The cheapest LN2 GPU pot ever.

GPU pots are expensive. Like really really expensive. Slims go for 100-200$ and can't handle any of the big GPUs high power GPUs. Fat pots are even more expensive ranging from 200-400$. So basically that means I can't run LN2 on GPUs............
......
.......or does it?

Ladies and gentlemen I present you the Tapester GPU LN2 pot.

It's not pretty but it doesn't leak LN2 and it should be enough for some hilarity on a live stream. So then what is the Tapester? It's a reference HD 4870 heatsink wrapped in a liberal amount of electrical tape. It will mount on 4800 and 5800 cards. It should also fit several other AMD cards but I don't have them so I neither care nor know.


Here's some pics of the first iteration with a few hundred ml of LN2 in it.































The surprisingly leak proof bottom


Pouring LN2 into this first version was a very wasteful affair since I didn't give the top much of a funnel into which to pour.

Also during the whole cooling process the pot was making some horrible cracking noises as the tape shrunk from the cold. One of the cracks even shook the whole pot


I let the pot defrost and dry before I did an inspection of the damage that the LN2 did to it.



This is the only place where I found a visible crack in the tape. I think this is the one that shook the pot when it cracked. I'm also pretty sure that the tape cracked because I stretched it too much when putting it on. Either way I'll just add more tape.

The bottom of the HD 4870 has a layer of plastic. The tape didn't stay stuck to this when I added LN2 so this are got an extra piece of tape to hold it together better.

This wasn't caused by the LN2 but by lazy tape placement. one thing I noticed is that the tape held best when it didn't have any loose edges so this had to go.

Here too the tape started coming off. The solution is obviously more tape.

































I added some extra tape to the top for a proper funnel. After all if I can't get LN2 in the pot it isn't a good pot.

Here's the fixed bottom. The tape is just barely low enough to clear the center shim.

Here's a full frontal shot of the abomination.

And here it is fully insulated with 5mm armaflex and ready to roll. To test it I plan to just run some Unigine Heaven Basic preset with the 4790K on air cooling. If this works I'll have a few more HWpoints to add to my total. But much more importantly I will a working LN2 pot for 2 of my GPUs.Unfortunately I won't do much benching with this for a while because to get a good amount of points I'd also need LN2 on the CPU and I currently don't have the equipment needed to LN2 both a GPU and a CPU.

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Saturday Fury X Benchmarking Stream!

I'm going to be live streaming again. This time it will be 3 Fury Xs vs a whole lot of 3Dmark Firestrike and Firestrike Extreme.

I've already set a score of 33970 points with HWbot rules that got me the 18th spot foir 3GPUs in Firestrike on HWbot. However it has come to my attention that I'm not particularly efficient so here's the plan for the stream:

Beat this score

and this one

And this one too

Improve my current Firestrike score on HWbot.

Since bench marking Firestrike on Fury Xs isn't a super involved process I will be doing my best to answer questions during the stream.

I will be starting at 7GMT and basically going until I beat all the score or drop dead trying.

As always the stream will be up on my twitch channel

Possibly the last batch of custom Fiji BIOS

And here is the most likely final batch of custom BIOS. Now including a BIOS for the Fury Nitro and a newer version of the Fury X BIOS which should be better than the old version.

The BIOSs offer raised power limit and a 3D load voltage of 1.3V. This leads to better overclocking capabilities and better performance than the stock BIOSs running similar amounts of voltage in Trixx/Afterburner/GPUTweak. The power limits on all the BIOSs are 400W and 350A you should not need to raise the power limits but can if you wish to do so. The newer Fury X BIOS is based of the latest AMD provided BIOS and seems to clock better than the last one I made but I haven't fully tested it yet(it is safe to use).

