How to overclock a 7850 past 1050MHz?

[kharma45]

Just a thanks to everyone in this thread for the tips got my 7850 a few days ago and got it nicely OC'd to 1200/5800, will fiddle around with it further at a later date but just a quick message for the indirect help in choosing the card!

 

[MyUsualOnesUsed]

Yours might be about the same as mine, needs voltage higher than everyone elses to get even a reasonable o/clock. If you can do 1150 at say, 1.175v core, then thats in the same ballpark as me, give or take a few millivolts. Your temps appear to be reversed with mine, I get higher in game temps than when benching, heaven that is. My temps on the other hand are extremely low as I've got a gelid cooler on mine which gives storming cooling, never seen me card go above 45c-50c load since putting this on.

Yeah, I need 1.170 to get 1150. I think the reason the temps weren't very high in BF3 is that my CPU could have been the bottleneck. In Crysis it went up to 77. Can anyone tell me if this temperature is safe?

 

[pieman109]

Yeah, I need 1.170 to get 1150. I think the reason the temps weren't very high in BF3 is that my CPU could have been the bottleneck. In Crysis it went up to 77. Can anyone tell me if this temperature is safe?

the temps are relatively safe but if it were me I'd like them to be a little lower. My main concern would be how hot are the voltage regulators getting? I reckon these limit overclocks stability due to running hotter than normal when over volting is used. I found I was stable at 1175/ 5800 when I fitted some sinks to mine a few days back, whereas before I could barely get 1125/ 5800 when gaming.

 

[Mookzen]

Gibbo just recently said the 660 probably won't be coming anytime soon and the 670 will start out at 300+ so screw waiting, I am quite ready to buy.

Now around here (Latvia) the MSI 7850 goes for 200 quid, while its bigger brother stands at 275. Reading this here thread, am I correct in assuming the difference is no way worth 75 ? Problem is, I reluctantly step down from the 7950 as it is, another step down feels a bit silly considering it is going into a decent rig and I can happily afford a 7870. However, I -am- a sucker for a good deal and certainly no stranger to overclocking.

Hoping for someone to slap me with a convincing argument to seal the deal, then I can join in on the clockin' and benchin' fun around here.

 

[pieman109]

The problem here mate is that the overclocking of any 7850 can't be predicted as you probably already know. A few cards will do stupidly high clocks, well over 1200 core, a lot will do 1200 but no more, then theres a few that'll only do 1150-1175 at fairly high voltage, theres loads of these. So assuming that you get an "average clocker, I think you'd be looking at 1150 to 1200 core, 5800 memory, and anything up to 12v to do this. But please realise this is a guesstimate, you could summat at any of the extremes.

 

[MyUsualOnesUsed]

the temps are relatively safe but if it were me I'd like them to be a little lower. My main concern would be how hot are the voltage regulators getting? I reckon these limit overclocks stability due to running hotter than normal when over volting is used. I found I was stable at 1175/ 5800 when I fitted some sinks to mine a few days back, whereas before I could barely get 1125/ 5800 when gaming.

Thanks. I might change my fan settings.

Gibbo just recently said the 660 probably won't be coming anytime soon and the 670 will start out at 300+ so screw waiting, I am quite ready to buy.

Now around here (Latvia) the MSI 7850 goes for 200 quid, while its bigger brother stands at 275. Reading this here thread, am I correct in assuming the difference is no way worth 75 ? Problem is, I reluctantly step down from the 7950 as it is, another step down feels a bit silly considering it is going into a decent rig and I can happily afford a 7870. However, I -am- a sucker for a good deal and certainly no stranger to overclocking.

Hoping for someone to slap me with a convincing argument to seal the deal, then I can join in on the clockin' and benchin' fun around here.

If you want more performance, perhaps a pair? Or is this more than you're willing to spend?

 

[Mookzen]

If you want more performance, perhaps a pair? Or is this more than you're willing to spend?

Now that's the thing, if I was willing to spend anywhere near the price of 2 7850s I would just get a 7950 for sure, but I rather prefer to get a mid-range card and upgrade a bit sooner, desire/need permitting. Its just this awkward gap between a 7850 and 7950, I was planning to spend more than a 7850 but the 7950 is a bit too much, price wise the 7870 is closest to what I want to spend given the performance boost justifies it. Better put, I wanted the 7870 to be worth it but unfortunately I do avidly worship at the altar of bang-for-buck goodness.

Perhaps going for a 7850 now and looking to buy another one later down the road is the most prudent course of action.

 

[MoodyB]

Going by the cards OcUK have in stock, personally I'd go for the Sapphire 7870 if I had the cash.

Mainly because the Vtx cards seem to struggle to hit 1150-1200core regularly, or do so with high temps & noise.

If you wanted a quieter card that should clock to 1200 or above, which most Twin Frozr or Sapphire dual fan cards seem to do, you'd be paying £200+ so might as well pay another £45 and get the 7870.

 

[PGdude]

And then a bit more for a 7950...?

 

[karl55]

Ran some tests with trixx...since sapphire removed my 1050 lock curse.
1200/5800 @ 1.176 Cant get to the end of a benchmark/normal unigine loop
@1.178 did 3 loops , tried a benchmark and it froze
On some tests i did with various voltages and lower gpu clocks most of the time it would freeze before the end of a benchmark but not after 3-4 loops...and it would freeze almost always at the same place(during benchmarks)...

Im now sitting at 1.205, it gets close to 70c(68-69ish) and i was able to finish a benchmark and get these results:

FPS:
57.7
Scores:
1453
Min FPS:
29.2
Max FPS:
118.2

next thing i need to try is a few loops and some gaming.

