How to overclock a 7850 past 1050MHz?

[555BUK]

Would anyone recommend the sapphire 7850? It is £15 cheaper than the msi twin frozer and seems to be similiar.

The Sapphire is a very good card. However, if you want the absolute highest overclock, just buy the cheapest 7850 you can find and add an Accelero Turbo Twin II cooler to it. The overall cost will not be much higher, but you will get the absolute best cooler for a 7850. The downside is that it takes up 3 slots and you invalidate your warranty. If you don't like the idea of this, get the Sapphire or MSI Frozr.

I wish someone would post a guide here on how to flash these cards in wnidows, I don't like messing around in dos, I find it confusing and I'd like to see if I can get 1200 stable, the most I can get 1180 at 1.225v
I unlocked me old 6950 a while by flashing in windows and it was a piece of cake.

Flashing in Windows is very risky. DOS is best.

 

[555BUK]

Over Voltage Protection (OVP) does not seem to be an issue for these cards. I thought that I was suffering from OVP when I had a reference cooler (fps would choke anywhere above 1.2v), but it turns out that it was thermal throttling caused by the GPU getting too hot.

With my new cooler and the card at 1376MHz @ 1.3v there is no choking whatsoever. OVP and Thermal Throttling simply do not occur.

I played BF3 @ 1350MHz for 20mins last night and it seemed stable. I think 1325-1350MHz rock solid is achievable on 1.3v, but 1376 is just for benches. I completed one run of 3DMark11 @ 1400MHz and Heaven @ 1385, but they took 5 or 6 attemps and both are extremely far from being stable. I am sure >1400MHz is possible once I find away to give it more than 1.3v.

I have received a mail from a US guy offering $400 for my card. Apparently he wants to give it some extreme modding and cooling and be the first to hit 2GHz. He thinks I must have a great piece of silicon.

 

[555BUK]

What grounds do I have to get a refund based on this or for OCUK to send me one out with 4 heatpipes?

OcUK have a 2-week no quibble returns policy. Also, if you received the card within the past 10 days you are covered by DSR. So long as you received the card within this period just return it quoting DSR and request a full refund.

 

[555BUK]

I've left a message on the customer service part of the forum attaching the pics, so I'll see what they have to say. Looks like a manufacturing fault as the pics clearly show the slots where the additional heatpipes should have gone.

It is not a manufacturing fault. HIS's website now state 2 heatpipes for the 7850. Within Gibbo's original Pre-Order thread I warned that these would only have two heatpipes, but I guess not everyone saw my post. Here is my original warning.

 

[555BUK]

People having issues with ASUS GPU Tweak should try Sapphire Trixx. GPU Tweak has better monitoring, but Trix has much better fan control and it seems to "unlock" core speeds easier. I now prefer Trixx.

 

[555BUK]

My cards default voltage is 1.050v.

edit: It was 1.050v but after flashing to ASUS BIOS it now shows as 1.075v. Different partners must tweak to different levels, so voltage may have nothing to do with silicon quality.

 

[555BUK]

Just ckecked some screenies of my original VTX reference card, and that was 1.050v.

So, I have had two cards (VTX & Powercolor), both reference, and both 1.050v. Perhaps voltage is set low because the reference coolers are not great. Maybe MSI, ASUS etc set it higher because their coolers handle heat better and because it makes them appear better out-of-box overclockers? One thing is certai, at 1.3v these cards rock.

 

[555BUK]

What are the temps like on the HIS cards? So long as they stay below 80deg, it doesn't really matter how many heatpipes the thing has.

 

[555BUK]

It seems that I am currently the only person in the world who is able to benchmark an air cooled 7800 @ 1400MHz and run 1350MHz rock stable.

It must be a case of ying and yang. Several years ago I obtained the worlds worst overclocking GTX480, plus I have owned plenty of other duffers in the past too. I suppose it is only fair that things balance out.

Come on guys, someone else post some >1400MHz suicide shots.
P7807 @ 1400 / 1500

edit: and for fun, here is how my old stock GTX580 performed vs the 7850. Also, here's a 930MHz core overclocked GTX 580 compare.

 

[555BUK]

What voltage are you running it at? And which model is it?

