The Radeon 7850 is an overclocking beast

Page 28 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Soulkeeper

Diamond Member
Nov 23, 2001
6,713
142
106
my diamond 7850 has a hard limit on voltage at 1.225
the bios/drivers won't allow higher
 

Don Karnage

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2011
2,865
0
0
1) Would you consider a stock 670 a good upgrade to the 460? Since that seems to be what some people are getting close to..

2) Probably not binned any better.. Now, maybe the OC version has a better PCB, VRMs, cooling.. Which might be worth it.

670 is overkill for his resolution
 

Freddy1765

Senior member
May 3, 2011
389
1
81
2. I'm not sure if the OC version of the Sapphire is binned any better than the stock one. Its only $10 more though. Think its worth it?

Cooling wise non-oc is identical to oc version, and I really doubt they'd change any of the components for a $10 premium. Whether the chip quality is worse is impossible to figure out, but its most likely luck of the draw as with anything else.
I will say though, that I wanted the OC version initially for basically the same reasons you mention (illogical, sure, but its a rather modest sum), but it wasn't in stock here, so ordered non-oc instead, still waiting for it.
 

jmgamer

Member
Mar 16, 2012
36
0
0
1. Is an HD 7850 a decent upgrade from an OC'd GTX 460 like mine? I will OC the HD 7850 as well. I do only game at 1680x1050, but like to max quality settings if I can.

2. I'm not sure if the OC version of the Sapphire is binned any better than the stock one. Its only $10 more though. Think its worth it?

Dunno how fast the gtx 460 is, but a 7850 should handle that resolution very well. I ordered a non-OC Sapphire version to save $10, so you know my stance on that.
 

buklau

Member
May 4, 2012
135
0
76
I came from a GTX460 1gb MSI cyclone and I can tell you that the radeon 7850 was a nice upgrade from that. Not only it consume less power, but the card itself is much more quiet. My corsair cx400 power supply usually will spin up during starcraft 2 with GTX460 810/1620/4000, but now it doesn't with the new 7850 1050/5800 and everything stays quiet.

I still can't seem to keep my fps up even with increased power limit +20% (max sapphire trixx allows) as soon as I go pass 1.150v. My fps will drop back to stock 870/4840 level stock level. The best I can do is 1100mhz core 5800mhz memory @ 1.15v. Maybe I can try and fix the issue with BIOS mod?
 

Leyawiin

Diamond Member
Nov 11, 2008
3,204
52
91
Thanks for the tips guys - got the OC Edition on order. Had some Amazon credit card points so it was $228 after those. First Radeon since an X850 XT - hope I like it!
 

Freddy1765

Senior member
May 3, 2011
389
1
81
I still can't seem to keep my fps up even with increased power limit +20% (max sapphire trixx allows) as soon as I go pass 1.150v. My fps will drop back to stock 870/4840 level stock level. The best I can do is 1100mhz core 5800mhz memory @ 1.15v. Maybe I can try and fix the issue with BIOS mod?

Could it be your power supply? If it's only 400W thats definitely on the low side, even for a modest power consumer like the 7850. I know AMD recommends a 500W one, but of course it depends on the amperage on your 12volt rail and stuff.. Just a thought.
 

Soulkeeper

Diamond Member
Nov 23, 2001
6,713
142
106
I'm using a quality 400W gold psu here
It seems to be just enough for my system (modest cpu and addons).
I overclocked my cpu to 3.7GHz and vid to 1100/1250 and I pull a bit over 300W from the wall max load. With everything stock it's closer to 200W under load.
I was unable to get my system fully stable with such high overclocks either psu and/or heat.

I'd imagine an i7 or x6 would easily drown a 400W when coupled with the 7850
 
Last edited:

Don Karnage

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2011
2,865
0
0
I'm using a quality 400W gold psu here
It seems to be just enough for my system (modest cpu and addons).
I overclocked my cpu to 3.7GHz and vid to 1100/1250 and I pull a bit over 300W from the wall max load. With everything stock it's closer to 200W under load.
I was unable to get my system fully stable with such high overclocks either psu and/or heat.

I'd imagine an i7 or x6 would easily drown a 400W when coupled with the 7850

3570k would work with that psu. X6 would blow it up

 

Freddy1765

Senior member
May 3, 2011
389
1
81
Makes me wonder if my PSU is up to snuff.. 408W on the 12v rail, 2500k @ 4.0. Should handle an OC'ed 7850 shouldn't it?
 

