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ATI 3850/70 Maximum Overclock

well i got very poor overclocks with my card, so i updated the bios to the oficial one and no luck, i then updated to the lowest clocked one from the above site and no luck, i then upped the pci-e frequency from 100 to 110 and BANG the memory overclock increased by a megaload

without changing pci-e

Card: Sapphire 3870 512MB
Cooling: Accelero-s1 with turbo modules
Maximum Core: 830ish
Maximum Memory: 1146 or 2292 (effective)
3DMark06 Score: wont run on my vista
SM2: n/a
SM3: n/a
CPU/Clock: Core 2 Duo E6600 @ Stock with Speedstep
O/S: Windows Vista Home Pemium 64-Bit

with pci-e at 110

Card: Sapphire 3870 512MB
Cooling: Accelero-s1 with turbo modules
Maximum Core: 864
Maximum Memory: 1287 or 2574 (effective)
3DMark06 Score: wont run on my vista
SM2: n/a
SM3: n/a
CPU/Clock: Core 2 Duo E6600 @ Stock with Speedstep
O/S: Windows Vista Home Pemium 64-Bit

it has been stress tested using ati tool, rthdribl and 3dmark 03

i will run 3dmark 05 tomorrow and i found a fix for 06, i will install tomorrow and report back

if you want to get the best from your 3800 series card there are 3 steps to follow

1. fit an arctic accelero s-1 (cheap and better than watercooling in my opinion)
2. use a modded bios from here http://www.iax-tech.com/video/3800biosmod/03.htm these bios's are dogs danglies
3. try different pci-e frequencies ranging from 101 to 110, these are perfectly safe levels if your running sata drives, if you use ide drives then you can go up to 120
 
Last edited:
Psycho Sonny said:
well i got very poor overclocks with my card, so i updated the bios to the oficial one and no luck, i then updated to the lowest clocked one from the above site and no luck, i then upped the pci-e frequency from 100 to 100 and BANG the memory overclock increased by a megaload

without changing pci-e

Card: Sapphire 3870 512MB
Cooling: Accelero-s1 with turbo modules
Maximum Core: 830ish
Maximum Memory: 1146 or 2292 (effective)
3DMark06 Score: wont run on my vista
SM2: n/a
SM3: n/a
CPU/Clock: Core 2 Duo E6600 @ Stock with Speedstep
O/S: Windows Vista Home Pemium 64-Bit

with pci-e at 110

Card: Sapphire 3870 512MB
Cooling: Accelero-s1 with turbo modules
Maximum Core: 864
Maximum Memory: 1287 or 2574 (effective)
3DMark06 Score: wont run on my vista
SM2: n/a
SM3: n/a
CPU/Clock: Core 2 Duo E6600 @ Stock with Speedstep
O/S: Windows Vista Home Pemium 64-Bit

it has been stress tested using ati tool, rthdribl and 3dmark 03

i will run 3dmark 05 tomorrow and i found a fix for 06, i will install tomorrow and report back

if you want to get the best from your 3800 series card there are 3 steps to follow

1. fit an arctic accelero s-1 (cheap and better than watercooling in my opinion)
2. use a modded bios from here http://www.iax-tech.com/video/3800biosmod/03.htm these bios's are dogs danglies
3. try different pci-e frequencies ranging from 101 to 110, these are perfectly safe levels if your running sata drives, if you use ide drives then you can go up to 120
Click to expand...


if the 06 problem you are having is related to openal32.dll, you can download it here http://www.openal.org/downloads.html get the windows installer and make sure you run it as admin
 
Card: Powercolor 3870 512MB
Cooling: Stock
Maximum Core: 825MHz
Maximum Memory: 2610MHz
3DMark06 Score: 10269
SM2: Not sure as now you have to pay to see the other results?!?!?!?!?
SM3: Not sure as now you have to pay to see the other results?!?!?!?!? Sod that.
CPU/Clock: Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 2.66GHz
O/S: Windows XP Pro SP2

Believe its a lack of voltage issue so will be doing the pencil mod at some point.

Matthew
 
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3850's have 0.1v lower than the 3870's so you're probably right, A 1Ghz Core would be nice on these cards.

Does anyone have advice on cooling the Vmem?
 
Cairnsey said:
3850's have 0.1v lower than the 3870's so you're probably right, A 1Ghz Core would be nice on these cards.

Does anyone have advice on cooling the Vmem?
Click to expand...

get an arctic accelero-s1 and strap 2* 120 mm fans to it using cable ties, or if you dont want them slightly beigger than your card, starp 1* 120 mm and 1*90mm to the accelero, the amount of air running over your card will be enought to cool, ram, voltage regulators, and everything else
 
gurusan said:
sure can. post a pic of the back of your card (the right half toward the pci-e power plug)
Click to expand...

sorry mate, taking out my graphics card is a real hassle, i got like a million components inside my pc, ill post you links of pictures other people have taken.


http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=166334&page=14

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=166334&page=13

i hope the pics within those 2 pages are fine, if not, i hope someone else with a smaller system can take pics of their card

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=166334

thats the thread from the first page, although its nearly 1000 posts long, its a very good guide for noobies if you read through it all, may take an hour or two but lots of good info there, especcially towards the end
 
Cairnsey said:
but for that cost, I may as well have bought a HD3870XT, my line of thinking anyway....
Click to expand...

