Hello people of tek syndicate forum I have some questions for you. I have been playing around with my Sapphire 7870 trying to get better frames in my games. I looked of some guides on overclocking but I have no idea if my overclock is doing any good. I have gotten the core clock to 1150 mhz with only 11% power limit in afterburner. The voltage is the same as it was when I got it (1.225 volts). I haven't touched the VRAM. I this a good overclock on this or should I go higher. This OC is for everyday use. Thanks and have a good day/night.
Run it through some benchmarks. Heaven 4.0 is one I like to run my sapphire 7870 through. The Metro games have their own benching tools if you open up the file locations for the games. 3dMark does a decent job as well, they have demos for those programs on steam. I wouldn't mess with VRAM too much, not much benefit for regular users as far as I can tell, and when I have messed with it I can only get rid of artifacts on reboot.
well when I play Skyrim with my mods I get 35 FPS when in a area with many plants and trees with there leaves moving. Like I don't feel a difference and in most games I can run them pretty well.
Well, crap. After messing with mine I couldn't hit 1150 on power control settings alone...I am sad. With that said, I don't see why your card couldn't hit 1200 stable.
The only problem is that I don't want to break it and have to buy a new one. I still have warranty for another year but it doesn't support OC failure. Increasing the core clock hasn't increased heat much but I more worried about what if it is reading wrong temps or something. I worry to much. Like how I reapplied my thermal paste 3 times because I didn't think I had enough.
Well i run my asus dc2 7878 at 1100/1350. I tried1150 clock and while it was stable in crisis 3, it wasn't in other ones. As far as the temps go mine is running really cool even maxed out. So don't worry about the temps these don't produce much heat.
As long as you don't mess around with the voltage, you can't really fry your card. I had a Sapphire HD 7850 1GB and that overclocked pretty nicely on stock voltage.
Use GPU-Z for temperature monitoring and Sapphire Trixx for GPU overclocking. Stress test with Furmark or games you play if you want.
The 7870 and 7850s are great overclockers in general. I suggest that for your first overclock, you should stay away from the voltage meter, and only modify core and memory clocks.
Keep stepping up the core clock in small intervals, and test with furmark until you see artifacting(it's obvious, don't worry. It'll bloom outwards and look terrible). Once you see this artifacting, bump your total overclock down about 10-15%. Remember the number, and repeat with memory clock only. Once you get these two numbers, set the core to the number you recorded first, and then memory to the number you recorded second. Test with furmark/games to see if you have any crashes or stuttering. If you do, keep dumbing down the clocks until it becomes stable.
I have 2 voltage options. Power limit and core voltage is locked for me. Even with checking the settings in Afterburner I can't get the voltage unlock (thou I don't need it). I didn't use Furmark because I got it to 1150 on the core with now power adjustments and them played bf3. 30 min in I got a crash on whole system. Putting power limiter on 13% solved it
You can unlock voltage with trixx 4.6? can't remember exact version other then it is something .6.
You will have to keep hitting the plus sign to bump it up, or I had ot anyways. I wouldn't start off with increasing voltage if I were you. Best read up on it first.
I believe it's 4.6 yes, really it'll only loosen up the limit to 1.3, you're not going to fry anything with 1.3
personally I just turn the power limit and voltage all the way up, and see what clocks I can get, after setting a custom fan curve it manages without any overheating
running at 1200/1400 stable in almost everything, few things just wont run with an overclock (ns2)