Is it wise to OC HD 5850 without Vcore change?

[RoutedScripter]

Basically a friend has gigabyte HD 5850 , and , he overclocked like the second day he got it , to 900Mhz core and 1100Mhz ram , with MSI afterburner , and he doesn't even have any knowledge with overclocking whatsoever , so he overclocked like 200MHZ right away before any help or check on websites if it's okay. Probably didn't do with Vcore voltage anything. And I saw u need to have 1.3Vcore to have 900/1100 i think.

I never used MSI Afterburner before , but well I suppose it changes the BIOS of the Gigabyte HD5850 or not ? Or is this program made for all ATI cards.

It's obviously a bypass of BIOS locked OC, the Catalyst allows for 75mhz OC on the core , which he claims it's "nothing" , it is small but it's better than nothing.

We all know that the limit is made for that because higher OC can potentiall kill the card , and Msi Afterburner seems to not show limits , he claims "i can oc with this program as much as i like" he actually takes this numbers for granted like the card could really go that high, omg , obviously you can go as high as u like until u find the limit your self haha. He claims 1200/1300 is too much? , but like 1150/1200 would be acceptable , he just throws numbers out like they are butter, he doesn't know the actual limit (neither do i yet) , he just has a smart ass.

GPU mhz is not the same as CPU , he doesn't have idea , and he thinks 200mhz is not alot, like a CPU , eh 400MHz is not a lot. I overclocked for a year, and had read over countless posts forums and whatever and , actually over a year i got my OC correct.

I am familiar with the Gigabyte EasyTune which was extremely unstable and useless program , is MSI afterburner one of those kind of programs, while people using it are just those who brag about their OC and actually don't know shit about it ?


You know how are these teens when they get a hold of new stuff they think they know a lot , basically he's so smart he said it can go to 1100MHZ core and 1200MHZ memory just like that , with cooling obviously on automatic. (which is crap, I always have it to 35-40% in HD4870 and that keeps it cool under 70C all the time, but 5800 have even more powerful fan)

How can I actually prove him he's doing it wrong , he doesn't believe a thing and says "these cards are so good they could be OCd to 1100/1200 right away" well they are good , but I think that KIND of OCing approach will not work anywhere.

Just if it works with the test, doesn't prove that's working , as small game crashes and simple freezes , weeks later , can show when it's unstable OC.

I don't really care ultimately , when it brokes he will have a lesson him self, but i don't want to see cards breaking for stupid reasons , and it wasn't so cheap here either.

 

[digibucc]

yeah 11 is a strech. I can get to 940/1200 on stock volts, and it runs stable but hot. so i keep it much lower.
the 58xx series memory clocks don't matter as much. you get better performance out of 933/933 than 899/1180 (from experience)
not that it is impossible , but it is so very unlikely that he is right. that being said, how can you prove it to him? let him try and fail... that's the only way i see...

edit: to answer the question in the title, yes it is plenty wise. different volts support a different range of frequencies. some with less heat and some with more. what i mean is , 1.15 volts doesn't just give you 940 core. it can also give you 900, 966, or any number of others. that means stock volts have a range too, and it is rarely if ever set as optimally high as it can go. this means you can OC on stock, and many times find a better running speed, with less or equal heat compared stock. so it really isn't a bad idea to test and see what seems best for you.

afterburner is awesome. I hate the gui really, I wish it looked like a normal app, instead of those stupid skins. I like ati tools layout, etc. but Afterburner works best for me, and can do everything from volts to clocks(duh) to fans, with profiles. it really is a good piece of software. never used easytune.

 

[erixx]

Afterburner is a very good app, for normal users or junkies

 

[RoutedScripter]

Well okay , thanks guys.

I suspected that memory overclock won't bring any more significant performance

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

I have seen it claimed that higher memory clocks can help with frames when using high antialiasing levels but have not seen numbers nor tested this myself...

Is his a reference model? If it is he is also able to raise the voltage with afterburner which almost definitely will allow 1100+ core clocks.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I have the Asus HD5850 DirectCU which has an excellent custom cooler, the downside is that it's non reference so afterburner won't work, the upside is that it has smartdoctor and therefore it's own voltage tweaks, I hav run it at 1050mhz on 1.3V and it runs fairly cool, I game at 1000mhz on 1.25v and it runs very cool at that. End of the day,voltage hikes just need sensible monitoring and keep within safe margins on reference cooling.

 

[Mr McC]

I have the Asus HD5850 DirectCU which has an excellent custom cooler, the downside is that it's non reference so afterburner won't work, the upside is that it has smartdoctor and therefore it's own voltage tweaks, I hav run it at 1050mhz on 1.3V and it runs fairly cool, I game at 1000mhz on 1.25v and it runs very cool at that. End of the day,voltage hikes just need sensible monitoring and keep within safe margins on reference cooling.

Very impressive.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Very impressive.

Thanks, everything has heatsinks on also (stock) and the fan provides airflow over them, I have mounted an antec spot cooler in the case to blow some extra air between the cooler shroud and PCB for more air over regulators etc just to be on the safe side.

 

[1Kurgan1]

1.3v sounds toasty to me, wonder if thats possible on the stock cooler, I was going to try 1.25v @ 1000mhz, now I might have to and keep an eye on temps.

 

[brandonwh64]

i could get 1000core and 1200mem on 1.2v but didnt try any lower

 

[RoutedScripter]

Okay , I had the info he had , he upped voltage on 1.2V , and had 900/1100 , that's more than 0.1 Voltage up , a 175Mhz core increase with 100mhz mem increase

Things like BFBC2 worked , and RUSE too , but Crysis on DX10 , taken the first mission aircraft intro scene and it froze the game in mere minute , weird green screen appeared when ATI VPU recover engaged probably, threw to desktop and crashed crysis , then the whole PC froze

I have an idea , i will not tell him , will set up the OC back , and let him play Crysis, just a matter of time hah.

