.2 and maybe, just maybe it can solve the problem. Is the 7970 overclocked or flashed with a Ghz BIOS?
 
Well, power delivery is also important for Video Cards... Problem is testing that. I would not rule out a PSU problem in the 12V rail, so if you can swap rails and/or PSU to test, try that.

Also, underclock the VRAM. Usually, artifacts come from problems with VRAM. If you can fine tune timings (warnings here though, of course) use the reference card settings and start from there playing with them.

Cheers!
 

cowboy44mag

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Never got into overclocking the GPU at all. As I am only running a Phenom II I figured I wouldn't see too much improvement overclocking a high end GPU. I figured I would only succeed in bottlenecking something. I'll try downclocking the processor to 4.2 and see if it helps. The only other video card I currently have is a GTX 550 Ti right now so I guess I can try that and see as well.
 

cowboy44mag

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I don't see how it could be the PSU- its only like 6 months old and is 1000W 80+ Gold, but I will try switching the 12V rail and see if that helps. As before mentioned the video card is running totally stock, the VRAM is running stock speeds and I'm a little worried messing with that.
 

cowboy44mag

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Update- I think I may have found the problem. I never checked the core clock of the GPU before as I had never overclocked it and it was at stock. Well when I looked its supposed to be at 1070MHz and it was set well lets just say well above that. I don't even know how the thing was booting with the computer at all. The wife tells me that my nephew was over a while ago and asked if he could run a few games and apparently took the liberty to overclock my video card. Checking all my other settings to make sure he didn't fiddle with anything else. I don't think he boosted the voltage with the core clock so I have no idea how anything was even booting. I set the clock back to stock (1070 MHz) so I'll have to see if that fixes the issues.

Thanks for the replies I would have never checked the clock settings if you guys hadn't suggested it. Guess I'll have to install a lock on the door to my man cave.
 


Dun dun dun! By the way, what is your 7970's maker\type? I would assume from the base clock that it is the MSi R7970 Lightning.
inb4heputtheafterburnersliderallthewaytotheright@1350MHz
 

cowboy44mag

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Yep, right on I have MSI R7970 Lightning BE GHz Edition. I was really happy when I purchased it, ended up picking it up for $400, most places I've seen it advertised were around $500. I've been really happy with this GPU since purchasing it and it seems to be perfect for my cpu as trying to run 2 GPUs would probably bottleneck a Phenom II 965 BE.
 


The 9970 is looking really attractive, it may place nVdia back in the "Late 2011 GTX 580 situation" .

PS: Is everything completely fine now after that failoverclock?
 

cowboy44mag

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So far so good, still testing everything. I couldn't figure out why out of the blue I started having BSOD by launching Chrome, along with system freezes, and a lot of weirdness. I've had my cpu overclocked much higher over the winter, and it was totally stable all spring/summer till just a week or so ago, so I really didn't think it could have anything to do with the cpu overclock. I would love to know why teenagers think they know everything and have to change the settings on everything they touch. He would have been fine gaming with the way it was. Really its a credit to the GPU that it was still partially running with the way he had it set.
 




The 9950 will likely take the 7970's role and the 7970 will disappear fast, with no price drop I would assume.
 

8350rocks

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Yes...HD 9950 expected to be $400-450

EDIT: In all fairness, the HD 9950 is expected to exceed HD 7970 GHz performance by ~8-10% while the HD 9970 is supposed to be 20+% gain over the GHz Ed. and about 30+% gain over regular HD 7970.
 

cowboy44mag

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Those are going to be awesome GPUs. There is nothing I have asked of my 7970 that it hasn't been able to handle and exceed my expectations. 20-30% performance boost over that is just awesome!!