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4830 Overclock Thread

Jimbo Mahoney

Jimbo Mahoney

Jimbo Mahoney

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
6,672
For those of you who, like me, are budget-minded when it comes to components and tend to be a little 'old-school' when it comes to overclocking (buy cheap components, overclock them to high-end components or beyond)...

You can see here that the 4830 is only some 10% slower than the 4850, but at current prices is ~20%-25% cheaper. (I'm mainly concerned with 1920x1200 - my native res).

I bought a Powercolor 4830 (not from OcUK) with the intention of volt-modding, watercooling and seeing how high I could get it. It's also an excellent choice for a cheap Crossfire upgrade later...

First, the good news - the default vCore of these Powercolor cards is 1.25v :D. This means the core easily does 775Mhz out of the box (for me at least, on water). (I believe the default vCore on most 4850s is ~1.1v).

Now the bad news - the memory doesn't seem to want to budge an inch. This isn't too much of a handicap though, as the core is where it's at as far as performance is concerned.

So, I've just done the volt mod on the core and settled in to 1.3v - I've yet to start clocking again. I'll post back when I do.

As for benchmarks, I've just been messing with my E5200 @ 3.8Ghz while I wait for my E7300:

@ 775/900

'01 = 53677
'03 = 46486
'05 = 20127
'06 = 12834

As I say, I'll update this thread with my final scores / clocks when I settle in with the vMod..
 
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Now we're cooking with gas:

900Mhz on the core @ 1.5v

43'C loaded with ATITool Fur Cube.

Pointing some fans at the memory has also helped, albeit not much. It can't really go above default 900Mhz without cooling, but with some active cooling, it can clock to 970 Mhz before artifacting. Meh.

Still haven't had time for much benching though. Presumably Crysis would be on people's must-have list for a GPU-related bench? I'm such a die-hard 3DMark geek, but they are such low resolution...

Can I run the Crysis bench with the demo download?

Something tells me I'm going to be the only one posting in this thread.. :D
 
Nice!

With standard air cooler my HIS can only manage about 700/1000.

Make sure the power regulator modules are properly cooled as well - AFAIK these are more likely to fail on volt-modded cards.
 
I kind of ruled out the 4830 due to its initial high pricing compared to the 50 but this thread has raised my interest again.

Anyway, yes you can download the demo and run the benchmark tool although I think there may have been optimizations with the patches, I'm not sure...

What about vantage?
 
steve258 said:
With standard air cooler my HIS can only manage about 700/1000.
Click to expand...

Yeh that's about right - this Powercolor comes with 1.25 vCore on default for some reason, at least mine did (so I assume they all will). This means 775 Mhz for me on water, so I guess 750Mhz or so on standard cooler.

Make sure the power regulator modules are properly cooled as well - AFAIK these are more likely to fail on volt-modded cards.
Click to expand...

Regulator modules are cooled too - I currently have two 120mm quiet fans pointed at the card for this very reason.


Cairnsey said:
I kind of ruled out the 4830 due to its initial high pricing compared to the 50 but this thread has raised my interest again.
Click to expand...

Yes, initially that was the case.

When I bought this card, it had gone down in price, while the 4850 had gone up, so it was a no-brainer for me.

At the time, it was £23 (20%) cheaper than the 4850.

Will get some more benches done.
 
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Well, I pushed the voltage a bit further, to 1.6v and managed 930Mhz on the core with no artifacts. The card is really struggling now.

I think some benchmarks @ 950 Mhz would be possible, but 975Mhz locked the screen.

I'm not confident enough to put more than 1.6v through the card at the moment, but it's pretty obvious from the diminishing returns I'm getting that it won't do much anyway.

I've turned it down to 1.5v for day-to-day use, but I'll post back some benches (time is a major issue for me at the moment).
 
Jimbo Mahoney said:
Well, I pushed the voltage a bit further, to 1.6v and managed 930Mhz on the core with no artifacts. The card is really struggling now.

I think some benchmarks @ 950 Mhz would be possible, but 975Mhz locked the screen.

I'm not confident enough to put more than 1.6v through the card at the moment, but it's pretty obvious from the diminishing returns I'm getting that it won't do much anyway.

I've turned it down to 1.5v for day-to-day use, but I'll post back some benches (time is a major issue for me at the moment).
Click to expand...


Nice work Jimbo.

Hows does it compare with the 4850 at 900Mhz ?
 
Have to admit I was pleasantly suprised by the 4830 when I got to play with one a little recently - it was suprisingly faster than the 8800GT that was in the system before. I still don't like ATI's drivers tho personally.
 
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