Also I might be asking how u guys have OCs , nice posts , i am getting one of 5800 cards my self later this year.

Crysis it's definitely still the de facto PC benchmark (eager to see if Crysis 2 is it's successor(not a lot of good news in the graphics department)) , finds problems right away , he tested ith MSI afterburner integrated test i saw , or was that 3Dmark , of course those artificial tests did not found any problems.

 

[Mr McC]

he just has a smart ass.

Always wanted an intelligent donkey.

I have an idea , i will not tell him , will set up the OC back , and let him play Crysis, just a matter of time hah.

Are you sure this guy is your friend? Seriously, if you are aware that he is about to damage the card or his system don't let his bragging prevent you from warning him: knowledge is worthless unless it is shared.

 

[RejZoR]

I don't get it why would OC without voltage changing be bad in any way? We were overclocking without voltage control for years. If cooling is good, it doesn't really matter.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I don't get it why would OC without voltage changing be bad in any way? We were overclocking without voltage control for years. If cooling is good, it doesn't really matter.

^^ True Dat.... at the end of the day, we are positvely encouraged to add voltage, I mean, Asus advertise all their cards on the box as "voltage tweak", the reason I went with this Asus HD5850 (apart from the excellent cooler of course), is that it's warranty covers raising voltage..... smart Doctor allows voltage up to 1.35V and is warrantied to that level... although personally I would never go past 1.3V even on really good air.

 

[RoutedScripter]

Are you sure this guy is your friend? Seriously, if you are aware that he is about to damage the card or his system don't let his bragging prevent you from warning him: knowledge is worthless unless it is shared.

Yes , don't worry , actually he's my younger bro but i didn't want to mention before i was so pissed off. It's not a big deal about trust however, he just got Samsung T260HD LCD + HD 5850 , and you know how you feel for 2 days after u get a bombardment of new hardware like this for example A shift from 19inch and HD 2600XT , that's ... quite something.

Ofcourse I stand by , but i just showed him how his super fast OC was bad , but at first he insisted " i play BC2 i don't care about Crysis" (lol) well, actually after some time of testing (quite some time) we got onto a good stable OC with nice improvement with either no voltage increase or only to 1.100V , and tested always with Crysis Benchmark Tool , if the benchmark didn't even start it was a bad OC. So this got sorted out later the day so no panic anymore. (actually finished now at 1 AM lol)

So there was a lesson , how games like BC2 don't even seem to detect this hardware or I don't know how they bypass it , if it's a bad OC , it will hurt your GPU no matter of games crash/freeze or not imo. Or BC2 isn't powerfull enough like crysis , well that's the only explanation i see.

And let me tell u something btw, Crysis is actually a lot better game that I thought 2 years ago


EDIT: Is this true that OCing needs lowest temps possible, that when I run at for example 80Celsius it reaches for example 1000/1200 max , but if I had like 40Celsius it would reach higher than 1000/1200 max OC ?

 

[OnBoard]

EDIT: Is this true that OCing needs lowest temps possible, that when I run at for example 80Celsius it reaches for example 1000/1200 max , but if I had like 40Celsius it would reach higher than 1000/1200 max OC ?

Generally cooler card=higher overclock. Cooler card also equals lower voltage needed to reach some overclock and lower voltage means cooler card

GTX 200 series liked to be cool and lower temperature helped overclock, but HD 5000 series already runs so cool that it might not make a big difference.

Cooler card means you can use more voltage and that leads to better OC. (except with GTX 280 were more voltage didn't do anything, it reached same OC undervolted). In the end it comes to what you consider a safe temperature and that is what limits the OC. Like my i5, overclocks easily over 4GHz, but I keep it @ 3.6 as that's low voltage+low temp=good for 24/7.

 

[moriz]

typically, the steps you take to overclock something is to: 1) raise clocks until you've hit your ceiling 2) raise voltage and go back to 1), hopefully allowing you to hit a higher ceiliing, and 3) keep going as long as temperatures are acceptable.

so if your friend got lucky and gotten a golden chip that will actually do 1000/1100 stably with stock voltages, then all the power to him.

oh btw, all the vRAM modules on the 5800 series are rated for 1200 mhz, so tell your friend to set it to that and leave it there. unfortunately, those modules also won't go anywhere above 1200 mhz without losing stability. even worse is that the memory controllers on the 5000 series have error checking, which means that it won't show any artifacts; it would just start to lose performance.

 

[DarknRahl]

yeah 11 is a strech. I can get to 940/1200 on stock volts, and it runs stable but hot. so i keep it much lower.
the 58xx series memory clocks don't matter as much. you get better performance out of 933/933 than 899/1180 (from experience)

I have a Gigabyte 5850 OC edition. I get reliable performance at the exact same settings (940/1200) with no additional voltage. I can also go higher but I lose long term stability. Also when you run right on the edge of how far the card can go your performance often drops off in comparison to a slightly lower more reliable overclock.

Try and get your mate to do a little research online. I've been overclocking since I built my first computer that I purchased with my own money back in 2000, overclocked my AMD Duron 700 with a graphite pencil across the L1 or L2(?) bridge. I also had two FOP38 fans strapped to the heatsink plus another 13 system fans in various areas. I couldn't sleep with that computer on, it sounded like a helicopter every time you turned it on.

My point being I was a spotty 19 year old at the time and was safely overclocking stuff. You just need to educate yourself about what you're doing.