How to overclock a 7850 past 1050MHz?

pieman109 · 11 May 2012 at 22:43

SickBeast said:
Guys I was able to flash my Powercolor 7850 to an Asus and my voltage is now unlocked.

My card is stable at 1260mhz on the core and 5600mhz on the memory. Is that good? I'm at 1.3v.

Flashing is still risky but I did it and everything works great.

I used atiflash.exe from a dos usb key drive.

I typed:

atiflash -p -f 0 asus.rom

Just replace "asus.rom" with whatever rom you're using.

Remember this is risky if you're doing it! It worked for me but it might not work for you!

What settings were stable at before the flash? Does this mean you're able to clock higher?

Arron17 · 11 May 2012 at 22:44

Isn't 1.3v a bit high? I thought 1.25v was the max?

SickBeast · 11 May 2012 at 22:51

pieman109 said:
What settings were stable at before the flash? Does this mean you're able to clock higher?

I was only stable at 1180mhz at 1.225v before the flash. Yes, I am able to clock 80mhz higher now.

SickBeast · 11 May 2012 at 22:52

Arron17 said:
Isn't 1.3v a bit high? I thought 1.25v was the max?

It's high, but really it's only 0.1v beyond stock voltage on my card.

They say that 1.25v is the safe limit but I have excellent cooling and I like to push my hardware.

Arron17 · 11 May 2012 at 23:02

SickBeast said:
It's high, but really it's only 0.1v beyond stock voltage on my card.

They say that 1.25v is the safe limit but I have excellent cooling and I like to push my hardware.

Ah ok Fair enough, This is my first time properly overclocking so I'm probably being overly cautious.

I can get mine upto 1225 but only at 1.25v but I'm much more comfortable at 1200 at 1.185v, plus 25mhz isn't much.

Piklar · 12 May 2012 at 06:31

SickBeast said:
It's high, but really it's only 0.1v beyond stock voltage on my card.

They say that 1.25v is the safe limit but I have excellent cooling and I like to push my hardware.

Interesting! this gives a better idea of the voltages these cards can handle, please update us on how those voltages go for you and what clocks you finaly settle on for stable 24/7 gaming

pieman109 · 12 May 2012 at 10:21

SickBeast said:
I was only stable at 1180mhz at 1.225v before the flash. Yes, I am able to clock 80mhz higher now.

Any chance you post a step by step guide (and written for pc numpties, ie: Me

) as to how to do this flash? is it possible to do it in windows like unlocking the extra shaders in bios of the 6950 was done? I'll certainly give this a go if it appears easy enough

Spirit of Jazz · 12 May 2012 at 11:31

I've been running into some issues with my oc but only whilst running The Witcher 2. My OC is 1200 core and 5500 memory at 1160 volts, setting for The Witcher 2 are ultra with no bloom or uber sampling.

About once an hour my GPU stops responding and resets (the game freezes for about 30 seconds and then resumes). From what research I've managed to do on the net it would seem to be an issue with the card overheating. However my core temperature never goes above 53C, so does anybody have any clue what the issue could be?

MyUsualOnesUsed · 12 May 2012 at 11:41

Spirit of Jazz said:
I've been running into some issues with my oc but only whilst running The Witcher 2. My OC is 1200 core and 5500 memory at 1160 volts, setting for The Witcher 2 are ultra with no bloom or uber sampling.

About once an hour my GPU stops responding and resets (the game freezes for about 30 seconds and then resumes). From what research I've managed to do on the net it would seem to be an issue with the card overheating. However my core temperature never goes above 53C, so does anybody have any clue what the issue could be?

Try bumping up your core voltage a little.

SickBeast · 12 May 2012 at 12:58

pieman109 said:
Any chance you post a step by step guide (and written for pc numpties, ie: Me ) as to how to do this flash? is it possible to do it in windows like unlocking the extra shaders in bios of the 6950 was done? I'll certainly give this a go if it appears easy enough

There is probably a way to do it in Windows but I'm only comfortable flashing a bios in dos.

The first thing you need to do is to make a bootable USB key drive. There are tons of guides on how to do that.

Then you need to download amdflash.exe and copy it to the usb drive.

Then you need to download the bios file which I found here:

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/118907/Asus.HD7850.2048.120306.html

Put that file on the USB key drive.

Then, boot up the key drive, and type:

atiflash -p -f 0 asus.rom

I re-named the bios file "asus.rom" just so I didn't have to type the long name it had before.

