XFX 5850 memory overclocking advice needed please :)

[razer1978]

I've just started really trying to push this card to see what it can do, i have fitted ram sinks (had to mod one of them as the heat pipe go's directly over one of the ram chips) and moved the card to the bottom slot in the case because there is better air-flow (2* 140mm fan's built into my desk blowing cool air through the bottom of my HAF) it's only running @8x PCI-e but haven't noticed any drop in performance (only tried GTA4 so far)

i currently have the core @ 777 and the memory @ 1100 i can't increase the V's because the board has no support for this so what sort of limit can i expect to reach safely? i'm getting 35'c idle and 69'c fully loaded with OC profiles on afterburner 1.61 and enabled unofficial OC in cfg file

would also like to hear from others with the same board as mine (it's the AVP version with the centre mounted non full cover HS+Fan like the black edition one) and other makes also would also like to hear what sort of cooling you guys are running on these boards if you've upgraded as i'm thinking about doing the same soon

 

[Alfizzle]

is it the xfx 5850 with the egg shaped cooler?

 

[Jayster]

I believe this is your card here
That will give you the sort of max you are looking at although you could probably push the mem further since you installed heatsinks on them.

 

[Devrij]

I have the reference cooler, but I'm running 870/1200 @stock volts and getting about 64C max during games (usually around 60C), but haven't bothered running furmark or anything of that sort because it'd probably get pretty toasty.

 

[razer1978]

is it the xfx 5850 with the egg shaped cooler?

yeah that's the one mate

I believe this is your card here
That will give you the sort of max you are looking at although you could probably push the mem further since you installed heatsinks on them.

the cooler looks exactly the same but my card is the 5850, would be nice to reach 900MHz i must admit but would using a 8x slot hinder performance at that speed or will it be OK? also anyone know what the thermal limit is for these cards? i've had it upto about 78'c when i was testing an old 8600gts to see if it would work for Physx but didn't, the last thing i want to do is melt my new card

 

[lukext]

I got to 850/1150 at stock volts. I think 900MHz is going to need a bit of a voltage bump unfortunately.

 

[Alfizzle]

i have been running it maxed out in ati overdrive, with no problems.

i have tried 830/1210and that seemed ok.

i wouldnt worry about messing your card up, xfx actually dont mind overclocking so you would be fine to get it swapped under warranty.

one thing i did was take the cooler off, changed the termal paste ( it was really slapped on there) also i took off the plastic egg shaped thing + added ram heatsinks.

its improved my temps im at 32c idle now

if you had the reference 5850 (which i was hoping i would get), you could have flashed it with a asus 5870 bios.

 

[razer1978]

I got to 850/1150 at stock volts. I think 900MHz is going to need a bit of a voltage bump unfortunately.

850 sounds good enough to me

i have been running it maxed out in ati overdrive, with no problems.

i have tried 830/1210and that seemed ok.

i wouldnt worry about messing your card up, xfx actually dont mind overclocking so you would be fine to get it swapped under warranty.

one thing i did was take the cooler off, changed the termal paste ( it was really slapped on there) also i took off the plastic egg shaped thing + added ram heatsinks.

its improved my temps im at 32c idle now

if you had the reference 5850 (which i was hoping i would get), you could have flashed it with a asus 5870 bios.

yeah i know i just really wanted a 5850 card and about 2 month's ago there was an offer from someone else for the card i have for £200 and i could pay with paypal so made it easy to sell my old card and a few other bits to pay for the new one, otherwise i could never afforded it with money being so tight right now, normally i would do a couple of weeks research to get the best card for the money but it was a limited offer so just went for it and i'm very happy with my choice a reference card would have been cool but it's not the end of the world especially if i can overclock it to 800 ish core and 1200 ish ram i'll be well happy

so how much difference did removing the plastic shield make? what's your loaded temp playing games ect did it make a marked difference i was thinking about changing the cooler but if simple changes like ram sinks (that i have) and removing the plastic from the card make a big difference then i might same up the money as i've been thinking about changing the cooling on my CPU

one last thing, when you removed the cooler was the base totally smooth? the one on mine isn't and if i'm keeping it i think i will lap it, the paste on mine looked like it was just slapped on as well but then that go's for every graphics card i've bought i usually end up having to clean it off and renew it with OCZ or AS5