How to overclock a 7850 past 1050MHz?

Twirlywoos · 15 May 2012 at 07:54

555BUK said:
On Ultra settings BF3 holds onto 60fps pretty well at 1200MHz. I guess 1300MHz will be rock steady but I have tried this yet. I game at 1920x1200, so 1080P should be even better.

It would be nice to see what you get at 1300 since the majority including myself get 60fps at 1200 with no crashes.

Jordeh · 15 May 2012 at 08:07

totally new to overclocking
how does this look? it went ok for a while but now i'm getting driver crashes/freezes occasionally. do i have to increase the voltage?

http://i48.tinypic.com/wi8w47.jpg

RevBillyG · 15 May 2012 at 08:13

Played BF3 last night for a couple of hours. No problems.
In fact, my framerate was so good I decided to up the game settings.....only to find I'd already set most to Ultra (only AA was low). So I'm very happy

I've borrowed my misses HD monitor so I can test with 1920*1080 (I have 3*1680 screens in eyefinity which is why I don't normally test in 1920*1080)

Now running at:

GPU Clock = 1230
GPU Voltage = 1.165v
MEM Clock = 1400 (5600)
Max Temp = 68c

Bare in mind, my CPU isn't exactly cutting edge anymore

AMD Phenom II 550BE unlocked to quad running @ 3.6ghz

RevBillyG · 15 May 2012 at 08:16

Jordeh said:
totally new to overclocking
how does this look? it went ok for a while but now i'm getting driver crashes/freezes occasionally. do i have to increase the voltage?

http://i48.tinypic.com/wi8w47.jpg

I would say yeah, up the voltage. Many people seem to be running at 1.186v. I'm running at 1.165v to be on the safe side and all seems to be good so far.

pieman109 · 15 May 2012 at 08:27

Jordeh said:
totally new to overclocking
how does this look? it went ok for a while but now i'm getting driver crashes/freezes occasionally. do i have to increase the voltage?

http://i48.tinypic.com/wi8w47.jpg

Seeing as nearly all 7850 are doing at least 1150 core (with a very few exceptions), I would deffo try and increase your voltage. Assuming your default voltage is 1050 I would suggest increasing in steps of 0.025v and testing until it becomes stable. Use game as well as benchmarks as Crysis2 for example pushed cards harder than heaven for instance. Once stable at 1050, start increasing the core in steps of 25mhz and test again until it becomes unstable and starts to crash again, then bump the voltage up by a further 0.025 volts.
You're safe up to around 1.225v probably higher, going by what ppl here have found, but be aware temps will rise as the voltage and core increases so keep an eye on your temps, you don't really want to go above 70c-80c.

Edit: beaten to it again

HeX · 15 May 2012 at 08:27

Nice work 555BUK, cracking OC. I'm tempted to flash mine for some extra volts and go for 1300+ as I can do 1290 on 1.225... 1.25 should get me over 1300 easy...

Must resist

pieman109 · 15 May 2012 at 08:30

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.

Twirlywoos · 15 May 2012 at 08:33

Jordeh said:
totally new to overclocking
how does this look? it went ok for a while but now i'm getting driver crashes/freezes occasionally. do i have to increase the voltage?

http://i48.tinypic.com/wi8w47.jpg

You've not even unlocked the overclocking range.

Twirlywoos · 15 May 2012 at 08:35

HeX said:
Nice work 555BUK, cracking OC. I'm tempted to flash mine for some extra volts and go for 1300+ as I can do 1290 on 1.225... 1.25 should get me over 1300 easy...

Must resist

what does flashing do exactly? Won't memory correction kick in due to the hardware restriction. Or am I talking rubbish?

pieman109 · 15 May 2012 at 08:38

majnu said:
You've not even unlocked the overclocking range.

I didn't notice that. You need to tick the box marked "overclocking range enhancement"

HeX · 15 May 2012 at 08:40

majnu said:
what does flashing do exactly? Won't memory correction kick in due to the hardware restriction. Or am I talking rubbish?

Basically raises the max voltage you can put through.

On my MSI bios I can only put 1.225V through my card in ASUS Tweak.

