5850 Users: What clocks are you getting?

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O

OCGuy

Lifer
Jul 12, 2000
27,224
37
91
I just bought this non-reference cooling XFX to play around with:

xfx.jpg



What stable clocks are fellow AT members getting on these things? So far I have matched the highest factory OC I can find, which is 765/1100 or so. Temps reach the mid-70s.

Basically this isnt my main card so I dont mind pushing it as far as it goes :)
 
Termie

Termie

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
7,949
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www.techbuyersguru.com
You should be able to do 850 on the core without extra voltage. Others have hit up to 1000 with tons of voltage, 900-950 with a smaller bump. I haven't seen many people with memory reliably working much above 1200. The highest factory overclock is 765/1125, limited by ATI's Catalyst (actually, it goes to 775, but I haven't seen any factory cards at 775 for some reason). Use AMD GPU Clock Tool to adjust the clocks above the limits. MSI Afterburner will do it to with some tweaks to the config file.
 
MagickMan

MagickMan

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2008
7,460
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My max stable OC is 1050/1300 @1.31V, above that the VRMs get too damned hot and I get scared that they'll be damaged. My regular gaming OC is 975/1200 @1.16V because my hearing is sensitive and I don't like listening to the fan whine. :D
 
O

OCGuy

Lifer
Jul 12, 2000
27,224
37
91
^

Sweet. Sounds like I should be able to push this thing much further. Do the reference 5850s have heat pipes like this one?
 
K

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
2,250
136
HD 5850 overclocking 101 is buy a ref design card. This allows you to flash with the hacked 5870 bios. Reason for this is memory voltage as the 5870 feeds more voltage to the memory. On ref boards the memory chips are the same on 5850 and 5870. On a Non-ref it's ??? you'd have to look.

You'll have to try suggestion stated by others above and should be able to get higher :)

Mine will do 1000 core 1300 memory 1.275v 40* Furmark on water. But just gonna run it at specs in sig as I don't need the xtra power anyways.
 
konakona

konakona

Diamond Member
May 6, 2004
6,285
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Mine was stable 1260 (seemed a bit flaky at 1300) on the memory front, the GPU needing a voltage boost to do 920 (otherwise does 900). Beyond that, the GPU temps hovered around low 80s in Furmark with extreme burning mode on, but the VDDC (VRM) temps were in the low 90s and I didn't feel like trying higher voltages.

Today I just picked up a few syringes of AC ceramique, after seeing that someone on the other board managed to improve VRM cooling by replacing those thermal pads with the ceramique. That, and I am planning on taking out TT Pro's 92mm fans for bigger 120mm fans. Let's see how that goes.
 
MagickMan

MagickMan

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2008
7,460
3
76
^

Sweet. Sounds like I should be able to push this thing much further. Do the reference 5850s have heat pipes like this one?
Click to expand...

Nope, they don't. I just ordered a Thermalright T-Rad2 and VRM-R3 setup (just 5 minutes ago :D) and that should let me easily run at my max OC without the noise. Can't wait to get that installed.
 
Elfear

Elfear

Diamond Member
May 30, 2004
7,163
819
126
I think mine hit 1000/1200 @1.26V. It's a Sapphire reference card.
 
MagickMan

MagickMan

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2008
7,460
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Coincidentally, changing the cooler makes me nervous, I've heard horror stories of people damaging their cards. I'm not worried about voiding the warranty, already done that with BIOS hacks. ;) If I'm careful is this really a concern?
 
K

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
2,250
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MagickMan said:
Coincidentally, changing the cooler makes me nervous, I've heard horror stories of people damaging their cards. I'm not worried about voiding the warranty, already done that with BIOS hacks. ;) If I'm careful is this really a concern?
Click to expand...

The bios hack is reversable if you saved the original with gpu-z.

As far as swapping the cooler it's not too hard. Took me about 15 minutes or so swapping to a water block....Not counting the time to apply a s ceraminique as that stuff is hard to work with.
 
Last edited:
MagickMan

MagickMan

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2008
7,460
3
76
Kenmitch said:
The bios hack is reversable if you saved the original with gpu-z.

As far as swapping the cooler it's not too hard. Took me about 15 minutes or so swapping to a water block....Not counting the time to apply as jiceraminique as that stuff is hard to work with.
Click to expand...

I backed it up, in 3 different places, copied it to a USB drive, and burned it to CD too. :D I guess I'm just paranoid about damaging the card.
 
O

OCGuy

Lifer
Jul 12, 2000
27,224
37
91
MagickMan said:
I backed it up, in 3 different places, copied it to a USB drive, and burned it to CD too. :D I guess I'm just paranoid about damaging the card.
Click to expand...

I hope you took each of those to different locations! One house fire and they are all gone :)
 
spinejam

spinejam

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2005
3,503
1
81
techpowerup usually has a vast collection of vga bios' archived just in case of an emergency! :)
 
K

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
2,250
136
konakona said:
was that for VRMs and VRAM chips? I was about to put that on between my card and the TT Pro sometime tonite..
Click to expand...

Yep....Used it on the core also. Works good just thick and sticky!

Was gonna just use arctic silver 5 till I read it was semi- conductive :)
 
konakona

konakona

Diamond Member
May 6, 2004
6,285
1
0
well doesn't TT Pro come with some of that AS5 pre-applied? I put on some leftover OCZ freeze extreme on mine and didn't have any problem with that (turns out that stuff is also electrically insulating, oh well)
 
dug777

dug777

Lifer
Oct 13, 2004
24,778
4
0
I was just doing some benchmarks at 950 core (my highest yet!), haven't tried the RAM at all yet (XFX Black Edition 5850 with stock 765/1125 clocks - reference design).

CCC only gives me headroom to 775 core, and it's no surprise that I don't need any extra voltage for that.

However, no worries going well beyond that with Afterburner if you do the unlocked clocks trick (I don't have the link handy but it has been discussed on here plenty, can always dig it up for you if required).

I am discovering that I seem very CPU bound generally (Q6600 using the ASUS EPU-6 motherboard app to automatically clicks me up to 2.7Ghz under load), but was playing with Serious Sam 2 and in the most intensive of the stock demos and running 24xAA (edge detect and Adaptive MSAA) (Greenwood demo), I went from 61.8 average fps to 72.2 average fps between 775 core and 950 core :)

Other apps seem considerably less sensitive (haven't had time to get fully used to the GPU horsepower and experiment with sky-high AA settings for most games), and usually when I check my CPU usage afterwards I am pegged to 100% on a core. My quad will happily do 3.4Ghz at not much over stock voltage, I just don't like running it at that 24/7 as I really don't need it...but maybe I should ;)

Although, to be fair, since I haven't touched the RAM yet I could also be memory bandwidth bound...so that's not my final conclusion by any means.

That said, I need to tiptoe over 1.2v for the 5850 to get there, at that voltage GPU temps are fine, VRMs are ok in normal gaming but furmark just roasts them alive. Luckily I don't play furmark ;)

Until I do something about my CPU and more thoroughly explore overclocking of both the core and the memory, as well as cranking the eye-candy, I think my casual conclusion is that 775/1125 seems more than sufficient for me in general using and gaming.
 
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