6850 Black Edition Overclocking

[Ewaf]

Ello,

Got my 6850 black edition today. Love it, heard it was good for overclocking, however I have never OC'ed a card before. I swear there use to be a sticky about overclocking your GFX card but can't find it anywhere, and search is showing up fruitless.

Can anyone give me a guiding hand on how to get this baby to it's maximum potential? I heard you can even flash it to a higher card? is this true?

Thanks in advance, appreciate it

 

[Surveyor]

To answer the second part of your question - no it can't be flashed to a higher card.

Version 1 2GB 6950 can be flashed to 6970 but 6850 nothing.

 

[Ewaf]

Humm ok, just I found these:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1562148

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18206003

Anyone got any advice or can point me to a guide on OC'ing this?

Cheers guys

 

[Surveyor]

Humm ok, just I found these:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1562148

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18206003

Anyone got any advice or can point me to a guide on OC'ing this?

Cheers guys

All that those do is flash the BIOS to higher clocks, they don't unlock anything as with the 6950 to 6970. And, unlike the 6950, you don't have a backup BIOS if the flash goes wrong or doesn't work.

You can overclock the card yourself using Catalyst Control Centre or MSI afterburner:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Afterburner-2.1.0-Final-download-2562.html

 

[Ewaf]

Ah ok cheers for clearing that up.

Humm is it a case of overclocking it and watching temps?

 

[Surveyor]

Overclock a bit at a time.

Watch for errors/image corruption/temperatures.

GPU clock first. Increase speed a bit, test, increase a bit more if OK. If you get errors/corruption back down a bit.

Repeat with memory speed.

 

[Ewaf]

Ok, cheers mate

 

[LiamJ]

Very simple. Should reach over 900 on the core without a voltage change; if you do increase voltage, expect closer to 1000 easily.

Make sure to benchmark before and after too, to find an optimum overclock for noise/performance.

 

[Ewaf]

ok, so I finally got round to OCing it, but theres a problem. I reached 950mhz core and 1115 mem clocks, no voltage changes yet, was running stable in GPUTool, no artefacts etc, and temps not going over 72ish. I saved the settings in MSI, closed it, and when I load the settings and click apply it just resets back to the stock clocks. I can't get my overclock to stay? Any ideas?

Do you have to have MSI afterburner open all the time?