Overclocking a 5830

So, I have a Gigabyte 5830 (with the quiet dual fan cooling unit), and I have been wanting to overclock it to get a little bit more performance on it. I built my own rig and overclocked my CPU, but overclocking a GPU is a bit harder to do.

I've tried using auto-tune on ATI overdrive, and even though the Overdrive test said it was stable, the graphics freaked out after about half an hour of playing Bad Company 2. The clocks it gave me where 975mhz Core clock and a 1200mhz memory clock.

So what is the best method of overclocking my card? I've heard that its sensitive to your other computer components, but I am not sure where to begin. Should I just play with the clocks and just keep stability testing it?

My other system specs are as follows:
Q6600 G0 @ 3ghz
4gb OCZ Reaper 1066mhz Ram @ 5-5-5-15
Antec Earthwatts 650w
Gigabyte EP45-DS3L mobo

Also, does anyone know what the best drivers are for this card? I recently went from 10.2 to the 10.4a preview, but the whole 5830 driver situation is confusing. Any recommendations?

Download MSI afterburner. Probably the best gpu overclocker. Bump up the core and memory by 10 Mhz at a time and stability test with firmark.

I think u went too far for starts, actually GPU's overclock is made step by step from what i kno, The way i've done it is using rivatuner and ATItool, first with the core and the shader clocks linked started with 3MHz steps, running ATITool after every step for an hour to check stability, if u don't get artifacts u are good to go for another 3, when it finally shows an artifact then go back a step. Put back clock and shader to stock settings and start doing the same with the memory clock, once u get artifacts go back a step.

In the end u just slide the clock and shader to the last stable/no artifacts overclock and there u go, ur stable 24/7 GPU oc is ready, check with ATITool the stability and u r done.

You can modify the fan speeds with rivatuner too, when overclocking just set it to 100%, after that u can even schedule the fan speed % according to ur temps for rivatuner to increase it automatically

ATITool is a bit dated. They stop updating it and it doesn't support a lot of new cards. Wouldn't work with my 5750 or my 5870 for example. Also it doesn't stress the gpu enough IMO. I get about 1200 FPS with a 5750 on ATITool. Firmark will stress any gpu. Run it for about 30 minutes and if the temps stay low and you don't get any artifacts then you good to go. MSI afterburner is definitely the best tool you could use to OC.

Well like Younglin said ATITool is a bit dated, for me it tends to show a random artifact at the first minutes of the test and then run for hours without issues, anyway the steps are the same for any software u might use.

I will download firmark to get rid of the old ATITool, and hopefully get a better overclock with it.

Also Younglin, i have a topic right here in ATI section, can u drop by and check my question? ty

Younglin said:

ATITool is a bit dated. They stop updating it and it doesn't support a lot of new cards. Wouldn't work with my 5750 or my 5870 for example. Also it doesn't stress the gpu enough IMO. I get about 1200 FPS with a 5750 on ATITool. Firmark will stress any gpu. Run it for about 30 minutes and if the temps stay low and you don't get any artifacts then you good to go. MSI afterburner is definitely the best tool you could use to OC.

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Thanks for the input! I will definitely try this out.

I do have MSI Afterburner, although I've been trying not to use it because with both Afterburner and CCC on, the GPU gets wonky, mostly in regards to fan speeds and whatnot. Should I just not be running CCC all the time? It seems kinda cumbersome to me anyways.

Also, is there a new/modded BIOS available for my card? I've heard of some people voltage modding them with a pencil, but I'd prefer not to do anything THAT risky, but I do want to try and get the most I can out of this card.

Just disable ccc. Run Afterburner at startup with a saved profile. You don't need to mod the bios or anything. You can change the configuration files for Afterburner to overclock higher. Just go into the msi.config file and change the value of "enable unofficial overclocking" from 0 to 1.

Never thought of that! Thanks a lot! I will start playing with Afterburner when I get my improved CPU/RAM overclock stable.