5850 reference boards and the new non overclockerble ones

[d_brennen]

Does anyone have a list of which ones are the reference designs and which are the newer (and I'm told inferior) designs?

I've been offered an MSI Radeon HD 5850 Series Twin Frozr II 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express x16 (2.0v) Video Card Retail for the right kind of money but I'm not sure... Would like to be able to overclock it

 

[drunkenmaster]

Double check the MSI website, but both their new Frozr, and lightning ones I thought were the same PCB, just one overclocked and one not and both offering voltage control.

if they list voltage control as a feature, it will have it, if they don't, you'd need to check its a reference one. Theres non reference cards with voltage control, but most companies have gone for cheaper pcb's, MSI/Asus appeared to have retained voltage control as a feature last time I checked.

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=137&prod_no=2029

 

[Jay_t]

Hi,

I presume you are after the reference ones so you can flash an Asus bios and adjust the voltage? If so, you might be very lucky to find one. I think everyone is making non reference boards only now.

I know the Asus DirectCU ones are a bit more expensive than standard but at least you can tweak the voltage without having to risk a bios flash. They are also cool, quiet and more importantly, in stock.

 

[Liampope]

Did Ati produce/sell their own directly to end users as well as flogging them via board partners? Cos the one i have has no stickers or marking at all other than ati - just the black case with the red stripes down the middle and sides. Looks as reference as reference can be, so would this overclock well? Do I want to flash it with an asus bios to get volt modding?

Cheers

 

[drunkenmaster]

Afterburner doesn't require a asus/msi bios to overclock or overvolt, just a setting changed within the config, afterburner folder, config file, one of the options at the bottom though I can't recall the name you change a 0 to a 1 to force overvolting options to work.

As was fairly obvious, he found a MSI card for cheap and yes, the MSI card supports over volting and "may" overclock better than the reference design as its designed to be better, with better power delivery, rather than cheaper like most non reference designs.