HIS 4850 IceQ overclocking

[mtbiker278]

I recently bought a HIS HD4850 IceQ car to replace my aging x1950pro. First off I can say this card is awesome. Out of the box it runs more than 2x faster compared to the old card. Temps are decent with the IceQ cooler (~43 idle, >60 load). I've created some CCC profiles to augment the fanspeed when playing games as well.

So far I've been using CCC to overclock the card to 700Mhz core and 1100Mhz memory. Games seem to run fine at this level. However I'm at a loss for determining the max OC on the card without this trial and error approach. One thing to note when I run the "test" function in CCC, the result comes back failed even at stock speeds. Not sure what's going on with that.

I tried using ATItool, and that just locked up on me. The CPU load bounced around from 50% up to 70%, which was weird for a "light utility". I haven't tried ATI traytools yet, or Riva tuner.

Has anyone had better luck with these other apps? Can anyone recommend a program aside from ATItool to scan for artifacts?

Thanks for the help,
Doug

 

[Monkeywoman]

Riva tuner is pretty sick. it works very well, in terms of artifact finding use atitool but not for overclocking, just for the spinning 3d cube.

 

[WarEagleAU]

ATI tool is actually pretty awesome for finding the max. I think the newest one supports the new hd4x series and has some nice code in it. W1zz would know more though. Rivatuner is more for tweaking and such but ATI tool and Overdrive are best.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Try rbe 1.15,i just injected the overdrive signature from a sapphire bios into mine and my limits are 800/1300 now.I love you bagzzlash

 

[SonDa5]

Did you get the "X" version?

The gddr3 ram on the "X" version is supposed to be Samsung and fast.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

I never,but my ram runs at at least 1150mhz fine.

 

[mtbiker278]

I finally resolved my issues by using the Beta versions of both ATItool and ATI tray tools. Both seem to support the HD4850 well, although on the ATI tray tools, the 3D rendering gives me a message about incorrect OpenGL versions and I need to update my driver (weird). It still works well for overclocking though. I used ATItool to scan for artifacts on my overclocks and here's what I have so far.

Volt: 1.158v, Core: 730Mhz, Memory: 1175Mhz

This was done with the fan set at 100% for good measure, I'll back the fan off once I reach some rock stable clocks. There were some visible artifacts while using the scan tool but they weren't counted.

A couple of things I've noticed is CCC will butt in a reset the video card if it thinks the card is not responding to driver commands. I'm not sure if this is a result of the 3rd party tools having control of the card, or if the clocks were just set too high. I'm going to guess the latter. Also, even though the card seemed stable when running the higher overclocks, when launching a game CCC center would again but in an reset the card. So far I've settled on 700Mhz core, and 1125Mhz Memory. Temps were stable at around 50C on load and about 37C idle with the fan at 100%.

Overall I'm happy with the card. Just to note again I have the non-turbo edition of the card. It comes witht he same reference clocks as the other standard cards, it just has the IceQ 4 cooler mounted along with the Samsung memory and 4-phase power design. I get the same perfomance as the Turbo-x edition, but 40 bucks cheaper.

 

[Tomzi]

I'd like to buy a 4850 card that's outfitted with Samsung memory chips, hoping that I'll be able to achieve better oc results than with the reference cards.

Do I see it correctly that all HIS ICEQ4 models have Samsung modules?

mtbiker278 mentions in the post above that he has a non-turbo model with Samsung chips.

As for other manufacturers, only oc'ed cards seems to have these chips and these cards usually cost about the same (around here) as the HIS Turbo(X) models therefore, it seems, the cheapest card with Samsung RAM would be the non-turbo ICEQ4 model.

I'd be grateful if someone would verify that all ICEQ4 cards have Samsung RAMs? Also, any insights on whether buying a more expensive (turbo) version would be a better option?

 

[SonDa5]

Overall I'm happy with the card. Just to note again I have the non-turbo edition of the card. It comes witht he same reference clocks as the other standard cards, it just has the IceQ 4 cooler mounted along with the Samsung memory and 4-phase power design. I get the same perfomance as the Turbo-x edition, but 40 bucks cheaper.

Are you sure?

I thought only the x edition had the Samsung memory.

 

[mtbiker278]

I'll pull out the card again and verify this, but from a manufacturing stand point it would be easier to build them with all the same memory and "Bin" them differently.

