Max overclock rate on utilities like MSI Afterburner (Radeon HD 6850)

[ochho87]

Hell folks, does anyone know what is the max overclock rates achievables through utilities like Sapphire Trixx, MSI Afterburner ..etc ?

I have seen some screenshots with 1030~1060 Mhz core clocks on HD6850 cards, but I find the max you can achieve with those utilities is 1000Mhz (no option to increase beyond that).

I do not currently own an HD6850 but I am ordering an ASUS EAH6850 DirectCU card, and their SmartDoctor utility is also maxxed at 1000Mhz core clock... even though temps and voltages seem to indicate you can go further.

Here at 2 reviews of this card:

http://www.vortez.co.uk/contentteller/articles_pages/asus_eah6850_directcu_review,9.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/EAH_5830_DirectCu/31.html

And this image show core clock and temperature scalings with voltage increase (from techpowerup review)

So how do you go about to reach higher than 1000Mhz core clocks?

PS: I am extremely new to overclocking, so I hope I am not asking questions that seem too stupid to most..

Thanks guys!

 

[17seconds]

According to the very same page from where you got the chart:
"To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of GPUTool and our benchmarking suite."

GPUTool Download:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1383/GPUTool_Community_Technology_Preview_1.html

Now if you are new to overclocking, in order to attain 1Ghz on the core you will need to tweak the voltage of the card. While relatively easy, you are definitely taking overclocking to the advanced level, and increasing the risk of damaging your GPU. So be careful.

For reference, here is what Hardwarecanucks.com had to say about extreme overclocking on the 6850:
"Upping clock speeds by applying additional voltage brought the HD 6850 in line with its more expensive brother but like all cards, this quickly leads to high heat and diminishing returns in overall framerate increases. Even XFX’s custom heatsink struggled to keep temperatures within check when the core was running in excess of 1Ghz."
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/37499-hd-6870-hd-6850-vs-gtx-460-1gb-overclocking-study.html

 

[ochho87]

According to the very same page from where you got the chart:
"To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of GPUTool and our benchmarking suite."

GPUTool Download:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1383/GPUTool_Community_Technology_Preview_1.html

Now if you are new to overclocking, in order to attain 1Ghz on the core you will need to tweak the voltage of the card. While relatively easy, you are definitely taking overclocking to the advanced level, and increasing the risk of damaging your GPU. So be careful.

For reference, here is what Hardwarecanucks.com had to say about extreme overclocking on the 6850:
"Upping clock speeds by applying additional voltage brought the HD 6850 in line with its more expensive brother but like all cards, this quickly leads to high heat and diminishing returns in overall framerate increases. Even XFX’s custom heatsink struggled to keep temperatures within check when the core was running in excess of 1Ghz."
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/37499-hd-6870-hd-6850-vs-gtx-460-1gb-overclocking-study.html

Thanks for the reply matto!

I don't know why I didn't try to google GPUTool up .. lol, and yes I know the risks involved with voltage tweaks, so I will go at it slowly and make sure it's stable.

I see most reviewers use FurMark to test for stability and max temps, any other suggestions?

PS: I'll go read that canucks article now thx

 

[17seconds]

You can use Afterburner, but it won't allow you to tweak voltages on the 6850 (yet).
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Afterburner-2.0.0-Final-download-2562.html

Afterburner also has MSI Kombustor software bundled with it. Kombustor is based on Furmark, and does a great job of stress testing your video card.

 

[notty22]

Lot of talk about tweaking voltage lately with gpu's BUT I would NOT, be in a rush to raise the new AMD cards to high. They are allowing to much adjustment.
ATI's vrm's got toasty in the 5 series and probably do in these cards.
I would not go over 1.2
None of the Fermi's are volted this high and they are much bigger gpu's with heat spreaders on the gpu die.

 

[Guest]

You can use Afterburner, but it won't allow you to tweak voltages on the 6850 (yet).
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Afterburner-2.0.0-Final-download-2562.html

Afterburner also has MSI Kombustor software bundled with it. Kombustor is based on Furmark, and does a great job of stress testing your video card.

with msi afterburner 2.1.0 beta 4 u can adjust the voltages!

 

[jrdoane]

I have an 6870 kindly provided by MSI and I'm running it at 1.281v @ 1000Mhz core, and 1150(4600) memory. I don't go above 71*C at full load with my custom fan speed vs temperature scaling. I would say that yes, it runs hot, but it runs hot to begin with before you overclock it. Keep in mind that if AMD keeps the fan speeds so low at high temperatures, it can obviously handle it (to a point of course.)

 

[sedona]

I'm using AMD Catalyst Control Center v13.12 and the AMD OverDrive page limits the GPU clock setting from 600 to 850 (default is 775MHz). It also limits the memory clock setting from 1000 to 1200 (default is 1000Mhz). Is 850MHz the highest that this HD 6850 card can go? How did the thread starter achieve 875?

I found that I could easily overclock to 850MHz/1150MHz without any crashes and temperature maxed at 71 °C which is OK for my micro-ATX casing. Going above 1160MHz will cause screen black out so I found the limit to memory clock setting. But I want to try adjusting GPU clock setting higher than 850MHz ...... can't do it on AMD Catalyst Control Center and AMD OverDrive?

Just a dumb question: If this HD 6850 card can work "normally" at 850/1150, then why did the manufacturer sell it at 775/1000? Makes no sense considering that at idle the clock will throttle down to 100-300MHz and generate no extra heat if no playing heavy games. I just found it incredible that it could easily go to 850/1150 without additional cooling measures, which I don't have. My casing has a front 120mm fan and rear 92mm fan to keep the airflow going.

This card idles at 51-55 °C. Is this correct? Sorry for the many questions, I recently bought this card second-hand and very excited about it's overclocking.