Soulkeeper

Diamond Member
Nov 23, 2001
6,713
142
106
Makes me wonder if my PSU is up to snuff.. 408W on the 12v rail, 2500k @ 4.0. Should handle an OC'ed 7850 shouldn't it?

considering that the stock 7850 pulls around 130W (almost/entirely from 12v rail) your overclock might be limited
 

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
5
76
Makes me wonder if my PSU is up to snuff.. 408W on the 12v rail, 2500k @ 4.0. Should handle an OC'ed 7850 shouldn't it?

How many watts does a 2500k @ 4.0 draw at peak all by itself? I have no idea since I was stuck on AMD's platform for so long, but I'm pretty sure it's at or below 200W. That would leave you at least 200W and probably more, for the 7850 which is plenty for oc'ing. According to http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/24.html the card maxes out at 101W at stock. Even with moderate overvolting and a big overclock, I doubt it would literally double that peak draw.

All of this assumes you don't have some other huge energy gobblers on the 12V rail, which I think is a good assumption... usually CPU + GPU energy usage dwarfs everything else.

Btw Don that bit-tech chart is for system power draw at the wall (so PSU efficiency needs to be accounted for): "However, for the power consumption tests we re-enable everything in order to get a real-world power draw. The power draw is measured via a power meter at the wall, so the numbers below are of total system power draw from the mains, not the power consumption of a CPU itself. Measuring the power draw of any individual component in a PC is tricky to impossible to acheive."

I don't know if they left iGPU on or not. If they left it on, then the chart will slightly exaggerate CPU power usage for those of us who ordinarily disable iGPUs. This is in addition to the wattage you need to deduct to account for less-than-100% PSU efficiency.
 
Last edited:

Freddy1765

Senior member
May 3, 2011
389
1
81
No clue how much it draws, but I doubt it's anywhere close to 200. Doesn't TDP say anything about how many watts it requires?
 

AlucardX

Senior member
May 20, 2000
647
0
76
just had a random reboot, pc has been on and not under any load all day :|

has never happened before on this box and it's not leaving a windows crash dump.

shouldn't be PSU. i have a 650w Antec and this card uses probably less idle power than my old 5770.

and, if it has been mostly idle all weekend without any reboots, then it shouldn't be CPU or GPU's idle voltage level.

guess this leaves ati drivers maybe?
 

SickBeast

Lifer
Jul 21, 2000
14,377
19
81
just had a random reboot, pc has been on and not under any load all day :|

has never happened before on this box and it's not leaving a windows crash dump.

shouldn't be PSU. i have a 650w Antec and this card uses probably less idle power than my old 5770.

and, if it has been mostly idle all weekend without any reboots, then it shouldn't be CPU or GPU's idle voltage level.

guess this leaves ati drivers maybe?
My driver was crashing when I had my memory overclocked too high.
 

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
5
76
No clue how much it draws, but I doubt it's anywhere close to 200. Doesn't TDP say anything about how many watts it requires?

TDP can give you a clue about how much thermal energy needs to be dissipated for a part--a guideline for how much cooling is necessary. TDP is not going to be lower than the actual average power draw though peaks can go higher. And with overvolting and overclocking, power draw can be much more than TDP.

Given the above, let's begin:

A 2500K's TDP is 95W: http://ark.intel.com/products/52210

According to this, the entire system draws just over 200W for a 2500K clocked at 4.6GHz, which is far higher than 4GHz and doesn't account for PSU inefficiency. http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/zardon/power-consumption-fx-8150-v-i5-2500k-v-i7-2600k/ (Also, Don's bit-tech link showed the entire rig drawing 161W for the stock 2500K at load.)

Given that a mobo, RAM, fans, etc. will eat a decent amount, plus the PSU inefficiency thing, plus the fact that 4.6GHz probably means a higher voltage, PLUS the overclock, and given that at stock a 2500K's TDP is 95W, and given the bit-tech and Kitguru graphs that imply that the rest of the system is drawing something like 40W (you can actually get some good info on non-CPU/GPU power draw in this review: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/pcs/2010/02/24/energy-efficient-hardware-investigated/8), I am going to guesstimate that a 2500K@4GHz will have a peak power draw of about 120W, or 10 amps on the 12V rail, for normal programs, maybe a little higher when running LinX.

And I already outlined why the 7850 is very unlikely to draw anywhere near 200W peak even with a high overclock, though if you did something crazy like 1.3 watts and 1.4GHz with liquid nitrogen or something then yeah, maybe.

Plus it's unlikely that the CPU and GPU would peak at exactly the same time so you can't just add two peaks together; realistically their combined peak will be a little less than that.