 

[Tomzi]

As far as I'm concerned, I don't need that info anymore. Though, I'm sure it'd interest others, however, whether there're Samsung RAMs on non-Turbo ICEQ4 models.

As for me, I've already bought another card, the Asus eah4850 rev. 2 with glaciator fan, exchanged that for a heavily discounted HR-03 GT and now I'm testing them happily. These two together cost me as much as the non-turbo ICEQ4 would have.

BTW my rev. 2 eah4850 has Samsung chips, overclocks to >790 / >1120 (need more testing, have had the card only for a day now), and temperatures are about 30 degrees C lower with HR-03 than with the Glaciator fan. Still I have to admit that the Glaciator was also practially silent, even at high rpm.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

My non samsung chips will bench at 1200

 

[mtbiker278]

If you can buy a HD4850 and an aftermarket cooler for cheaper than the HIS IceQ4 I would say go for it. Even the reference standard boards can overclock a good amount with additional cooling. I just liked buying the card/cooler as one package, but there is a small premium associated with that.

Other things to take into consideration is where you want the waste heat going, bundled goodies/software, some might even consider the bling factor (do you really need the gold plated DVI ports to match your chain?).

I'll pull the card tonight when I get a chance. I just need to find that tube of thermal grease I have somewhere...

 

[superfly]

Hi, im looking to pencil mod, but im stuck...

I have the HIS 4850 Turbo ICEQ4, but it dosnt seem to have the reference board?! its got the same memory component to pencil mod but for the GPU mod theres no component there, theres just a gap!!!

Does anyone know where this component has moved to and how to pencil mod this card?

So far i have managed to overclock using Ati Tray Tools with voltage of 1.158(1.2v) which gets me a core at 700 and mem at 1159 (so far) but i think im nearing my limit on the core so i really need to find how to pencil mod its voltage to get more!

I have a pencil and a voltmeter ready.

My cooling is good, and the card at its current overclocked load state never gets above 60 and idles at 38, so im not too scared of temps.

So the Questions:-
1) is there anyone else who has successfully pencil modded this card?
2) if i am able to mod the mem voltage, what limit should i aim for, it dosnt say in the guide?
3) when volted to the max, what core/mem could i expect...750/1250???

Thanks, any advice is welcome and appreciated.

 

[kajson]

how do you guys even know about the samsung memory at all, i cant find anything on that anywhere, the HIS website itself only shows different OC speeds, I was planning on ordering a normal 4850 iceq4 tonight, but I'd like to know for sure if they all have the same memory or if the X one has an upgraded version...

tnx in advance

 

[mtbiker278]

No Samsung memory for Non-turbo... :-(

Well I got a chance to pull off the cooler and see what exactly was under the card. Sure enough there was an RV770, and the 4 phase power design , but no samsung memory chips. Instead I found Qimonda memory modules .

I was kind of surprised, but then reassured since I haven't been able to achieve as high a stable overclock as I had hope. This could potentially be the culprit. However, with that said I'm still able to reach the factory clocks of the Turbo-X edition.

As for knowing about the Samsung memory, Techpowerup's Wiz did a review of the Turbo-X version and stated the memory to be Samsung (pics too). I'm sure there are other reviews that do similar removals of the cooler to verify the memory modules.

 

[SANEagent]

Hi, im looking to pencil mod, but im stuck...

I have the HIS 4850 Turbo ICEQ4, but it dosnt seem to have the reference board?! its got the same memory component to pencil mod but for the GPU mod theres no component there, theres just a gap!!!

Does anyone know where this component has moved to and how to pencil mod this card?

So far i have managed to overclock using Ati Tray Tools with voltage of 1.158(1.2v) which gets me a core at 700 and mem at 1159 (so far) but i think im nearing my limit on the core so i really need to find how to pencil mod its voltage to get more!

I have a pencil and a voltmeter ready.

My cooling is good, and the card at its current overclocked load state never gets above 60 and idles at 38, so im not too scared of temps.

So the Questions:-
1) is there anyone else who has successfully pencil modded this card?
2) if i am able to mod the mem voltage, what limit should i aim for, it dosnt say in the guide?
3) when volted to the max, what core/mem could i expect...750/1250???

Thanks, any advice is welcome and appreciated.

Im not sure about getting 750/1250, but with my HD4850 toxic I am able to get 749/1240 which is close to that. And I just did the low level pencil mod, not the max one.

Good luck in finding someone who has done that with the card you have.