Overclocking 5850

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JunK

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Allo. Yup i got my 5850 and i immediately went to overclocking it. Not a crazy amount but to get it around 5870 speeds anyway, i easily overclocked it to 850/1150 stable with a slightly higher voltage yet still never going above 70c while running furmark for extreme heat test. Here is my problem however.

Whenever i restart my computer the GPU and fan speeds are reset. The programs i used are AMD GPU Clock Tool, MSI Afterburner, and Furmark for testing. I basically followed THIS article on how to overclock it and adjust the fan speed automatically according to the temperature, which works great. But the article doesn't mention exactly how to set it so the settings are automatically applied upon startup.
There is an option in MSI Afterburner to check off, Apply overclocking at system startup, but its checked off so apparently it isn't working. MSI afterburner will start, but its just with the default speeds.
So as it stands everytime i reboot my computer, i need to manually set everything all over again in AMD GPU Clock Tool, and change the fan speeds with MSI afterburner.

Does anybody know of a way i can set it so it basically never goes back to default? im finding difficulty finding anything out via google on this issue

EDIT: Ok apparently i need to have MSI afterburner open all of the time because it will revert back to default if i close the program, however it is in my startup applications...but just doesn't start i guess, i dunno
 
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Never turn off your computer. ;)

Sometime applications in startup still don't run properly. You may have to do a registry edit (regedit) to get it to run on startup.
 
I read somewhere u also need to change the speeds in CCC to the ones u did in afterburner or something.....im not 100% sure but i think thats wat it said, something about also needing to change the CCC speeds to the overclocked speeds, idk if that will work tho if theres a limit on CCC.

And yo, if u get ur core to 1000mhz its faster than a 5870 itself :)

so turn that fan up to 100% and let the noise begin/epic speed
 
no way, the fan on this thing is like a freaking jet engine at 100%, seriously. i put it there just to test it out and it scared the junk out of my cat. it is sooooo loud its insane, so im good with just 850 for now.

however i have another problem. Im getting stupid low frames for counter-strike source for the power of this graphics card. before i upgraded i had an overclocked 8600 gt at like 700 core or somethin i forget, but i could get 100-250 frames depending how much action was going on with everything on high/1680x1050/no AA/AF. Now with this card i get 45-70 fps on the same settings....ya seriously. and the frames go down to 30-40 when i place full AA/AF (8x/16x). now i know other people with much less of a video card can play at everything full with hundreds of FPS, why the hell can't i?
this seems to be restricted to CSS because i notice a huge huge boost in every other game i own
 
JunK said:
no way, the fan on this thing is like a freaking jet engine at 100%, seriously. i put it there just to test it out and it scared the junk out of my cat. it is sooooo loud its insane, so im good with just 850 for now.

however i have another problem. Im getting stupid low frames for counter-strike source for the power of this graphics card. before i upgraded i had an overclocked 8600 gt at like 700 core or somethin i forget, but i could get 100-250 frames depending how much action was going on with everything on high/1680x1050/no AA/AF. Now with this card i get 45-70 fps on the same settings....ya seriously. and the frames go down to 30-40 when i place full AA/AF (8x/16x). now i know other people with much less of a video card can play at everything full with hundreds of FPS, why the hell can't i?
this seems to be restricted to CSS because i notice a huge huge boost in every other game i own
Click to expand...

hmmmm cs source is mostly cpu related but you shouldn't be getting those low of frames either way...........could possibly be driver related
 
I've seen a few 5800 series cards have troubles with CS:S and have yet to find a solution. What kind of FPS do you get on the video stress test?

Edit: You could try max_fps 999
 
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ok im testing a few things out because apparently catalyst control center is a little screwed up. when you set the AA/AF settings manually they will obvious affect the games, but if you then turn them off it doesn't affect the games...its as if it stays on until you reboot. so im going to reboot and try without a forced AA/AF from CCC and see if the results vary at all. i would have to say its mostly driver related, because there is no way CSS is that nvidia centered haha.
will edit this post to update if there was an effect.

EDIT: Ok now im not sure what was affecting it, but here are all my results.

No CCC Forced AF
No AA/AF: 120-200 fps
8x MSAA/No AF: 80-180 fps
8x MSAA/16x AF: 80-160 fps

CCC Forced 16:1 AF
No AA/AF: 60-200 fps
8x MSAA/16x AF: 50-120 fps

so that is how things are affected, weird to me. I guess im just not going to use the forced AF.
 
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What are your in game settings?

My initial reaction is that you may be getting more AA/AF than you bargained for.

I would be curious to see the difference between these two setups would be, if you're willing to try it.

No AA/AF in CCC, and maxed AA/AF in CS:S options.
Same values as maxed CS:S AA/AF in CCC, and no AA/AF in CS:S options.
 
............either way, your frames are way too low with max AA/AF for a 5850........im running my old overclocked 4850 and i run maxed AA/AF and get atleast like 150 FPS, if anything it dips to around like 120 lowest........80 is certainly playable and u wont notice anything but its lower than a 5850 should get especially overclocked to 850 core and such.

Man hopefully when i get a 5970 or something, this problem is gone by then, would suck.....
 
