How to overclock a 7850 past 1050MHz?

[David Bisset]

RIP! never got mine much past 1200MHz, 1400 is epic!

 

[petertr2000]

Just a quick thanks from me. I didn't get lucky with my MSI card, but still managed a stable 1050/1375 with only a small voltage bump to 1.185v.

Simply won't stay stable at 1100 no matter what voltage I put through it. Actually higher voltage seems to make it even more unstable. Even though the temps don't get very high. Odd. But hey ho, its a 17% OC on GPU and 15% OC on Memory for nothing.

 

[new boy]

WOW, I remember this thread! My 7850 was a sweet card

Just a quick thanks from me. I didn't get lucky with my MSI card, but still managed a stable 1050/1375 with only a small voltage bump to 1.185v.

Simply won't stay stable at 1100 no matter what voltage I put through it. Actually higher voltage seems to make it even more unstable. Even though the temps don't get very high. Odd. But hey ho, its a 17% OC on GPU and 15% OC on Memory for nothing.

Have you increased power limits?

 

[petertr2000]

WOW, I remember this thread! My 7850 was a sweet card
Have you increased power limits?

Yeh, I've basically had a full 18 months of not gaming since my kid was born - so I'm trying to get back to it, only to find I've just-about dropped off the bottom of the curve and needed to give it a little boost - CPU is still totally fine, but GPU had never been OC'd - so I thought I'd give it a go.

Power Target - is that the setting in GPU Tweak? I never touched that.

Currently running
1100 CPU [EDIT - I was actually getting 1100GPU, not 1050)
1185/5500 Memory
Voltage 1.185
Power Target 100

Even a small increase was blipping the drivers (crash and auto reload) in Heaven. Increasing volts didn't help.

You think I need to increase the power target? What is the process? TIA

Update:
Note the correction above - I was actually getting 1100, not 1050 originally. GPU Tweak had gone wonkey and wasn't opening up the GPU range, so it was showing me what I thought was my stable max, but instead was just the "locked" limit.

Just tried increasing the Power Limit to 120%, and I pushed the GPU to 1130 at 1.2v, but it couldn't take anymore, just started to crash Heaven. Not seeing much reason to put the extra stress on the system for such a small increase. So unless someone can suggest something, I've dropped it back to 1100/5500/1.185v

 

[new boy]

I would always max the power target as a matter of course even if I was running otherwise stock settings. It just makes the gpu throttle when it draws "too much" power. It's not really needed as it won't draw damaging power, it will just allow more stable frame rates.

I would leave the vram frequency at stock until you have finished playing with core frequency.

I'm afraid there isn't much magic advice to give when overclocking the core once power limit and vram are taken out of the equation. It's just a case of balancing vcore and core frequency. I can't really offer any advice on voltages and stuff, as it's been so long since I played with my old 7850.

 

[petertr2000]

Cheers. I'm happy enough with 1100/1375 tbh. Its a big jump on 900 - 20%+ gains for nowt.

I've left Power Target at max now, just for the sake of it. Like you said, its just lifting barrier just in case.