5970 OC (is what ive done safe)

[abbalinos]

hello everyone,

i just OCed my 5970 through ccc. i went from 725 clock speed to 800 and upped the memory from 1000 to 1100.

i played Age of Conan all last nite without any problem, GPU temperature is ranging from 62-68.

is what i ve done safe? im no OC expert so i thought id ask the community's opinion. and if so can what are the safe limits of OC my card has?

thx for your time.

regards,

 

[welshmousepk]

well, i would stress test before doing anything else, make sure you are stable at those clocks.

but yes, the chip can easily reach 1000 core and 1300 mem. so you should be fine.

 

[abbalinos]

thx for ur fast reply Welsh

 

[welshmousepk]

no problem.

 

[fisshy]

as Welsh Says Yes those are safe. but the question is why would you Oc a 5970?

Im not having a go at you but its kinda pointless mate. its the best card on the market. Ocing it is just gonna push your temps up

On watercooling i've seen 5970's @ 1200Mhz And 1500Mhz (GPU/Ram) Brilliantly Fast And uber Cool but still pointless...

Good luck

 

[welshmousepk]

as Welsh Says Yes those are safe. but the question is why would you Oc a 5970?

Im not having a go at you but its kinda pointless mate. its the best card on the market. Ocing it is just gonna push your temps up

On watercooling i've seen 5970's @ 1200Mhz And 1500Mhz (GPU/Ram) Brilliantly Fast And uber Cool but still pointless...

Good luck

not true at all, even a 5970 cant max metro 2033 or crysis and get consistently +60fps. not until overclocked.

plus he could be playing at eyefinity resolutions.

either way, the card id designed for overclocking, so why not get some more frames out of it?

 

[fisshy]

LOL, Ok... yes. i agree im an OCer myself. its just seems pointless unless you are doing something extreme like what you are talking about??? (which would have been nice to know)

 

[abbalinos]

well like i said guys, im playing age of conan on DX10 which is not fully optimized yet, so im trying to bump my fps a little

thank you both for your answers

 

[fisshy]

Don't mention it, its all good

 

[rofl_my_waffle]

The 5970 is actually not that impressive. Fastest card on the market by far but that doesn't make it adequate. It doesn't even max settings for new DX11 games or Crysis which is DX10. For competitive online games like Bad Company 2, minimum frames is a better measurement of playability and the card really struggles on high settings. Having erratic FPS even for the slighest moment can get you killed in close quaters. The card can only manage about 2x AA on Bad Company 2 with HBAO off.

Overclocking it would help. If you are worried about heat, then try to get the most performance you can get without raising voltage. My card is running at 950/1250 at 1.149v

You won't be able to get to 1200mhz core and 1500mhz memory with watercooling alone. You need to flash the bios to enable higher overvolting of the core and enable memory overvolting as well. That passes all definitions of "safe" imo.

 

[fisshy]

You won't be able to get to 1200mhz core and 1500mhz memory with watercooling alone. You need to flash the bios to enable higher overvolting of the core and enable memory overvolting as well. That passes all definitions of "safe" imo.

I have No idea How he did it. trust me if i did i would probably do the same just for the fun of it...

Acctually i probably wouldn't (my Old Pc I7 920 D0 3.8ghz +5870+6gb 1600mhz ram was all drowned by a faulty coolant?!?!?!?)
i Managed to get some money out of the buggers tho so im saving for my beloved I7 System again. my E7600 isn't So Bad really

Sigh... I still think its an EPIC card

 

[rofl_my_waffle]

faulty coolant? If you are talking about some watercooling story gone wrong, then so called non-conductive fluids are really only non conductive inside the bottle.

Any non-conductive fliud including deionized and distilled water would quickly pick up conductivity when exposed to copper.

 

[ubernoobie]

the 5970's memory is rated at 5ghz so 1250 should be your first overclock for your memory. For core bump to 850 and check for stability. Increase 50mhz if pass, check stability and repeat, decrease 5mhz if failed stability test. When your near your goal, you should see if the gains are worth it. if 850-950 core is only 5fps increase while your power bills go up 5%, it's not worth it

 

[welshmousepk]

if 850-950 core is only 5fps increase while your power bills go up 5%

do you have some sort of evidence of this? that sounds mighty exaggerated. assuming you need to add another 200-400 millivolts to reach those clocks, would sure as hell not increase a persons power bill by 5 percent.

 

[wolfram23]

Seems like you could easily get more. I have my 5850 at a stable 975 gpu, 1200 mem and temps aren't going over about 78C under stress, but playing Crysis not over about 65C (High, 4xAA, 1920x1080) and I'm getting a very stable 50fps. I start to get greyscreens trying to OC the core at 1000 and mem might be pushed to 1220 but I could only run it for a short while over that before a greyscreen. Right now it's set to 1.2V on the OC profile. At 1.15 it crashed... I might be able to do a bit lower than 1.2 but since the temps are ok I'm not bothering.