Here is  a download link for them: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v18py3rhbef8rmx/ProFijiBIOSs.zip?dl=0

In other news I've done a quick test run of Firestrike with 2 cards and the results are looking promising. The cards aren't fully finished but at this rate I should be able to break 40K graphics some time soon. With some work on the 5960X I can probably get into the top 20 for 3Dmark Firestrike on HWbot. Currently I'm number 65 on the Firestrike rankings for 2 cards. Here's a link to the score: http://hwbot.org/submission/3185463_ 

Mind you I got that score with 0 artifacts so there was still some room in the cards left to push it but it was 3AM and I got the results I wanted to see. Also the 5960X was only 100mhz above my daily OC since I wanted to test the GPUs not mess around with CPU stability issues. Once I have everything working 100% I will be live streaming the overclocking sessions. I'm coming for you 3 way TITAN-Xs and once I'm done they will rename Firestrike to Furystrike.

MFW I get 38.8K GPU score in Firestrike

Also for those of you who watch the youtube channel do not worry. I have not forgot about you, there will be content soon I promise.


If you enjoy reading AHOC and would like to see more content please make a donation using the button in the top left corner. All donations will go towards producing more content. If there is something specific you would like to see you can leave it in a message with your donation or in the comments bellow.

More Custom Fiji BIOSs

So I noticed that I forgot to include the 3584 core BIOSs in the last BIOS pack. Those are now included. I also got my hands on a Windforce Fury BIOS so those of you who have can now enjoy the magic of overpowered BIOSs. Also apparently the 3776 core and 3840 core BIOS for all Fury cards were name swapped this should now be fixed. Enjoy!

For those who do not know what the custom BIOSs are

Here's the dropbox link

I'd like to make a "pro" BIOS for the Nano however I do not want to set peoples GPUs on fire so I need a Nano to test with. Even as much as I like to think that I'm a famous overclocker. I'm not and so while I can ask AMD/Sapphire/Powercolor.... bla bla bla for samples I don't get them. I think you get the idea of where this is headed. I need money. There's a donate button in the top left of the page.

BTW if you're wondering about my voltmoding progress with the Fury X. Then I got good and bad news.
The Fury X I started with still works. The bad news is that it's currently stuck at +20% Vcore and I can't really bench the card till I fix that. I do know how to fix that because I already did the same thing to my 290X. The problem is that the fix isn't very tidy and I'd like it to look good. It also doesn't help that the fix makes the Volt mod less sensitive. So I'm currently thinking about how to fix the card the best way.

Here's a silly Fury X for the time being

Also I'm considering throwing the Fury Xs on Dry ice if things go well on the stock cooler. Should be pretty awesome based from what Joshy Ocuk told me at The Big Freeze. Apparently HBM absolutely loves cold and at around -70C I won't even have to do much to keep the card happy since the cold bugs are bellow -100C°.

R9 Fury and Fury X high voltage high power BIOSs

This post is outdated all the new BIOSs can be found in this post.






So as you can clearly see from the image above I have a really awesome desktop background. It started out as a picture of some fire which I...

Ok now seriously my desktop looks pretty great but what is actually important is that the GPU-z window. As you can see the BIOS version says: BZBIOS.FrX.1300mv.400W. This is because it's my own BIOS which unsurprisingly sets the stock load core voltage to 1.3V, sets the stock power limit to 400W and sets the current limit to 350A. This beautiful BIOS does not see the negative FPS scaling that software setting core voltage does and while it still doesn't give us a real 1.3V it does give you a good boost in overclocking headroom and sustained my best card at 1175mhz. You can also run +25mv on top of this BIOS to get even more overclocking headroom but with no FPS loss. On the new 16.3 drivers there seems to be a bug with HBM overclocking on this BIOS. If this is also the case for you with this BIOS say so in the comments bellow so that I can go and make BIOSs with already applied HBM overclocks. I've made BIOSs for every Fury and Fury X that I could. So for now that means the STRIX and the Tri-X Furys and all Fury Xs since those all use the same PCB. I've also made them to support the different unlock levels from 3776 to 4096 SPs for the Furys.

DISCLAIMER: By downloading the following zip file you agree that I am in no way responsible for any damage that happens to your GPU by flashing these BIOSs. 

