any idea how to unlock voltage control for the HIS 5850?

jimmyjam1234 · 28 Apr 2010 at 21:27

Hi guys wondered if someone could help, Ive currently overclocked my HIS 5850 with msi afterburner currently at 825/1200 stable, i want to tinker with the voltage a little to see if i can get it nearer the 900 mark, Any idea how i can unlock the voltage for this card,( ive tried the usual settings) edit cfg file etc. Any ideas or is it just not possible?. Cheers

lukext · 28 Apr 2010 at 21:41

you would need to flash the card to an Asus or MSi bios. However this has attached risks... and would void your warranty although technically overclocking your card has done that anyway. If your comfortable flashing your card then go for it, otherwise be happy with 825/1200, its pretty good!

fs123 · 28 Apr 2010 at 23:34

make sure your HIS 5850 is a reference design before you go flashing it with the Asus bios otherwise you'll brick it..

Vince · 29 Apr 2010 at 09:15

You don't need to flash the card to get a decent overclock, I have a powercolor card and use msi afterburners "unofficial overclock" to unlock the voltage control.

download msi afterburner, open the install folder and find the setup config file, open the file in notepad and change the setting "unofficialoverclock" from 0 to 1. Restart afterburner and providing you have a reference card and enjoy.

BTW using this method my 5850 will easily reach 1050/1250 with only a slight notch up on the voltage

straxusii · 29 Apr 2010 at 09:27

I can't see any company would be able to defend in court that overclocking a card has voided it's warranty when they have supplied software with the card to do just that!

Danny_75 · 29 Apr 2010 at 09:35

More to the point of warranty.Do you think they evan look at the faulty cards? I bet they get back 1000s a week they will get pulled down and refitted to new cards if that. They prob just get scrapped.

JTrickle · 29 Apr 2010 at 09:37

With the 1.51 afterburner version I'm using, you can turn on voltage control within the settings. No need to hunt for ini files.

Running my reference Powercooler 5850 undervolted and underclocked for a quiet life at the moment.

fs123 · 29 Apr 2010 at 10:58

Danny_75 said:
More to the point of warranty.Do you think they evan look at the faulty cards? I bet they get back 1000s a week they will get pulled down and refitted to new cards if that. They prob just get scrapped.

I used to work for an electronics repair centre and it is usual procedure to check every return item to verify it is faulty. They would be really stupid to throw away cards without checking them.

I don't know about the budget cards but the more expensive ones will difinitely be repaired if possible.

jimmyjam1234 · 29 Apr 2010 at 14:27

Hi how do I know if its reference or not? Cheers

Vince · 29 Apr 2010 at 16:41

What does the cooler look like? is it full shroud all over the top of the card like this?

This is the reference design

makamiso · 29 Apr 2010 at 18:09

How do you go about overclocking a sapphire 5850 even just on the normal coreclocks. when ever i try with msi afterburner it just resets to default... new on all this overclocking jazz. please help so frustrating!

GothicGhost · 29 Apr 2010 at 18:12

So all reference design cards can overclock same as asus 5850 without flashing the card ?

Vince · 29 Apr 2010 at 19:11

Yes they can indeed, using msi afterburner 1.4 and below you will need to navigate to the install folder and modify the cfg file as my previous post. For me this allows voltage tweak and big clocks. 1ghz core is easy had for example with the most minimal voltage bump.

makamiso · 29 Apr 2010 at 19:25

Any link to msi afterburner 1.4, also why not available on later editions? stupid.

GothicGhost · 29 Apr 2010 at 19:29

VinceB1 said:
Yes they can indeed, using msi afterburner 1.4 and below you will need to navigate to the install folder and modify the cfg file as my previous post. For me this allows voltage tweak and big clocks. 1ghz core is easy had for example with the most minimal voltage bump.

Oh right cool

Mite buy a reference card then but problem i had with 4850 card i got is cleaning the dam thing so hard with full case over the heat sink.

But say with the asus new model heat not sucked out the case.

I got a week or 2 to make my mind up anyways.

jimmyjam1234 · 29 Apr 2010 at 20:34

Hi guys this is my card, the cooler is a Beast!! http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-003-HS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411 still unsure if its reference tho lol

.

Vince · 30 Apr 2010 at 14:24

jimmyjam1234 said:
Hi guys this is my card, the cooler is a Beast!! http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-003-HS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411 still unsure if its reference tho lol.

Doesn't look reference to me. I would say its a custom pcb design and therefore might be using different voltage controlers... There is a good chance you will not be able to enable voltage control on this one im afraid.

Couldn't find a download location so have uploaded it to some spare webspace here

Some idea on performance gain before and after runs of stone giant on my 5850 . 1050 is my safe clock with one notch up on the old voltage, those with more balls could be looking at 45% + core overclocks.

jimmyjam1234 · 30 Apr 2010 at 18:39

lol gutted i can't crank the volts up, i suppose i can live with 850/1200 lol, would have been nice to of seen it over the 900 mark (although i dont really need the extra performance hehe).

JTrickle · 30 Apr 2010 at 18:40

1050 is 45%?

Those Stone giant results are disappointing. 45% core increase + 25% memory clock increase only results in a 20.5% fps boost. Are your other benchmark tests as subdued?

--

That HIS card above doesnt look like a reference shape cooler. Which I'd say is likely a good thing, as HIS are normally good at making quiet coolers.

Vince · 1 May 2010 at 15:21

JTrickle said:
1050 is 45%?

Those Stone giant results are disappointing. 45% core increase + 25% memory clock increase only results in a 20.5% fps boost. Are your other benchmark tests as subdued?

--

That HIS card above doesnt look like a reference shape cooler. Which I'd say is likely a good thing, as HIS are normally good at making quiet coolers.

To be honest I hadn't really calculated the percentages or run all that many benchmarks (generally they bore me to death). What I do know is that in that particular benchmark, my card was on par or beating overclocked 5870's which to me shows good value for money and not bad performance.

Clearly performance doesn't scale linier with clock speed but you get pretty decent gains. If you would like me to run a few other tests let me know and I would be more than happy to, but remember my cpu @ 3ghz is hardly stellar by today’s standards and could explain why I am only getting 20% performance increase from those clocks.

Either way you look at it a 44.8% increase in clock speed (which is roughly what 1050 is), is pretty impressive for a card with stock cooling.

jimmyjam1234 said:
lol gutted i can't crank the volts up, i suppose i can live with 850/1200 lol, would have been nice to of seen it over the 900 mark (although i dont really need the extra performance hehe).

Sorry to hear that buddy, either way the card even at stock is more than enough to eat through today’s games without breaking to much of a sweat. By the time you need that extra clock speed you will be wanting for new tech anyway