As for my voltage and clockspeed, I'm at 1240mhz at 1.3v. I can actually run Heaven at 1300mhz but I had to back it down to 1240mhz for Crysis 2. Other games were stable at 1260mhz. I'm hitting 50C under full load. I have an Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo II installed.

Jordeh · 12 May 2012 at 17:50

never overclocked anything before and I've just got a HIS 7850.
does anyone know of a step by step guide? i'm totally clueless

Richeh · 12 May 2012 at 18:04

It would be nice if possibly the original post could be updated with what exactly is needed/not needed as there has been a lot of change in the thread regarding what tools to be used. Will have a go on my HIS hopefully tomorrow and know I will have to trawl through pages of this thread just to find out exactly what's needed

pieman109 · 12 May 2012 at 19:40

Richeh said:
It would be nice if possibly the original post could be updated with what exactly is needed/not needed as there has been a lot of change in the thread regarding what tools to be used. Will have a go on my HIS hopefully tomorrow and know I will have to trawl through pages of this thread just to find out exactly what's needed

Depends what you want to do. If overclocking, download cats 12.4, asus tweaktool 2.0.8.3, heaven benchmark 3.0 and away you go, thats all you need

Twirlywoos · 12 May 2012 at 21:25

quick question: Games like Alan Wake, Bf3 all play fine after I've overclocked. But When playing Sniper Elite V2 I crash. Should I up the voltage or knock back the value on the memory clock/GPU clock speed?

HeX · 12 May 2012 at 21:38

If AW and BF3 are fine, it's more likely SE is just buggy.

555BUK · 12 May 2012 at 22:46

I have another 7850 for the weekend, and I thought I would see what it can do. It is another reference Powercolor/VTX card, but unfortunately does not clock quite so well as my original. Top end for the new card is 1250-5900 (old one managed 1275/6000).

3DMark11 @ 1250/5900 scored P7084
3DMark11 @ 1250/5900 with Virtu MVP scored P9665 - MASSIVE gains.
3DMark11 compare - with/without MVP

Heaven @ 1250/5900

Heaven @ 1250/5900 with Virtu MVP enabled - Nice gains.

Heaven 7850 overclocked scores get pretty close to a stock GTX670, and overclocked+MVP scores comfortable beat a 670 (I know MVP is cheating, but hey

).

Twirlywoos · 12 May 2012 at 23:00

HeX said:
If AW and BF3 are fine, it's more likely SE is just buggy.

I think that the game does have some issues or it's badly encoded, but I'm no expert. I reduced my core clock from 1205 to 1200 and the game seems to be running fine now (touch wood).

Maybe error correction was kicking in.

edit - nope it didn't fix the game and heaven crashed at the lower clock speeds. I'll figure it out tomorrow.

Twirlywoos · 12 May 2012 at 23:04

555BUK said:
I have another 7850 for the weekend, and I thought I would see what it can do. It is another reference Powercolor/VTX card, but unfortunately does not clock quite so well as my original. Top end for the new card is 1250-5900 (old one managed 1275/6000).

3DMark11 @ 1250/5900 scored P7084
3DMark11 @ 1250/5900 with Virtu MVP scored P9665 - MASSIVE gains.
3DMark11 compare - with/without MVP

Heaven @ 1250/5900

Heaven @ 1250/5900 with Virtu MVP enabled - Nice gains.

Heaven 7850 overclocked scores get pretty close to a stock GTX670, and overclocked+MVP scores comfortable beat a 670 (I know MVP is cheating, but hey).

Virtu MVP is strange, someone posted before 40% gains with it on and I find it unbelievable especially since it didn't give me any gains in Heaven or whilst gaming.

555BUK · 12 May 2012 at 23:18

majnu said:
Virtu MVP is strange, someone posted before 40% gains with it on and I find it unbelievable especially since it didn't give me any gains in Heaven or whilst gaming.

What mobo do you have? You need a Z77 mobo with the Lucid chip onboard to use MVP.

My oiwn findings are that Virtu is good for benchmarks (especially 3DMark), but not much changes during gaming. BF3 and F1 2011 show minor gains but only a few fps. Some older games of mine won't even start when it is enabled.

Twirlywoos · 12 May 2012 at 23:56

555BUK said:
What mobo do you have? You need a Z77 mobo with the Lucid chip onboard to use MVP.

My oiwn findings are that Virtu is good for benchmarks (especially 3DMark), but not much changes during gaming. BF3 and F1 2011 show minor gains but only a few fps. Some older games of mine won't even start when it is enabled.

Asus Sabertooth z77 and i5 IB. I tried it after someone reported similar gains on the previous page and I posted my reuslts. It just didn't give me any gains.