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How to make Link speed 2.5GT/s to 5.0GT/s on ATI card and Nvidia card

The Kuroutoshiko brand is usually always the cheapest reference card in Japan but with god-awful noisy fans/cooling. Sapphire is OK but ¥30,000 yen ±¥5000 is too rich for me to "play" with.

I don't burn my fingers doing fine soldering (been doing it for better part of 35 years) but I don't want to burn a hole in money either, because I don't sell cards, so the cost is not research business overhead. If I find a cheaper used card. I might give it a whirl and see what happens.


Tesselator said:
The 7950? They're ¥22,000 here in Nagoya. I don't remember what maker but it was a golden-brown/yellowish box.



LOL I was trying to find which one it was when I saw THIS and laughed my butt off. Hehehhe $1,200 for the mac version. Bahaaahahahaaa
​

I think it was this one Tho I guess it could have been this. There was a stack 2x2 and waste high with a sign atop saying ¥21,980. At least the box color is about right for those two. It was at Goodwill Nagoya. But I don't see it on their webpage at all:
http://www.goodwill.jp/goods/search.php?pc=50&pp=1&c=7&c1=0405&c2=040501&sort=pr
Click to expand...
 
MacVidCards said:
Good luck.

Just know that when you have put the hours in testing various combos, potentially killed a card or two, burnt your fingers and finally get the answer, Fouley-Poo will be on here bragging that HE figured it out.

Just noticed that EBay is already FLOODED with flashed 7950s and 7970s, most mired down in PCIE 1.0 speeds. This means they will still be plugging along at low speeds when Mac Pro 6,1 comes out at 3.0.

Oddly, even Foul is selling ones stuck in 1st gear. Hmmmmm.....
Click to expand...

Shame.

Someone will figure it out and I'm quite happy to wait...
 
The better card to "play" with is the PowerColor since from ebay that seems to be what MacVidcards has found the magic 5 GT/s key to.
About 33,000 yen here.



Tesselator said:
The 7950? They're ¥22,000 here in Nagoya. I don't remember what maker but it was a golden-brown/yellowish box.



LOL I was trying to find which one it was when I saw THIS and laughed my butt off. Hehehhe $1,200 for the mac version. Bahaaahahahaaa
​

I think it was this one Tho I guess it could have been this. There was a stack 2x2 and waste high with a sign atop saying ¥21,980. At least the box color is about right for those two. It was at Goodwill Nagoya. But I don't see it on their webpage at all:
http://www.goodwill.jp/goods/search.php?pc=50&pp=1&c=7&c1=0405&c2=040501&sort=pr
Click to expand...
 
Looking at online pictures of the kurotoshiko 7950 it seems like a stock reference rebadged HIS or PowerColor so if you can it get for ¥21,980, that would be a great deal I think. You never know about the resistor hack but that price is seriously tempting for sure.
I can't find one for that price online in Tokyo but a walk round the bigger stores in the back streets of Akihabara this W/E might turn up a similar deal.

Tesselator said:
Hmmm, OK. Thanks for the tip!
Click to expand...
 
nekton1 said:
Looking at online pictures of the kurotoshiko 7950 it seems like a stock reference rebadged HIS or PowerColor so if you can it get for ¥21,980, that would be a great deal I think. You never know about the resistor hack but that price is seriously tempting for sure.
I can't find one for that price online in Tokyo but a walk round the bigger stores in the back streets of Akihabara this W/E might turn up a similar deal.
Click to expand...

Probably for sure. I was back there again this evening and all those gold boxed ones were gone already. But they had what looked to be pretty good deals on Sapphire cards:
 

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My Japanese is a little rough, but I think those are 78xx cards. :)

Maybe that's what you intended to buy. I only mention it because in text the conversation seemed to be about Japanese 79xx cards.
 
ActionableMango said:
My Japanese is a little rough, but I think those are 78xx cards. :)

Maybe that's what you intended to buy. I only mention it because in text the conversation seemed to be about Japanese 79xx cards.
Click to expand...


Ha! LOL... I shot the wrong cards... hehehehe... I thought those were exceptionally good prices for Sapphire branded cards... Oh man! :D
 
I had to go to Akihabara today for Apple spare parts and took the chance to look for HD 7950 cards in all the big and little stores I could find. There was not a single card anywhere and very few (I saw only 1) 7970s too. nVidia 650, 660ti and 680 cards are swamping all the stores like a tsunami. AMD must be losing market share like crazy.

On another forum, Rominator has posted that the EVGA 680 (2 GB) is fully supported by the recent Mac ROM, and luckily, that is exactly the brand I have as well as a Zotac 680 so I am well pleased.



Tesselator said:
Ha! LOL... I shot the wrong cards... hehehehe... I thought those were exceptionally good prices for Sapphire branded cards... Oh man! :D
Click to expand...
 
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Is it really useful?

I have a regular PC nvidia GTX 680 lodged in a 2010 Mac pro. Under Windows 7 (bootcamp) GPU-Z reports a PCI-E 1.1x16 Bus interface whereas Nvidia Inspector reports a PCI-E 3.0x16 interface. Strange...Anyway, Mark vantage graphic score for this GPU is 30207, i.e. in the average of Mark vantage graphic scores for similar GPUs in regular PCs with PCI-E 2.0 Bus interfaces. I am therefore encline to think that all this debate about 2.5 versus 5.0 Gb/s is not so important in real life...
 
ghislain said:
I have a regular PC nvidia GTX 680 lodged in a 2010 Mac pro. Under Windows 7 (bootcamp) GPU-Z reports a PCI-E 1.1x16 Bus interface whereas Nvidia Inspector reports a PCI-E 3.0x16 interface. Strange...Anyway, Mark vantage graphic score for this GPU is 30207, i.e. in the average of Mark vantage graphic scores for similar GPUs in regular PCs with PCI-E 2.0 Bus interfaces. I am therefore encline to think that all this debate about 2.5 versus 5.0 Gb/s is not so important in real life...
Click to expand...

