Overclocking 4870

[Slinkie]

Hi folks,

I have a Power colour 4870 512mb and I am looking at pushing it a bit further. I have swapped the stock cooler for an accelero s1 so it runs nice and cool (40 degrees at idle, around 55 under load)

I have my card at 790/1100 overclocked in CCC but that is as high as it goes. I downloaded rivatuner so I could push it a bit further. I reduce the memory to 900 and just concentrated on the core. I just uppped it by 10 and then ran 3dmark 06 to check for artifacts etc. I didn't see any until I got to 880. I decided to stick to 870, the last setting I had before the artifacts, but I found the second time I was at this setting there were artifacts again. Every time I knocked it down 10mhz it was the same until I had it at stock level and still they were there. I have just restarted my pc and it is now fine again at 790/1100, no artifacts.

What did I do wrong, what is the best method for overclocking the card?

Thanks

Matt

 

[AndyOcUK]

Hi folks,

I have a Power colour 4870 512mb and I am looking at pushing it a bit further. I have swapped the stock cooler for an accelero s1 so it runs nice and cool (40 degrees at idle, around 55 under load)

I have my card at 790/1100 overclocked in CCC but that is as high as it goes. I downloaded rivatuner so I could push it a bit further. I reduce the memory to 900 and just concentrated on the core. I just uppped it by 10 and then ran 3dmark 06 to check for artifacts etc. I didn't see any until I got to 880. I decided to stick to 870, the last setting I had before the artifacts, but I found the second time I was at this setting there were artifacts again. Every time I knocked it down 10mhz it was the same until I had it at stock level and still they were there. I have just restarted my pc and it is now fine again at 790/1100, no artifacts.

What did I do wrong, what is the best method for overclocking the card?

Thanks

Matt

Try this mate:

http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

 

[decrypt3r]

rivatuner!!! it lets u see gpu temp in ** tray also

 

[Greebo]

Could be a temperature issue or just general weirdness.

I did a similar thing with my watercooled 4870 but I was checking with ATI tool.

I kept upping the core every few minutes and I got it to 915Mhz before yellow dots appeared.

Backed it off but still kept getting yellow dots.

Eventually I had to back down to 839Mhz to get rid of the yellow dots.

Even from a cold boot, if I try and go above 839Mhz I get yellow dots straight away and at 890 the system hangs now.

I have no idea how I managed to get my card up to 915Mhz without errors and why it won't go anywhere close now.

Certainly not a heat issue on the core but maybe heat on the power regulators. Before the latest version of gpu-z and rivatuner which now shows those temps, I had no idea they were going way above 100C.

I suspect I may have broke something with the heat in my card and turned an exceptional overclocking card into a reasonable one.

 

[1kiwi]

Certainly not a heat issue on the core but maybe heat on the power regulators. Before the latest version of gpu-z and rivatuner which now shows those temps, I had no idea they were going way above 100C.

I was actually reading about this the other day mate as my PR's use to get up to 120 (part of the reason why i changed from a GPU to full cover block) - turns out these babys can handle allot of heat and are made to hover around these temps on load.

Have you tried flashing to another bios or something?

 

[HeX]

It is just a 'thing' with ATi cards.

You'll find once you clock them too far and you start getting artifacts you'll have to restart to get rid of them all.

Once you've restarted you'll prolly find you can clock it back upto 870 and it'll all be fine and dandy again