I tried very mild overclocks and any game I run crashes/freezes and gets artifacts... I was told to change the default voltage in MSI Afterburner but would like opinions of what it should be, a safe/recommended setting... I have just switched from Nvidia to Ati and am not too familiar with them, it's been 10 years since I last had an ATI card! My current default settings are as follows: Fan speed 50% Memory Clock 1200 Core clock 900 Default Voltage 1164
Try to keep it below 1.25v for everyday use... unless you don't care about increased noise. Just something I read somewhere a while ago regarding the 5800 series.
Ok, will give it a try... Also, what clock/memory shader can I comfortably set which won't result in artifacts? Default core is 900 and memory 1200... Just not used to Ati, that's why I ask!
Go up in 10 MHz increments and use Furmark/Kombuster to test for artifacts. Right when you start seeing artifacts, back down 20 MHz, or crank up the voltage (if and when temperature allows).
Thanks King dubs, I will give it a go... Any idea of what voltage I should safely apply? I don't wanna fry my GPU that's only 3 hours old, lol
Leave the memory as it is. What's for the core, you can push voltage straight to 1.2 and try out 980 Mhz. Lower it step by step by 5Mhz if unstable, once it's ok - try to lower the voltage.
Don't 5000 series use ECC memory? so performance drops an you never see memory artifacts. Personally test your stability with crysis bench as stated about find max on core first before touching the memory.
Why not run it at the stock (standard oc) for a bit while you get used to the card, get used to the temps it runs at, verify that it's stable etc.. At least you'll have some baseline temps/fps ranges to work with. Some things, like memory, actually degrade performance when you push them too much as the error correction starts kicking in.. It'll work but the extra heat will cause it to run slower than even stock might.
Strange, I upped the voltage to 1200, upped the voltage only to 950, so just 50mhz more, I then ran MSI Kombuster and after about 20 seconds, artifacts came and my pc froze again. It's like it doesn't wanna overclock!
Try out 925 Mhz, see if it's stable. It's a common problem with stock OC'ed gpus - additional overclocking might get more complicated than for reference gpus.
I was just playing Battlefield Bad Company 2, maxed out at 1920X1080 and got a constant 60fps... Though performance is good, I jot got another crash in BBC2, suddenly the screen went to a funny colour, like the colour of sand, I'm sure it's the card... It seems to crash, and does not want to overclock regardless...
I can run BC2 with stock clocks with around 65-70 fps with everything maxed out except HBAO (which doesn't even affect visual quality) Anyway, try the older 10.5 drivers, I only had issues with 10.6
Right, overclocking a card to be perfectly stable isn't a quick process, it takes a bit of time and patience. First of all, set the card to default settings, and then run Furmark on Extreme Burn In mode for 3 or 4 minutes and see what the max temp is (ideally this wants to be a maximum of between 70 and 80c to give you a bit of room for overclocking). If the temp during that is acceptable, then you want to keep it running and up the core 10 mhz at a time until you get a crash. Windows will recover from the crash, and Furmark will lock up (you need to end task to get rid of it). Once you've got to your limit with that, you will want to add a little voltage, say 0.025v (so if your stock voltage is 1.175 then up it to 1.2) and try again, see if you can knock it up any further. Keep repeating this until you either hit 1.3v, or you can't keep it under 85c anymore. Then you will want to run the Furmark benchmark twice (this is to ensure your score wasn't an anomaly) with your memory at stock, note the score you get, then keep running it at 10mhz higher (twice each time) until your score doesn't get any higher, then back it down 10mhz and call it quits. This is the process I would use, but I've never bothered upping voltage, I'm quite happy with my 5870 being at 945/1310 on stock volts. One other thing to consider is case airflow, you really need this to be good to keep the card cool and ensure a better overclock. Any other questions let me know. Edit:- You will want to check the settings afterwards with some gaming, I usually find that both Crysis and GTAIV make me drop my memory overclock down 10mhz or so because they're both very graphics memory intensive, and that's something Furmark doesn't really cater for.