nah mate, the cooler on the 3870xt is the worst cooler ive ever seen on any graphics card ive bought, if you bought the 3870, you would still need to upgrade that too, its only another £12 or something, shop around for places which offer cheap shipping, for under £20 my load temps dropped by 50-60C, now for £20 do you not think thats worth it?, if you have spare fans lying around, why not put them to good use, trust me this air cooler is the best ive ever seen, arctic accelero s1 for the win, put it this way the change between my idle temp and full load is 5C
 
Cairnsey said:
could I use RAM sinks with it as well?
Click to expand...

you can all of my ram sinks fitted apart from one using some aksa thermal tape

lemme tell you step by step there are many option you can do

first option

use the original ram sinks, the original ramsinks look pretty good to me, the surface area is larger than any 3rd party ram sinks

2nd option

use the ram sinks supplied with the accelero s1, i used these, but 1 fell off because one of the coolers heatpipes knocked it off when putting the cooler on the core, tried again same thing happened, so one of my ram is running naked, the sticky stuff on the supplied heatsinks is crap, you need thermal tape from aksa

3rd option

just run them naked - this is perfectly safe, so long as you have decent airflow, it also in some cases has improved clocks, and a lot of people run them naked
 
gurusan said:
take a look at this thread
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=166623&page=10
Click to expand...

thanks mate your a star, i think im gonna leave it though, im at 864 core, with the pencil mod, say i get an extra 100mhz on the core, i doubt i will notice the difference that much, and i might kill the card, and its gonna be too much hassle to rma and sticking the stock cooler back on, ill leave it for now, at least i now know where to pencil, so i might try it in 6 months time, when i might upgrade or something and pass it down
 
Any of you try overclocking using crossfire. I have two powecolor 3870s and each will OC well singly but if I up the mem at all it crashes out. May be the BIOS update and volt mod required so I'll try that tomorrow. Just wondered if anyone else was having the same issue.

Daz
 
dazman said:
Any of you try overclocking using crossfire. I have two powecolor 3870s and each will OC well singly but if I up the mem at all it crashes out. May be the BIOS update and volt mod required so I'll try that tomorrow. Just wondered if anyone else was having the same issue.

Daz
Click to expand...

up your pci-e frequency, this is needed for crossfire, 110 should be fine, maybe even somewhere between 110-115, but dont go over 115 if you have sata hard drives, 110-115 should be perfectly safe so long as you have a decent motherboard
 
So increasing the PCI-E Frequency is how people are becoming stable on these bios files, so didnt know that! :p Didnt actually think it made a huge difference to be honest
 
jrodga2k5 said:
So increasing the PCI-E Frequency is how people are becoming stable on these bios files, so didnt know that! :p Didnt actually think it made a huge difference to be honest
Click to expand...

nah mate the original bios wont let you overclock above 862 no matter what you do, if you read my original post in this thread its way before this one, it will explain better. basically i could overclock my core to 830ish and i only got like a 20mhz overclock on my ram, i upped my pci-e frequency to 110 and boom, i could now overclock my ram by 170 mhz, thats a big jump from only being able to do 20 before,

upping the pci-e frequency can also do the opposite, make your card more unstable, but if your cards are unstable in the first place, try it, it will work 95% of the time, upping the frequency also helps nvidia cards get higher clocks, people say it may give the card more voltage somehow, or because it provides more bandwidth, it becomes more stable, it is uknown why it helps but it does, ive been messing about with pci-e frequencys since i got an x800gto2 a few years back, it is a well known technique to achieve higher clocks
 
this is taken from a post i made earlier

without changing pci-e

Card: Sapphire 3870 512MB
Cooling: Accelero-s1 with turbo modules
Maximum Core: 830ish
Maximum Memory: 1146 or 2292 (effective)
3DMark06 Score: wont run on my vista
SM2: n/a
SM3: n/a
CPU/Clock: Core 2 Duo E6600 @ Stock with Speedstep
O/S: Windows Vista Home Pemium 64-Bit

with pci-e at 110

Card: Sapphire 3870 512MB
Cooling: Accelero-s1 with turbo modules
Maximum Core: 864
Maximum Memory: 1287 or 2574 (effective)
3DMark06 Score: wont run on my vista
SM2: n/a
SM3: n/a
CPU/Clock: Core 2 Duo E6600 @ Stock with Speedstep
O/S: Windows Vista Home Pemium 64-Bit

it has been stress tested using ati tool, rthdribl and 3dmark 03

i will run 3dmark 05 tomorrow and i found a fix for 06, i will install tomorrow and report back

if you want to get the best from your 3800 series card there are 3 steps to follow

1. fit an arctic accelero s-1 (cheap and better than watercooling in my opinion)
2. use a modded bios from here http://www.iax-tech.com/video/3800biosmod/03.htm these bios's are dogs danglies
3. try different pci-e frequencies ranging from 101 to 110, these are perfectly safe levels if your running sata drives, if you use ide drives then you can go up to 120
 
Psycho Sonny said:
nah mate the original bios wont let you overclock above 862
Click to expand...

Yeah mate I know that ;) Iv tried those other bios's and couldnt get them stable with the card at really any speeds so its good to know that the PCI-E frequency can help with that! Will be interested to try it out sometime!
 
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