Underwhelming 7850 performance

[juraba]

Hello forum,

I was excited for buying a new Sapphire 7850 1gb, as I have been 4 years with my 9800gt, and I thought it would be a good upgrade. And it was. I always knew from reviews that 7850 overclocks pretty well. My particular card reached only 1140MHz on the core and 1250(so disappointed) on the memory. Anything higher than that would result in a blue screen. Exception made disabling HT on my core i3 2100, in which 1300MHz on the memory would be stable. Dunno if this is actually the case. I was even more disappointed by the OC results in gaming. 28% gain in core clock to result in 10-11% increase in gaming.

Here are some results of Metro 2033 benchmark. I only disabled Hyper-threading out of curiosity, and it seem to have stopped the stuttering and even gave a tiny bit of extra frames. I wouldnt count on that because even with 10 runs of the benchmark the results were inconsistent.

Another thing I tested was 3dMark 11.
Stock result: p5128
OC result: P5731

Same goes with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. benchmark and pretty much any other game.

The rest of the specs are:
h61 Asus motherboard
4gb Corsair 1333 RAM
FSP 400w PSU

My question is what can I improve to get better scores, memory clocks and what should my next upgrade of the PC be. I was planning on either upgrade to z77 + core i5 in the not so near future or change the platform to AMD fx-6300. Also is there a way to unlock voltages on a 1gb card like some people do with 2gb cards by flashing to an ASUS bios.

Thank you for the time spared!

 

[Norlag]

First of all, you should not be using that psu! The 7850 requires at least 500w, and you have a 400 watt psu from a bad compny. Before you do anything else, replace it with a good psu from corsair, xfx, or seasonic. That will probably solve the problem there.

Not all cards overclock equally. Your card may just not overclock well, or you had some bad luck and got a deficient card. You probably can't rma it because it works, just not as much as you'd like.

Also, just because you overclock by 28% does not mean you will get a 28% increase in performance. This is true also for a cpu.

 

[stickmansam]

If you gift me the games, I can run bench's on those with my sig rig

This would be a nice PSU on a budget, only 430 watts but got lots of 12v rail for the 7850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026

You can unlock voltage depending on the bios or the the OC program you are using

This is an ultra bench with an OC 2600k

http://www.overclock.net/t/1269574/your-radeon-7850-overclocking-results

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18389760

 

[juraba]

http://www.corsair.com/us/power-supply-units/vs-series-power-supply-units/vs-seriestm-vs550-550-watt-power-supply.html

Never seen these series before, will it do the trick? And is it true that Corsair PSU emits annoying electrical noises?

 

[stickmansam]

http://www.corsair.com/us/power-supply-units/vs-series-power-supply-units/vs-seriestm-vs550-550-watt-power-supply.html

Never seen these series before, will it do the trick? And is it true that Corsair PSU emits annoying electrical noises?

I wouldn't get the VS series, they are the lowest quality ones, get the CX ones over the VS ones anyday

 

[juraba]

For the cx430 v1 or v2

 

[Norlag]

Please just get a 500 watt psu. Be safe and don't cheap out with the psu.

 

[andycal]

Some of my friends have experienced a whining or screeching noise from corsair psu's. Norlag is correct, you need to upgrade your power supply to at a least a 500w psu. Currently I'm using a Thermaltake 675w modular power supply to power 2 Gigabyte 2GB 7850's in crossfire. They run exceptionally well and handle battlefield 3 on max settings @ 60+ fps. Once you upgrade your psu, you'll have no problem overclocking your 7850.

 

[stickmansam]

Here is exact link for the PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026


I ran my 7850 on split 14+15 12v rail for a while OC without any issues, AMD overestimates power usage to be safe

The CX430 is less upgrade able than a 500W psu BUT THE cx500 only offers like 6 more amps on the 12 v

The CX430 has 32 amps on the 12v rail for 384 Watts ont he 12v rail, more than enough for an i3 +7850 OC

Some would say the Corsair units are a bit hit and miss in terms of coil whine though I haven't had any issues with mine and neither have my friends though your mileage will vary as with all things and all brands

 

[juraba]

So is there any chance to unlock voltage control after I get my new PSU

 

[Norlag]

Well, I tried. Not my fault if he blows the whole system.

 

[stickmansam]

You won't blow the system with only a 7850 + i3 on a 430W PSU

Voltage is dependent on the bios if it allows it

You need an utility like Sapphire Trixx to change the voltage

 

[TinkerTailor]

In the recent system builder marathon, they uses a good 400 Watt PSU with an i5 + 7850 combo with overclocking:

Fully loaded, these gaming-oriented rigs still sip power relative to what we'll likely see during the rest of this quarter's System Builder Marathon. Even if we estimate 85% efficiency, our 400 W power supply is only being asked to output 184 W at peak load.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pc-gaming-overclock-build-a-pc,3443-16.html

 

[juraba]

If the 7850 wasn't so power efficient I wouldn't have chosen it. The whole system should use about 14 amps on the 12v rail at mega full load so cx430 should be the PSU to take as it offers 27 or so amps. As for the voltage, there is no software to control it, is there a way to flash the bios with unlocked voltage control. Thanks for the replies all !!

 

[MajinCry]

Pfft. Everyone really does like to push unnecessary tech on people, eh?

Take a look here for power consumption with a 7850 whilst gaming. Doesn't even push 300 watts on Metro2033.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549

 

[stickmansam]

have you tried to unlock voltage change via msi afterburner?

just google "msi afterburner unlock" and the first two libks should do it

dunno about any bios though

 

[iam2thecrowe]

"I was even more disappointed by the OC results in gaming. 28% gain in core clock to result in 10-11% increase in gaming."

cpu bottleneck. You should upgrade to an i5, certainly dont go for a fx6300, any i5 2xxx series would be better for gaming and will fit straight in your motherboard. you will see a significant increase in performance. Also adding another 4gb ram would be very beneficial.

 

[juraba]

Well I ordered a new PSU and another 4gb of ram, we will se what the results will be. As for the cpu: I doubt the i3 is anywhere near bottlenecking the system. I will stick with it until the time comes to Crossfire another 7850. Thanks for all the replies guys, much appreciated!