HD6850/HD6870 Overclocking thread

[blastingcap]

sweet. So i can have Trixx take care of the O/Cing instead of CCC?

yep

 

[JM Popaleetus]

I'm hoping to match Anandtech's numbers of 940/1150 and calling it a day.

 

[Skurge]

I was gonna get a 6870 and not bother overclocking, but boy have they priced it high here. So I'll be getting a 6850 on Monday or Tuesday and overclocking to 850. Should be a nice upgrade to my 4870.

So, ill be OK with CCC right?

 

[WaTaGuMp]

I was gonna get a 6870 and not bother overclocking, but boy have they priced it high here. So I'll be getting a 6850 on Monday or Tuesday and overclocking to 850. Should be a nice upgrade to my 4870.

So, ill be OK with CCC right?

850 should be fine using the CCC.

 

[Rhezuss]

How OCCT works?

You let it run for 1 hour and come back to see the results?

 

[blastingcap]

How OCCT works?

You let it run for 1 hour and come back to see the results?

I go for 90 minutes, but an hour is long enough. It will say during the test (and again, at the end) how many errors happened. You should also monitor temperatures for at least 10 minutes before leaving for the next 50 minutes, because anything over, say, 90C is kinda unhealthy for a GPU. I freak out at 80C but I'm conservative like that.

 

[JM Popaleetus]

Well, going by visual anomalies in OCCT, my cards have max memory clock of 1140. Seeing that Anand could only get 1150, I'd say this seems about right.

Going to work on the core clocks tomorrow. Furthermore, I have decided that I am going to go as high as I can on stock voltage.

 

[vshin]

I have an ASUS 6850 and currently have my OC set at 920 MHz core and 1150 MHz mem at 1.168v (+0.02). I tried pushing it to 940 MHz but it crashed after an hour of continuous benchmarking. I think I can hit 940 stable if I bump the voltage to 1.172v like in the roundup article but I prefer to keep the card running silent (quieter than the CPU fan).

In 3DMARK Vantage, my GPU score rose from around 12500 to 15000, which is about a 20% increase. Doesn't translate to a 20% increase in real gaming benchmarks but it's still a noticeable upgrade from my trusty old 4870.

 

[JM Popaleetus]

It seems that this is as high as I can get on stock voltage:

880/1140

Not bad at all actually. Gonna do a series of 1hr torture tests to make sure it's 24/7 stable.

EDIT: To get 24/7 I had to go down to 860...right in line with Anand's article.

 

[nOOky]

19,992 in 3DMARK whatever that means lol.

 

[betasub]

^ And which 3DMark would that be?

 

[nOOky]

^ And which 3DMark would that be?

06

 

[flopper]

I run 2 6850 at 940/1150mhz and its been flawless since day1.

could likely run a few mhz higher, but runs games just fine for me.

 

[Deanodarlo]

OCCT and Furmark are good for checking your worst case scenario temps, but I wouldn't run it longer than say 3 minutes at a time. It's an artificial load, and unnecessarily strains your graphics card and voltage reg. Running hours at a time doesn't sound healthy to me.

Plus, I have many times seen a card perfectly stable in both these tests, including the OCCT memory test, only to crash out in certain games on high settings. Turns out to be ram or core set too high. These tests do not simulate gaming for the GPU, just max load which would never occur in real life use.

Do your card and yourself a favour - download the Lost Planet 2 benchmark. Run it at max settings, resolution and AA and go for test A then test B. Run it a few times. I guarantee if your card is unstable, it will crash and you're not ragging the card at a max artificial load - your using it as intended.

 

[betasub]

19,992 in 3DMARK 06

~20K in default 3dM06 is pretty good for a dual-core: those big overclocks on both CPU & GPU are getting you somewhere

 

[nOOky]

Very true. I ran 3dmark06 again after I installed the 10.12 driver. I got 15,590. I had a wtf moment and discovered my cpu overclock had reverted back to stock speeds. Setting it back netted me another 19,xxx score so the new video drivers didn't really affect the score in my case.

 

[daniellis89]

Sapphire 6850 W/ Sapphire Stock Cooler
Max Using Trixxxxxxxx
@Stock Voltage:900-1150
@1.15v: 960-1150
@1.17v: 1000-1150
@1.22v: 1050-1150

I haven't messed with the clocks at upper voltage limits much since I don't want to stress my motherboard too much (might lock it to 75W and see what happens ) I know I have done a furmark bench in the past at 1150-1150 at 1.22v but it was 5% slower than 1100 which was hardly faster than 1000. I love the stock cooler my card came with, and the custom PCB (shorter than reference).

I'll get screenshots posted once I get home. I use a custom fan profile that kicks in 100% at 70C+ so temps never go over 70C, not even in Fur Mark. I will be experimenting with better memory cooling to see if I can bring the memory up to 1200 stable since I feel like that is the only way to get this thing pushing more frames.

Lastly, for you all that play BFBC2, turn off bloom in the settings.ini(?) in My Documents\BFBC2, and turn of HSAO/HBAO as it really does nothing. In fact, everyone should always turn HDR/Bloom off. It murders perf and washes everything out real bad.

 

[happy medium]

Sapphire 6850 W/ Sapphire Stock Cooler
Max Using Trixxxxxxxx
@Stock Voltage:900-1150
@1.15v: 960-1150
@1.17v: 1000-1150
@1.22v: 1050-1150I haven't messed with the clocks at upper voltage limits much since I don't want to stress my motherboard too much (might lock it to 75W and see what happens ) I know I have done a furmark bench in the past at 1150-1150 at 1.22v but it was 5% slower than 1100 which was hardly faster than 1000. I love the stock cooler my card came with, and the custom PCB (shorter than reference).

I'll get screenshots posted once I get home. I use a custom fan profile that kicks in 100% at 70C+ so temps never go over 70C, not even in Fur Mark. I will be experimenting with better memory cooling to see if I can bring the memory up to 1200 stable since I feel like that is the only way to get this thing pushing more frames.

Lastly, for you all that play BFBC2, turn off bloom in the settings.ini(?) in My Documents\BFBC2, and turn of HSAO/HBAO as it really does nothing. In fact, everyone should always turn HDR/Bloom off. It murders perf and washes everything out real bad.

This is confusing me a bit I think.
So your card can do 1150 at stock voltage? Then you upped the voltage?
please explain and welcome to the forums.

 

[Skurge]

This is confusing me a bit I think.
So your card can do 1150 at stock voltage? Then you upped the voltage?
please explain and welcome to the forums.

Thats the memory I think.

 

[happy medium]

Thats the memory I think.

Oh I see now thanks Skurge.
Wonder why he is losing performance above 1000 core?

 

[Skurge]

Oh I see now thanks Skurge.
Wonder why he is losing performance above 1000 core?

Well, you can rule out Thermal Throttling as the card stays under 70c.

 

[happy medium]

Well, you can rule out Thermal Throttling as the card stays under 70c.

Mabe furmark sucks?

 

[Castiel]

 

[happy medium]

Your highly overclocked i5 760 quad core with a 6870 @ 1085 core clock gets beat by a e8400 and a 6870 @ 1000 core?
That don't make sense.

 

[RavenSEAL]