EDIT:

1.210 did 3 loops in unigine, tested in some games... worked fine...

psu is now doing slight crackle sounds, gpu sounds weird and the fan starts buzzing loudly only when its at 65-70 percent...
also i get a quite noticable humming noise coming from inside the tower when i move my cursor now.
Tried resetting and using default settings without overclock... still doing it
ill return it to the store, dont want to take a chance, i can only return it until the 30th.
i am a sad panda.

 

[[timko]]

For the users that have reached 1100Mhz+ on the GPU, how comes none of you have submitted results in the Official Heaven 3 thread? I know it won't be a Top 10 result but it's still nice to see them compared against previous generation cards just outside of the first 10 results

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18386056

 

[MyUsualOnesUsed]

If you wanted a quieter card that should clock to 1200 or above, which most Twin Frozr or Sapphire dual fan cards seem to do, you'd be paying £200+ so might as well pay another £45 and get the 7870.

I got a Sapphire for about £180 I think.

Perhaps going for a 7850 now and looking to buy another one later down the road is the most prudent course of action.

If you have a Crossfire ready motherboard then I think that would be a good choice.

 

[MyUsualOnesUsed]

I have made some good progress with mine. I had a suspicion that GPU Tweak was only controlling one of the fans on my card, so I switched to Sapphire Trixx. I also turned around my side panel case fan, so it's exhaust now rather than intake. I set a nice fan curve in Trixx, set the board power limit to 20 and started my OC from scratch. I have got to my previous overclock with 15 mV less than before, and 9C cooler! I am thinking of trying to go further. My current overclock is 1150 MHz with 1155 mV, max temperature is 68C. For Sapphire card owners, I would HIGHLY recommend using Trixx rather than GPU Tweak.

EDIT: I haven't overclocked the memory yet.

EDIT 2: Memory is fine at 6000, any more and I apparently deserve a nasty grey stripy screen.

 

[liamcrane]

Im finding that with my MSI 7850 the new MSI afterburner keeps crashing my machine its driving me mad! I have gone back to the 2.1 version with the 12.3 amd drivers and it seems to work ok now. I was thinking of maybe using something different to overclock but not to sure what. I have only tried increasing the core to 1000mhz so far and that seemed fine on stock volts but im not to sure how to unlock the voltage control to push it further. The older versions of afterburner was kinda easy just editing the cfg file job done but windows wont seem to let me edit it this time round

HEX- Just curious to know what kind of fan profile you use with your msi 7850? I have mine setup to run at 30% until it hits 50c then it goes up to 40% until it hits 60c then 50% after that. Battlefield 3 with everything on high apart from shadows on medium no motion blur or AO etc highest i have had is 58c at stock

 

[tuffluck]

***PLEASE READ****

***CATALYST CONTROL CENTER NOW ALLOWS FOR UNLOCKED OVERCLOCKING WITH THE 12.4 DRIVERS***

this is my Sapphire OC edition 7850. i'm loving the new 12.4 drivers, although my monitor will not resume from sleep with them though, so i have to now turn it on/off manually. but that's worth sacrificing for what you get in CCC...

what's also cool about this is that everyone on this thread talks about how they can OC their Sapphire to 1200/5800 @ 1.176 through GPU Tweak. WELL, in CCC you can see the power slider only does a percentage, and 10% of stock voltage of 1.075 is actually 1.1825, however you can see in GPU-Z that the card only needed 1.176 to get those 1200/5800 clocks. almost seems like AMD built the card to do that speed from the start

auto fan speed still kept my card no hotter than 70c running Unigine. also, i scored a full FPS higher in Unigine with using only the CCC to OC vs. the GPU Tweak utility from Asus.

 

[HeX]

Just so you know, that power slider in CCC is nothing to do with GPU voltage. It's how much power the card is allowed to draw over its normal TDP.

 

[tuffluck]

Just so you know, that power slider in CCC is nothing to do with GPU voltage. It's how much power the card is allowed to draw over its normal TDP.

so then how the hell is the GPU running at 1.176v on its own? i completely uninstalled GPU Tweak and restarted, so there is no way it is adjusting the voltage.

btw, when you hover the mouse over the slider it says: "Adjust the maximum power limits for the selected graphics processor."

 

[FSM]

Thank you all for very informative thread. I've registered to share my results and ask a question.

My card: Gigabyte HD7850 2GB OC edition - 975MHz core, 4800MHz mem @ 1.138V.
Idle temp: 31°C. The temp. goes up to 60°C @ 45% fan speed when stressed. Ambient temperature during tests 22°C.
I've tested my settings using Heaven Benchmark (tessellation normal, 4xAA, anisotropy x4, shaders high, 1920x1080).

I 've managed to reach 1200MHz/[email protected]. Max temp. went up to 76°C @ 60% fan.

My new default is 1160MHz/[email protected]. Max temp.: 68°C @ 60% fan.

Unigine results:
core 975MHz - 1204 points (mem@4800MHz)
core 1155Mhz - 1387 points (mem@5600MHz for all of the following)
core 1160MHz - 1403 points
core 1170MHz - 1394 points
core 1180MHz - 1394 points
core 1190MHz - 1337 points
core 1200MHz - 1340 points

Why there is no improvement above 1160MHz?

My rig:
i5 750, Asus P7P55D, OCZ 700W.

 

[HeX]

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1488/4/

Info on Power Tune when it was first brought out on 69XX boards.

 

[londonbairn]

How can I increase 2D clocks? I am getting random atimkdag BSODs (always in 2D mode), and seem to happen when I am using multi monitors. I am pretty certain it is the 2D clocks...