How to overclock my 3850 beyond the driver's limit

[15th Warlock]

Hi, I dunno if this has been asked before, but I've been looking for an answer to this question for a long time without any luck.

The thing is I have an AGP HD3850, and I use the CCC's overdrive to OC the card, but the limit is 720Mhz for the core and 950Mhz for the mem.

I've tried using many utilities to OC my card beyond the driver's limit: Atitool, Ati traytools, Powerstrip, Riva Tuner, all to no avail, everytime I try to set a new clock the sliders simply go back to the default 2D clocks.

I currently use the drivers that came with my card, which I think are based on the Cat. 8.1 release. AMD has been unable to provide any official support for my card in any of the more recent driver releases.

Is there any way I can OC my card beyond the driver's limit?

 

[gR3iF]

You could try to flash the card with another Bios. But I dont know if the card uses a pcie bios and the bridge Chip is doing the rest.

 

[15th Warlock]

You could try to flash the card with another Bios. But I dont know if the card uses a pcie bios and the bridge Chip is doing the rest.

You mean I should edit my current card's BIOS to higher clocks and flash it with the new BIOS? I've been thinking about it, but how can I safely test the new clocks before flashing my card?

 

[BrooksyX]

You mean I should edit my current card's BIOS to higher clocks and flash it with the new BIOS? I've been thinking about it, but how can I safely test the new clocks before flashing my card?

No he means flash it with a different Bios that is unlocked and will allow you to overclock it more. Some of 38XX series cards have bios that prevent any high overclocks.

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

You should flash the BIOS, but know alos that you will require more volts via a pencil-mod or hard-mod.

Check here. eva2000's HIS Iceq3 Turbo BIOS will unlock to 900 Core/1100 Mem.

 

[15th Warlock]

Thanks for your replies, I'll look for an unlocked BIOS for my card, as Grief mentioned, it could be dangerous if I use a PCIe BIOS. I always thought this was a driver limitation, but didn't realize the BIOS is locked on this cards to a certain OC limit

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Whoops! Neglected to see the AGP part!

Anyhoo, here is your Catalyst 8.3 AGP support!

 

[15th Warlock]

Whoops! Neglected to see the AGP part!

Anyhoo, here is your Catalyst 8.3 AGP support!

Thank you! much appreciated, downloading as I type

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Not a problem. I was well served by your Oblivion thread contributions!

 

[DaedalusHelios]

Use ATBedit and WinFlash. The edit utility allows you to set your volts really high already. I am not sure if higher than it supports would be very safe. I believe thats what killed DanishDevil's HD 3870.

I might have spelled the edit utility wrong though. I would check but that pc is not with me right now.


Above 850Mhz core gives me to much heat, and I use a VF900. You are using a VF900 aswell.

I could edit the AGP bios for that card to my OC settings, if you want me to. I won't change your idle or boot up clocks and voltage. I only change the 3d,UVD, and 2d clocks with their respective voltages to be on the safe side.

The 3d and UVD are locked to be the same in the bios. In other words, you OC one and the other follows with the same OC.

PM me if you want me to edit the bios for you, and set everything up.

 

[15th Warlock]

Here's my BIOS, just remove the .zip from the file's name:

View attachment Sapphire RV670 AGP.bin.zip

PM sent

 

[DaedalusHelios]

Bios editor cannot read it. The toolkit I sent you will show you aswell.

Try backing it up through the ATI Winflash I sent you. Then use ATB edit that I sent you to see if you can Open it after you back it up with Winflash.

If I tried editing it by hand(without the editing program) it still might work. I feel its to risky for that method, unless you wouldn't mind an RMA lol. I wouldn't bet my cards on it but if you are feeling lucky I could try.

We would know quickly if it worked or not. I wouldn't be able to adjust shaders or voltage, but I could possibly alter the Bios to have your current OC as the default, giving you more room on your sliders in Overdrive.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

I haven't played BF2142 in a little over a year. I made three accounts with all the unlocks. One of my accounts was under my name DaedalusHelios.

I got tired of everybody saying I was cheating.

He is a h4X0R blah blah blah

I had all the unlocks, like a month after it was released on one of my accounts.
To many hours played in such a short amount of time.

 

[Gump]

15thWarlock
Could you post a 3DMark 06 run with that setup?
I have been incorporating 3DM 06 Results from ORB into a chart, but want to check to see if my trendline is accurate. Due to ORB's less than reliable reading of GPU and Mem clocks I have been manually editing out results that diverge too far from the average. Still, I believe the vast majority of my samples have moderate to high OCs. Also, I cannot filter those results to AGP vs PCIe.

Here's what I have so far.

 

[15th Warlock]

Awesome news, now RivaTuner 2.08 supports low level overclocking for my card!!

No need for BIOS editing, at least for now, thanks for your help Daedalus, and everyone else who replied to my thread.

My card is running at 780Mhz for the core and 1000Mhz for the memory, and is as stable as a building with horses in it!

Gump, my new 3DMark06 score with video card OC, and proc at stock clocks (till I get a new Zalman cooler for it) @ 1280x1024 is

11,114!!!

EDIT: Here my result's details:

Main test results
3DMark Score 11114 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 4342
SM 3.0 Score 4848
CPU Score 3755

 

[Gump]

Thanks

I took out a couple more "out of range" readings and you are within 200 Marks of the trendline. Not at all bad...guess PCIe hasn't really separated itself from AGP --yet.

This also tells me that the Hybrid Motherboard you have is still an excellent option for those of us doing the incremmental upgrade.

Current:


In case you are wordering, the Total 3DMark Score does intersect the Sum of the 2 Graphics scores at 1013.5 CPU Marks ... if you have an [older] CPU scoring less than 1013.5 then your total 3DMark 06 score will be less than the sum of your 2 graphics scores.

 

[15th Warlock]

Nice graphic you have there Gump!

I think this proves that at least, mid range PCIe cards are not saturating the 8x AGP bus yet, and yes, I think you're right when you say this mobo is good for an incremental upgrade Dunno how much of an impact using good ol' DDR would have on performance though...