 

[fisshy]

faulty coolant? If you are talking about some watercooling story gone wrong, then so called non-conductive fluids are really only non conductive inside the bottle.

Any non-conductive fliud including deionized and distilled water would quickly pick up conductivity when exposed to copper.

Actually it Was a Bad production run at the factory (I cant name and shame...) and my performance coolant fluid (Anti freezing) turned out to be acidic. It ate through the Pump output tube in two weeks and spayed out onto all the components. i could only save my hdd's and DVD drive... Mobo, Cpu, Ram, Gpu and Psu Cooked...

Excuse me going off topic...

 

[abbalinos]

can someone tell me how to adjust the voltage for the GPU? is it through BIOS? and if so how?
<--- Noob here

 

[wolfram23]

can someone tell me how to adjust the voltage for the GPU? is it through BIOS? and if so how?
<--- Noob here

Try a program called MSI Afterburner. In the settings window, there are a couple boxes to check to "unlock voltage". Also, you need to open the config file and change then "allow unofficial modifying" from 0 to 1 (I think it's a slightly different name... but you'll know it when you see it. It's at the bottom of the page). After that you can tweak as you want and run your favorite test program to see if it's stable. Afterburner runs with MSI Kombustor which is based off the popular Furmark.

 

[fisshy]

can someone tell me how to adjust the voltage for the GPU? is it through BIOS? and if so how?
<--- Noob here

You cant do much to OC your GPU through Bios. Read this Before you start (Only For ATi Cards)

http://www.overclock.net/ati/633816-how-overclock-your-ati-gpu.html

Safe temps are around 80'C but 100'C are absolute cutoff.

Good luck

 

[shotgunwinner]

Seems like you could easily get more. I have my 5850 at a stable 975 gpu, 1200 mem and temps aren't going over about 78C under stress, but playing Crysis not over about 65C (High, 4xAA, 1920x1080) and I'm getting a very stable 50fps. I start to get greyscreens trying to OC the core at 1000 and mem might be pushed to 1220 but I could only run it for a short while over that before a greyscreen. Right now it's set to 1.2V on the OC profile. At 1.15 it crashed... I might be able to do a bit lower than 1.2 but since the temps are ok I'm not bothering.

Hey Wolfram I just wanted to ask - Getting that overclock on a 5850 while still keeping normal temps, is that normal for all reference 5850s ? Or is yours an improved heatsink model perhaps ?

 

[fisshy]

^ Its not Normal, he must have a low ambient temperature...
It is however usual that OC'd GPU's have a simlar heat out put of their stock counterparts, slightly more but not incredibly noticeable

 

[wolfram23]

Well, I don't know that it's all that abnormal. I have the reference model so it's voltage is unlocked, I had to boost it a bit. If you have a model with a different heat sink, they often lock the voltage which restricts the max OC. I haven't had the time to figure out how high I can go at stock volts, other than I know it's over 800 less than 900 core. Don't know about mem yet. As for temps, yes my ambient is pretty low since my PC is in the basement, pretty constant 24C. I have my fan speed to max out at 80% at 79C as well, which helps, plus my case has good cooling - it's only ever risen as high as 28C which once I noticed, I quickly reduced it by turning the fans to medium speed.

Check this site out for validated OCs: http://hwbot.org/hardware/videocard/radeon_hd_5850
You can see, there's a very large number over 1000 core and even 1300 memory! Crazy! I don't know how, but must be watercooled and BIOS flashed... who knows what else.

 

[notty22]

The new article on TH, balanced gaming pc, they weren't able to o/c the 5970 much without raising the voltage, they then reported the VRM's were overheating causing the card to throttle. For safety reasons they chose not to o/c. You might want to use gpu-z and monitor the numerous temp sensors before and after o/c on your card.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/balanced-gaming-pc-overclock,2625-7.html The lone exception is the Radeon HD 5970, which didn’t get far without additional voltage. Once we added more juice, the card could no longer run Furmark without the VRM temperatures skyrocketing upward to the throttling limit. Considering this design consideration prevented torture testing, we chose to play it safe and run all Radeon HD 5970 numbers at the card’s stock speeds.

Be sure to check the test configuration table below for specifics on the overclocks achieved.

 

[justin2081]

Why don't you just use the built in overclocking utility in the ATI Catalyst Control Center? That is what I use on my 5970 X2 and have never had any issues. I was able to get to 800 / 1100 completely stable under stress test.

 

[wolfram23]

7 months late to the party lol... ATI overdrive is fine, but limited.