Your problem is you didn't use Rivatuner to OC your GPU....highly recommended its a free program that can do it all. (for GPU's)
 
yes i know its low, but at least its playable, unlike what 30-40 frames was like.
my frames for dirt2 are pretty significantly lower than benchmarks you can see on the internet, but i attribute that to my am2+ mobo with am3 dual core processor and old 2GB 667mhz ram, i guess
 
JunK said:
yes i know its low, but at least its playable, unlike what 30-40 frames was like.
my frames for dirt2 are pretty significantly lower than benchmarks you can see on the internet, but i attribute that to my am2+ mobo with am3 dual core processor and old 2GB 667mhz ram, i guess
Click to expand...

yea.......ur CPU is probably bottlenecking the 5850 cuz the 5850 is an absolute beast, faster than a GTX 285....you'll be needing that quad-core now :) then test things out and check drivers daily to see if theres a new one and see if it helps

yea your ram is slow......you can try overclocking it though, i have my 6gb DDR2 800 running at like 1000mhz so its basically the same as 1066 ram
 
well my ram has kickin timings. i actually once tried to buy better ram when it was cheaper, i got 1066 ddr2 ram (mobo supports it) and the ram i have now rated better in all performance tests i could post. it was good ram too. so then i just returned it.
plus ram doesn't add many frames, but i would have to say its affecting here or something because i doubt my dual core is bottlenecking this. most likely tho its my mobo, its only am2+ running my phenom II x2 550 BE at a crisp 3718 mhz.
i believe my cpu will be a bottleneck in super high end games like dragon age and dirt2 but not for counterstrike, so i dunno.
i will however be getting an am3 mobo and ddr3 ram (4gb) next month so i'll be able to test how much of an affect that has on at least my dirt2 benchmarks
 
THIS article shows just how much dirt 2 benefits from quad cores. by these marks, my dual/5850 rig is doing what it should (except on CSS of course) from a hardware point of view because my benchmarks with only 1xmsaa and no af at 1650x1050 dx9 would be higher than that shown (due to the overclock) with 8xmsaa no af i run 56 ave and 46 min
however as you can see, having a quad core doesn't really benefit much when you run dx11, since the dual cores (particularly the same as mine) only dropped 1 FPS but the quads dropped 30. this just shows how much bottleneck the duals are for a 5870 with dx9, but how limited the GPUs are with dx11
 
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ya i gotta post again, this is insane - big time driver issue apparently. because with oblivion as maxed in game settings (no forced AF from CCC) im getting like 50-60 fps, and with FAR CRY (1 not 2) with maxed in game with aa/af i get 30-60 fps, without AA/AF i get 100+. i dunno
 
JunK said:
ya i gotta post again, this is insane - big time driver issue apparently. because with oblivion as maxed in game settings (no forced AF from CCC) im getting like 50-60 fps, and with FAR CRY (1 not 2) with maxed in game with aa/af i get 30-60 fps, without AA/AF i get 100+. i dunno
Click to expand...

wat resolution are you playing on???
 
only 1680x1050.
now im also figuring out that my ram is a huge bottleneck - at least what i've noticed on dirt2/borderlands my ram is capped at 1.3-1.5 gb 100% of the time while gaming while my cpu is using between 30-80% (the spikes kind of go all over in the task manager).

i've just updated msi afterburner to show GPU usage, and im going to test things out. i think the reason why i have such a huge drop with AA/AF enabled is because of my low ram. once i get windows 7 and 4-8 GBs of ram i bet i'll get a huuuge increase. that will not be for another little while though, stupid bills

but thats why im glad i got this video card, because its future proof to when im able to upgrade my other components.
 
JunK said:
only 1680x1050.
now im also figuring out that my ram is a huge bottleneck - at least what i've noticed on dirt2/borderlands my ram is capped at 1.3-1.5 gb 100% of the time while gaming while my cpu is using between 30-80% (the spikes kind of go all over in the task manager).

i've just updated msi afterburner to show GPU usage, and im going to test things out. i think the reason why i have such a huge drop with AA/AF enabled is because of my low ram. once i get windows 7 and 4-8 GBs of ram i bet i'll get a huuuge increase. that will not be for another little while though, stupid bills

but thats why im glad i got this video card, because its future proof to when im able to upgrade my other components.
Click to expand...

its probably the speed of your ram, like the bandwith and all that im guessing, not really the timings

you have 4gb of ram??
if you have 2gb of ram then thats probably your problem, i used to have only 2gb but it really did bog down performance and then i went to 6gb and it because smoother and running tasks was much easier
 
ya right now i only have 2gb of ram. i will be getting 2x2gb next month and then once i get windows 7 i'll probably get another 4gb.

my current full system specs:
Windows XP Pro 32 bit
AMD Phenom II X2 550 @ 3.7ghz
Asus M2N68-AM SE2
2x1GB DDR2 667mhz @ 4-4-4-12 timings
ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB VRAM @ 850 core/1150 memory

however with playing borderlands, the highest gpu usage was 90%. but i did also see THIS article, showing that the 5000 series is really not optimized for borderlands, but will most likely be fixed with further driver releases
 
JunK said:
ya right now i only have 2gb of ram. i will be getting 2x2gb next month and then once i get windows 7 i'll probably get another 4gb.

my current full system specs:
Windows XP Pro 32 bit
AMD Phenom II X2 550 @ 3.7ghz
Asus M2N68-AM SE2
2x1GB DDR2 667mhz @ 4-4-4-12 timings
ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB VRAM @ 850 core/1150 memory

however with playing borderlands, the highest gpu usage was 90%. but i did also see THIS article, showing that the 5000 series is really not optimized for borderlands, but will most likely be fixed with further driver releases
Click to expand...

hmmm okay......honestly you don't need 8gb of ram unless your doing like photoshop/movie editing stuff
6gb is like a sweetspot for me, running just windows 7 and i guess normal apps...i use about 2gb of ram and im not playing games yet so its not bad

you should honestly think into getting fast ram tho but keep the same timing, DDR2 800 overclocked to 1066 can keep timings or 4-4-4-12 but actually DDR2 ram has become increasingly expensive and 4gb will run you around like $75 cheapest now after rebate

im just gonna say DDR3 is a better buy than DDR2 now
 
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