A number of benchmarks have showed that there is a difference under certain conditions:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5458/the-radeon-hd-7970-reprise-pcie-bandwidth-overclocking-and-msaa

Dirt 3 especially ;)

95% of the time it won't make a difference, but it would be nice to have the full performance...
 
Watching this thread with interest. I just bought a eVGA GTX 680 Classified and would love to run it under PCIe 2X speeds in windows.
 
You should visit the netkas forum where Rominator says the evga GTX680 can be flashed to a Mac GTX680 for full functionality.
Here is the link

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,5709.0.html

Whoops—sorry missed the bit about 'windows'—Why, doesn't it OOTB?


Redneck1089 said:
Watching this thread with interest. I just bought a eVGA GTX 680 Classified and would love to run it under PCIe 2X speeds in windows.
Click to expand...
 
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Well tried to mod my ATI 4875 by moving MR153 to R153. What a PITA, those resistors are extremely tiny! I did it and it would not show 5.0GT, tried to redo it and lifted a pad and it seems I ruined it... Tried to see if it would still work and still seems to work fine at 2.5GT/s. Any long term issues with running it with no jumper?

It was the middle pad that fell off. Between MR153 and R153. Maybe this is a grounding pad and maybe I can still get R153 connected?
 
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nekton1 said:
You should visit the netkas forum where Rominator says the evga GTX680 can be flashed to a Mac GTX680 for full functionality.
Here is the link

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,5709.0.html

Whoops—sorry missed the bit about 'windows'—Why, doesn't it OOTB?
Click to expand...

It should run okay in MAC OS X in PCIe 2. Just won't in Windows because of a lack of EFI driver support.

Flashing the card won't work with the Mac Edition GTX 680 right now won't work either, as the GTX 680 Classified is the top end GTX 680 model with 4 GB of VRAM.
 
I got it Guys !!!!

5,0 GT/s speed link on a flashed PC radeon 7970.
It will work on all 7XXX (it work also on my flashed radeon 7950) and probably even on non ATI reference cards

I will post about it later, but it works!!!!
 

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J-MI said:
5,0 GT/s speed link on a flashed PC radeon 7970.
It will work on all 7XXX (it work also on my flashed radeon 7950) and probably even on non ATI reference cards

I will post about it later, but it works!!!!
Click to expand...

awesome news! I can't wait to try this on my reference 7950
 
MacVidCards said:
I wouldn't go that far.

Can't even find the same thing on 7870 or 7770, I looked.
Click to expand...

You are right, I should have written 79XX, because 78XX and 77XX dont have the same design as 79XX. But it will be great for those who have 79XX, and it will be free :rolleyes:
 
J-MI said:
You are right, I should have written 79XX, because 78XX and 77XX dont have the same design as 79XX. But it will be great for those who have 79XX, and it will be free :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

does it require physical modification to the card, or is it done in software\firmware?
 
Radeon HD 79XX PC : speed link 5.0 GT/S

I'm french, so please excuse me for my bad english writing

This is the back of the Sapphire 7950 Mac edition :



The interesting place is the green circle.

Radeon HD 79XX PC have two type of design:

This one :


(click on the image for larger size)

or this one :


(click on the image for larger size)

The resistor who limit the PCI-E speed link at 2,5 GT/s, in both design, is the R17 resistor (green arrow)

To enable 5 GT/s PCI-E speed link, you must remove the R17 resistor and it's done.:)

My Radeon HD 7970 Powercolor VortexII



 
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J-MI said:
To enable 5 GT/s PCI-E speed link, you must remove the R17 resistor and it's done.:)
Click to expand...

Great job!

How the hell did you find this out? Just by comparing the Mac Edition with the PC Editions?

I think there are more differences between these cards than just a missing R17. How many resistors did you resolder before finding the right one. ;)
 
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Cecco said:
Great job!

How the hell did you find this out? Just by comparing the Mac Edition with the PC Editions?

I think there are more differences between these cards than just a missing R17. How many resistors did you resolder before finding the right one. ;)
Click to expand...

I have compared pictures between the Mac edition and other 7950 PC pictures on Techpowerup website.
Sapphire Mac edition PCB design is very similar to the AMD Radeon 7950 3GB one.
First, everybody think the solution was only in the resistors near the crossfire connector.
But when you compare the cards, a lot of resistors are different on the two PCB (blue squares on the picture).



Because of all those difference, I thought compare these two cards was a wrong way.

In fact, only the Sapphire Mac edition and HIS radeon HD 7950 IceQ X2 Boost 3 GB is quite similar to the Mac edition one.Only two resistors differences (red squares on the picture).

I think the resistor near the power connector was not significant because on this point there is no difference between Sapphire Mac edition and AMD Radeon 7950 3GB.

But the other resistor difference, under the right down screw hole of the GPU, seems to was "the" resistor.

The cards reviewed on techpowerup website showed two type of design on the PCB for the resistor R17 (ver1 and ver2).
All the card, alike their design, had the R17 resistor. The Sapphire Mac edition hadn't it.

I talk about that to Fouel. He tried the resistor under the power connector and I tried the R17 resistor.
 
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