So I'd estimate that the combined peak load of a 2500K@4GHz and a 7850 at, say, 1200core/5000memory or something like that would be about 300 watts at absolute most (peak + peak, both running stuff like LinX and Furmark). Which is well within what you said your PSU could sustain on the 12V rail, though if it's a cheap PSU then they often exaggerate what their max sustained load is.
 
Last edited:

Freddy1765

Senior member
May 3, 2011
389
1
81
Wow, that's very comprehensive, thanks for clarifying!
I'll put my fears to rest and look forward to the over clocking begins later today

**Update**
Finally got my card, Sapphire non-oc. Stock volts are really high at 1210mv, I hope it'll be possible to down-volt it once I've settled on a clock. Currently running Heaven 3.0 @ 1225 / 1400 (score 1265, is that terrible? Pretty sure I've seen loads of card getting 1400ish in the OCUK thread). The benchmark only uses like 800MB of VRAM, is that normal? Also running in windowed mode so i can have GPUZ on top of the Heaven window, does that affect performance?
Temps have yet to rise above 66C, fan speed at 38-39% under load.
I'm getting coil whine when i quit the benchmark, disappears after the credits when the window closes.

**Update again!**
I completed 1225/1400 in windowed mode, then tried running it fullscreen where it crashed like 3 minutes in. I guess windowed mode does affect performance. Is there no way to have a temp overlay while in fullscreen?
 
Last edited:

AlucardX

Senior member
May 20, 2000
647
0
76
Wow, that's very comprehensive, thanks for clarifying!
I'll put my fears to rest and look forward to the over clocking begins later today

**Update**
Finally got my card, Sapphire non-oc. Stock volts are really high at 1210mv, I hope it'll be possible to down-volt it once I've settled on a clock. Currently running Heaven 3.0 @ 1225 / 1400 (score 1265, is that terrible? Pretty sure I've seen loads of card getting 1400ish in the OCUK thread). The benchmark only uses like 800MB of VRAM, is that normal? Also running in windowed mode so i can have GPUZ on top of the Heaven window, does that affect performance?
Temps have yet to rise above 66C, fan speed at 38-39% under load.
I'm getting coil whine when i quit the benchmark, disappears after the credits when the window closes.

**Update again!**
I completed 1225/1400 in windowed mode, then tried running it fullscreen where it crashed like 3 minutes in. I guess windowed mode does affect performance. Is there no way to have a temp overlay while in fullscreen?

I wouldn't worry so much about having to monitor the temp in real time. just run the benchmarks in fullscreen. if you're worried about your card overheating it will take care of itself. there's thermal shutdown somewhere around 90C I think, and your fan's auto profile will crank itself up anyways if it's really hot.
 
sale-70-410-exam    | Exam-200-125-pdf    | we-sale-70-410-exam    | hot-sale-70-410-exam    | Latest-exam-700-603-Dumps    | Dumps-98-363-exams-date    | Certs-200-125-date    | Dumps-300-075-exams-date    | hot-sale-book-C8010-726-book    | Hot-Sale-200-310-Exam    | Exam-Description-200-310-dumps?    | hot-sale-book-200-125-book    | Latest-Updated-300-209-Exam    | Dumps-210-260-exams-date    | Download-200-125-Exam-PDF    | Exam-Description-300-101-dumps    | Certs-300-101-date    | Hot-Sale-300-075-Exam    | Latest-exam-200-125-Dumps    | Exam-Description-200-125-dumps    | Latest-Updated-300-075-Exam    | hot-sale-book-210-260-book    | Dumps-200-901-exams-date    | Certs-200-901-date    | Latest-exam-1Z0-062-Dumps    | Hot-Sale-1Z0-062-Exam    | Certs-CSSLP-date    | 100%-Pass-70-383-Exams    | Latest-JN0-360-real-exam-questions    | 100%-Pass-4A0-100-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-300-135-exams-date    | Passed-200-105-Tech-Exams    | Latest-Updated-200-310-Exam    | Download-300-070-Exam-PDF    | Hot-Sale-JN0-360-Exam    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Exams    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-JN0-360-exams-date    | Exam-Description-1Z0-876-dumps    | Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps    | Dumps-HPE0-Y53-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-HPE0-Y53-Exam    | 100%-Pass-HPE0-Y53-Real-Exam-Questions    | Pass-4A0-100-Exam    | Latest-4A0-100-Questions    | Dumps-98-365-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-98-365-Exam    | 100%-Pass-VCS-254-Exams    | 2017-Latest-VCS-273-Exam    | Dumps-200-355-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-300-320-Exam    | Pass-300-101-Exam    | 100%-Pass-300-115-Exams    |
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    | http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    |