First-time overclocking 6850

[Aldakoopa]

Hello everyone, I've been reading a lot on these boards recently ever since I built my first system, so I decided I'd join in case I ever had any questions.

I just overclocked my HIS Iceq X Turbo Radeon HD 6850. It's the first thing I ever really overclocked in my life, and it went very well.

I had originally used MSI Afterburner and have been benchmarking in MSI Kombuster. My card scored a 2550 before any overclocking besides the factory pre-overclock. I used Afterburner and got a stable overclock at 900MHz core and 1200MHz memory, which then scored a 2675... that wasn't much of an improvement. I was getting around the same FPS in games so it really didn't change much at all. Then I tried AMD Overdrive, even though everyone I've seen says Afterburner is much better. I reset the frequencies to their original and closed Afterburner, then I tried the same frequencies in Overdrive and benchmarked again, this time I scored a 3667 and started seeing an improvement in games, which was even further enhanced after downloading the latest drivers, which then bumped my score up to 3919 and more than doubled my FPS in games. I'm now running all my games on ultra/very high settings and getting very good fps, and the GPU temp only reaches ~55C (give or take a couple of degrees) at load. Needless to say, I love this card, and I uninstalled Afterburner.

It makes me tempted to try out TriXX and see if there's any difference in performance (for better or worse).

 

[Aldakoopa]

Just installed TriXX and set the clocks back down to their original settings before running it, and ran another test at the factory pre-overclock settings to see what it does since the updated drivers. It scored a little over 3610 in Kombustor. Set the core and memory clocks back to 900 and 1200 in TriXX and it only scored a 3716. AMD Overdrive is still proving to be the best, however TriXX will allow me to play with the core voltage and push the core higher than 900MHz. I'll play with that in a little bit and be back with an update.

 

[Aldakoopa]

Just to be fair, I reinstalled Afterburner (never ran it after the driver update) and ran it on the same settings again and benched it at 3909 in Kombustor. Pretty much equal to AMD Overdrive.

 

[Aldakoopa]

I thought TriXX would let me adjust the voltage, but every time I hit "apply" it resets to the stock 1.15V. But, I was able to push the core clock even higher than the 900MHz that the others top out at. I got it up to 951MHz on the core and 1230 on the memory, still stable, GPU temp ~60C, and scored a 4038 in Kombustor. Any more than 951 or 1230 and Kombustor would freeze. No artifacts or anything, and I could close it in task manager. Seems like a software problem but it only happens if I overclock past those speeds. If I test it in another benchmark, since it seems like a software error, I may be able to push it further, but I'm going to quit there and go back to the 900 core 1200 memory with AMD Overdrive. It's good enough for everything I need it for and it's nice and stable and stays cool.

 

[Aldakoopa]

Just playing with overclocking again, and it's actually a driver crashing under load that prevents me from going any further. Figures.

 

[TeaQue]

Do you ever feel like you're talking to yourself?


jk, congrats

 

[TeaQue]

Whats the rest of your setup? I'm going to install this and mess with it as well

 

[Aldakoopa]

Do you ever feel like you're talking to yourself?


jk, congrats

Yeah, but there wasn't really a question, so I didn't really expect many, if any replies at all. I was just kind of explaining my progress, not much else, really.

 

[Aldakoopa]

Whats the rest of your setup? I'm going to install this and mess with it as well

Asus M5A88-V Evo
PNY Optima 8 GB memory (4x2) in dual channel
FX-4100 (still at stock settings)
HIS Iceq X Turbo Radeon 6850

... I think that covers the important things.

 

[TeaQue]

Hey which Bench were you using? 1280x720 or the one in the lower right of the application? Did you also select DX11?

 

[Aldakoopa]

I was using the 1920x1080 on DX11