With the ASUS TOP bios on the card it'll let you put up to 1.3V, as such you can OC even higher by using more voltage (at the cost of more heat).

As long as you can keep it cool enough there's more room to play with

pieman109 · 15 May 2012 at 08:42

majnu said:
what does flashing do exactly? Won't memory correction kick in due to the hardware restriction. Or am I talking rubbish?

manufacturers might use a slightly different/ modified bios than others and these bioses might allow higher voltages to be applied, slacker Vram timings to allow higher overclocks, various tweaks here and there, might have spent more time tuning the bios, etc.
It appears at least that the asus bios (as far as I know) allows for higher voltage to be applied at least to allow allow for higher overclocks

Edit: strewth beaten again!

Arron17 · 15 May 2012 at 09:01

spanielgita said:
Hello, i am amazed at your overclocking results with the 7850 and i will be buying one as part of my new rig.

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

My only worry is that the software would limit the overclock beyond the set ati ccc limits?

I've got the sapphire card and got it upto 1200/1475 @ 1.185v with Sapphire Trixx.

555BUK · 15 May 2012 at 09:15

spanielgita said:
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.

pieman109 said:
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.

Jordeh · 15 May 2012 at 09:25

pieman109 said:
Seeing as nearly all 7850 are doing at least 1150 core (with a very few exceptions), I would deffo try and increase your voltage. Assuming your default voltage is 1050 I would suggest increasing in steps of 0.025v and testing until it becomes stable. Use game as well as benchmarks as Crysis2 for example pushed cards harder than heaven for instance. Once stable at 1050, start increasing the core in steps of 25mhz and test again until it becomes unstable and starts to crash again, then bump the voltage up by a further 0.025 volts.
You're safe up to around 1.225v probably higher, going by what ppl here have found, but be aware temps will rise as the voltage and core increases so keep an eye on your temps, you don't really want to go above 70c-80c.

Edit: beaten to it again

thanks thats very helpful. just another question, should you increase your memory mhz as you increase your core mhz aswell?

RevBillyG · 15 May 2012 at 09:31

Increase the core until you find your limit, then work on the memory.

Twirlywoos · 15 May 2012 at 09:47

HeX said:
Basically raises the max voltage you can put through.

On my MSI bios I can only put 1.225V through my card in ASUS Tweak.

With the ASUS TOP bios on the card it'll let you put up to 1.3V, as such you can OC even higher by using more voltage (at the cost of more heat).

As long as you can keep it cool enough there's more room to play with

pieman109 said:
manufacturers might use a slightly different/ modified bios than others and these bioses might allow higher voltages to be applied, slacker Vram timings to allow higher overclocks, various tweaks here and there, might have spent more time tuning the bios, etc.
It appears at least that the asus bios (as far as I know) allows for higher voltage to be applied at least to allow allow for higher overclocks

Edit: strewth beaten again!

thanks, it's worth a shot I guess, but not for the faint hearted. But in the meanwhile Asus Tweek's "overclocking range enhancement" doesn't increase the overclocking range anymore. Whilst using Sapphire Trixx does.

Jordeh · 15 May 2012 at 09:52

RevBillyG said:
Increase the core until you find your limit, then work on the memory.

okay, so i'll put the memory back to default (4900) and only do the core? it's at 5500 now

RevBillyG · 15 May 2012 at 09:59

That's how I did it.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...h14052012.jpg/

Funnily enough, I was just playing some BF3 and marveling at my nice FPS then realised I hadn't set my clocks

Edit* 5600mhz memory is too much in BF3

Back to 5500mhz

Arron17 · 15 May 2012 at 10:04

Jordeh said:
okay, so i'll put the memory back to default (4900) and only do the core? it's at 5500 now

What I did with mine was up the core and voltages until I got the most I could get out of it without crashing or too much heat. Then Kept the core at it's highest and started upping the memory until I started to get grey screens or any other issues and knocked it down until they stopped.

It's my first time doing this so I have a few issues, like I had the voltage too low for 1200 core but I didn't test it long enough to find out, so when I was upping the memory I was getting crashes and I thought it was the memory that was making it crash. But after testing the core properly and upping the voltage I was able to raise the memory up to 1475 without issues.