Dropbox Download Link

These modded BIOSs are only possible due to the efforts of all the people over in this OCN thread. If you would like to learn how to make your own BIOSs just read that thread.

Now if you're wondering about my progress with crushing the HWbot Firestrike leader boards then I have good news. With this BIOS I have finally managed to beat the highscore I set on my Fury Tri-X. Also I will be buying all the voltmodding equipment I need soon and based on the fact that this BIOS mod works so well I do not expect to run into anymore issues with scaling. Also I have acquired an oscilloscope so I will have even more detailed testing results to work with which will hopefully further speed up progress.

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Fury X testing results

Optional intro

I hate power management algorithms. Sure they save you some power but they make overclocking a nightmare. The smarter they try to be the worse they are. Back when this blog first started I wrote a really long and terrible rant about Nvidia's boost algorithm and AMD's beginnings of what is now know as power tune. The TL;DR of that article can be: Nvidia's is dumb because you can't set core clock and AMD's is dumb because it's broken. Well Nvidia's hasn't changed and AMD's is possibly more broken now then ever before.

I promised a Fury/ Fury X overclocking guide some time ago. I also promised to whoop the ass of Nvidia GTX 980 Ti SLI setups in 3Dmark. If you follow me anywhere where I can be followed you are aware that I haven't delivered either and the facebook followers should know that I've complained that I can't even beat my old Fury score because AMD's drivers are garbage.

Well today I will show you what the problem is.

End of optional intro

TESTING METHOD
I used free cam mode in Unigine to park next to a wall so I could quickly track FPS changes. I was running Unigine Heaven at very low settings so that I was getting about 274FPS at stock clocks. I was running Unigine windowed and had Trixx open so I could change settings and immediately see the FPS changes. After every batch of readigns I checked that the FPS at stock clocks was still the same.

Here are the results in all their glory:

The core clock and HBM clock scaling in Unigine at 1440x900p is unsurprisingly garbage however what is surprising is the voltage scaling. You can see that even though I did not touch core clock or HBM clock, FPS goes down as I raised core voltage. Also note how power limit did nothing to prevent this drop in FPS. Basically AMD's power tune is as usual completely freaking broken.

Now I would like to see if this is the case for all Fury Xs so if you have one could you do me a favor and just check what happens to your FPS if you're at stock clocks and set core voltage to +96mv and to +198mv. you can mod Trixx to do that using this guide and post your findings in the anonymous comments bellow this post. You will need to run at least 55% fan speed to prevent the VRM from overheating.

For me this perfectly explains why running a 1225mhz core clock with +175mv scores lower than stock clocks in 3Dmark.

Luckily I can just hard mod the card for more power however I'd rather not do that and so I started doing a little investigating. First thing I found is that my PowerColor Fury Xs have 2 100% identical BIOSs. This goes against what some reviewers said about the Fury X coming with a 350W and 250W BIOS. So I've started searching for a 350W BIOS in hopes of getting rid of at least some of the negative scaling. I've also tried to contact AMD about providing a custom 600W BIOS but I doubt I will get a response much less an actual 600W BIOS. So I'll probably end up soldering 600ohm resistors in place of the 300 ohm resistors used for current sensing.

BTW for all those wondering about Fury X VRM temps. They are directly related to core temperature(duuurrr they share a heatsink) so if you're running stock setting and the core is at 70C the VRM is between 90-100C. If the core is at 40C the VRM will be at 60-70C.

Update:
So I've tried several custom BIOS with power limits as high as 768W and got no benefit. I also tried the clock blocker program also no benefit. I'm going try a 65000W BIOS but at this point I don't think it will make a difference. 

DON'T READ THIS IF YOU DON'T LIKE PEOPLE COMPLAINING
As you've probably noticed the table is missing 2 of my favorite data sets. Real world core voltage and power draw are both missing because someone stole my parcel which contained the equipment for measuring those. I still can't believe that the UK doesn't offer pay on delivery. I'm also in limbo about ordering anything else because the idiots running deliveries here would probably leave that in front of my door too.