It is a Powercolor referernce card (the cheapest 7850 I could find). I changed for stock cooler for an Accelero Twin Turbo II (~£30), and flashed the BIOS to an ASUS DCUII TOP to unlock 1.3v. Check this post for piccy's (results there were listed before BIOS flashing).

Card is currently running at 1325MHz / 1450Mhz @ 1.275v for 24/7 clocks, but it can run 1350 / 1500 @ 1.3v stable. 1400MHz @ 1.3v is totally unstable, but I can just about run benchmarks with it.

My problem is lack of voltage because heat is not an issue. The card games in mid-late 40's @ 1325MHz. The highest I have seen it whilst gaming was 53deg after an hour of BF3 @ 1350MHz. The Accelero is a great cooler.

 

[555BUK]

What's everyone's ASIC Quality reading? You can find this by opening GPU-Z and right clicking on the green icon in the top left corner, next to where it says "TechPowerUP GPU-Z". After right click, select "Read ASIC Quality".

It will be interesting to see whether good clockers have higher numbers and poorer clockers have lower.

Mine is 84.9%

 

[555BUK]

Ahh, you should have better cards than me then.

 

[555BUK]

59degrees is cool. These cards are okay up to 85. ASIC Quality is an "indication" of how good the GPU silicon is. Higher generally equals better, but it is not as simple as that. My 84.9% is lower than many others, but so far nobody can come close to my overclocks. A higher number increases the odds of a good overclock, but it does not guarantee it. Likewise, a low number does not necessarily result in a bad clocker.

 

[555BUK]

Here are my temps after an hour and a bit of playing BF3 on Ultra @ 1920x1200 1350MHz core.

Fan Duty rose to 77% on my custom profile, but that is pretty damn quiet on an Accelero (92mm fans spinning at about 1400rpm). 77% fan is quieter than than my old stock cooler was at idle. Max temps blipped at 54, but generally 53deg full load. When I play with my normal setting of Vsync enabled, temps stick to the high 40's.

 

[555BUK]

I ran furmark for a few minutes and temps hit 60. I did not want to leave it running too long and risk popping my VRM's, but I guess it may have reached mid 60's evenually. By comparisson, my reference Powercolor cooler reach 90 degrees at stock setings running Furmark (although gaming was low to mid 70's in general).

 

[555BUK]

Hey guys, could someone help me out here please?

I have really low heaven benchmark scores with my sapphire radeon 7850....

Those scores are low. You should be hitting about 40fps @ stock @ 1920x1200.

I suggest downloading and installing Driver Sweeper, then unistall the AMD drivers and CCC. Next reboot into Windows Safe Mode and run Driver Sweeper to clean out any old AMD and Nvidia driver leftovers.

After that, reinstall the latest AMD 12.4 drivers and see how it goes.

 

[555BUK]

Ignore me, my eyesight is **** and I misread something.... Damn small mobile screens...

 

[555BUK]

Thnx i just did that and it really helped!

1900 x 1200 resolution:
stock 860/4800:
FPS: 38.5, score: 970

OC: 1200/5800:
FPS: 51.3, score: 1293

1900 x 1080 resolution:
OC: 1200/5800:
FPS: 56.2, score: 1416


I guess these scores are normal now right?

Your scores are now spot-on.

I have to clock to 1175 core to get anywhere near those figures

Try following the process I listed for tomekalmighty within this post. It seemed to do the trick for him

*Always run Driver Sweeper between removing and replacing an AMD card (even when the change is between same series AMD cards). AMD's driver unistall package is completely pants, leaving tons of registry junk lurking about. Same old story for AMD. Good cards, buggy drivers.

 

[555BUK]

Just upped the card to 1120mhz and 5000 mem clock and had a crash on heaven...Should I bump up the volts a little? If so by how much?

Bump the volts up. You should be safe using up to 1,225v so long as temos stay below 80'ish.

 

[555BUK]

Can anyone confirm Asus Tweak letting them unlock voltage adjustment in version 1.2.1.4 when not having an Asus card?

2124 is no good for me. It severly restricts clocks and voltages when running my ASUS TOP BIOS flashed Powercolor card. 2.0.6 or 2.0.83 seem the most reliable versions for most cards.