My 4870 1GB is not OCing like the reports, whats wrong?

[The Red]

I've had my Powercolor 4870 1GB that I recently got.

The bios says its from 08/19/08

Overdrive tells me the max core is 780 and max ram is only 935. With so many people saying how easy it is to reach 1100 on their ram, this is odd to me. If I set the ram to 950 and hit the Test button, I get screen artifacts and a BSOD.

I opened the bios and checked the setings.. the bios votlage table looks like this:

0: 1.083v - Boot
1: 1.143v - Power saving for notebooks in battery mode, High performance, Optimal performance.
2: 1.203v - UVD
3: 1.263v - Power saving for notebooks in battery mode, High performance, Optimal performance.

I'm reading the bios with RBE v1.17

The Clock Info list in the bios looks like this:

Clock - GPU - RAM - Voltage

00 - 750 - 900 - 1.263
01 - 500 - 900 - 1.203
02 - 500 - 900 - 1.203
03 - 750 - 900 - 1.263
04 - 500 - 500 - 1.203
05 - 500 - 500 - 1.203
06 - 500 - 500 - 1.203
07 - 500 - 900 - 1.203
08 - 500 - 900 - 1.203
09 - 750 - 900 - 1.263

What should I change or modify, obviously along with fan settings, to get my ram to the same frequency as others.

Could the fact that its 1 GB and not 512 be the real problem?

Anyone with 1GB of ram and over 1000 mhz ram clock?

Is my card just a dud and I should return it?

 

[xBanzai89]

It is possibly a dud, but a ATI never guarantees that you can overclock the card. Does the 4870 even get a performance boost from the extra bandwidth? Last I knew it was next to nothing.

 

[The Red]

It is possibly a dud, but a ATI never guarantees that you can overclock the card. Does the 4870 even get a performance boost from the extra bandwidth? Last I knew it was next to nothing.

where does it show that its next to nothing?

 

[ebilcake]

This alone puts me off ATI cards, they don't clock as well and it's not straight forward as you have to mess round with voltages just to get half decent overclocks

 

[Porter_]

this is nothing new. you're not guaranteed to get a good overclocking card. if you want a guaranteed OC then you have to buy the factory OC'd cards. end of story.

 

[dobieg2002]

the 512 cards overclock very well, mine didn't seem to have any isseus. I upgraded to the 1GB and I can't OC the memory past 950 for most games and 920 for fallout 3 with out artifacts. The core seems to be OK. I think it is the memory density or power requirments. Most of the reviews of the 1GB cards have stated that the memory OC is poor.

 

[Uberbob102000]

I don't know why that would put you off ATi cards, it's not like video card overclocking does all that much anyways. I had my GTX 280 @ 725 and saw, a 1FPS gain, woohoo 1%.
@ OP: It's not like your guaranteed a good overclocking card unless you buy one used from someone who OC'd it or you buy a factory OC.

 

[RADEoN]

This alone puts me off ATI cards, they don't clock as well and it's not straight forward as you have to mess round with voltages just to get half decent overclocks

It's pretty clear to me that you have not a clue what you're talking about.

Oh man, they ask you to SLIDE A SLIDER? Jesus, if I knew overclocking this card was gonna be so complex I'd have just not even built a computer.


And just for the record, if I take my card (4870x2) from 750/900 and max it out to 800/1000, it's ~700 3dmarks in 2006.

The Red, what power supply do you have?

 

[The Red]

It's pretty clear to me that you have not a clue what you're talking about.

Oh man, they ask you to SLIDE A SLIDER? Jesus, if I knew overclocking this card was gonna be so complex I'd have just not even built a computer.


And just for the record, if I take my card (4870x2) from 750/900 and max it out to 800/1000, it's ~700 3dmarks in 2006.

The Red, what power supply do you have?

Rosewill Xtreme 850

I'm on a UPS for stability (priceless).

 

[ebilcake]

It's pretty clear to me that you have not a clue what you're talking about.

And just for the record, if I take my card (4870x2) from 750/900 and max it out to 800/1000, it's ~700 3dmarks in 2006.

The sad thing is you might actually believe that maxing that slider is a good overclock, it's really not and if you want more you have to use 3d party software and play round with the voltages.

That overclock you seem proud of is a rather pathetic 7% overclock, get upto around 20% and then we can talk.

 

[S3th13]

The sad thing is you might actually believe that maxing that slider is a good overclock, it's really not and if you want more you have to use 3d party software and play round with the voltages.

That overclock you seem proud of is a rather pathetic 7% overclock, get upto around 20% and then we can talk.

Then how is it any different than what you would have to do with an Nvidia card?

 

[ebilcake]

Then how is it any different than what you would have to do with an Nvidia card?

They don't need 3rd party software to achieve a good overclock, they don't need voltage adjustments, they don't need to change coolers or play with the fanspeed, and still you can achieve a better overclock, 20% or greater overclock is fairly typcial with the GTX260/GTX280.

 

[RadXge]

That overclock you seem proud of is a rather pathetic 7% overclock, get upto around 20% and then we can talk.

Well said.
It is like the BFG GTX 280 OC which is factory overclocked from 600 to 615MHZ. 3% overclock is pure marketing since it does not provide any significant performance advantage.

 

[The Red]

They don't need 3rd party software to achieve a good overclock, they don't need voltage adjustments, they don't need to change coolers or play with the fanspeed, and still you can achieve a better overclock, 20% or greater overclock is fairly typcial with the GTX260/GTX280.

Wrong on all counts friend.

I still needed to use NiBiTor to edit the bios to bump the voltages on my 8800, where as with ATI cards I dont need to edit any bios, I can use ATT to bump the voltages from inside windows, and not risk permanently disabling my card.

I also had no way to enable overclocking with the new control panel for Nvidia, and had to use several 3rd party programs to overclock.

And dont blout around with what is "typical" or havnt you read my first post?

 

[RamonGTP]

I've owned and OCed cards from both camps for many years and I'd have to agree... With both sides..

1) nVidia cards in my experience do overclock a bit better and easier

2) GPU overclocks don't do all that much, and even less when we're talking about the difference in OC potential between ATI and nVidia, because at that point, it's really neglegable and shouldn't put anyone off from buying either card.

 

[ebilcake]

Wrong on all counts friend.

I still needed to use NiBiTor to edit the bios to bump the voltages on my 8800, where as with ATI cards I dont need to edit any bios, I can use ATT to bump the voltages from inside windows, and not risk permanently disabling my card.

I also had no way to enable overclocking with the new control panel for Nvidia, and had to use several 3rd party programs to overclock.

And dont blout around with what is "typical" or havnt you read my first post?

I had a 8800GTS/8800GT/8800GTX, never had to edit the bios to get a decent overclock, as for software use ntunes, it's available on nvidias site.

Why shouldn't I give an example of what is typcial for nvidias current line up? I'm sorry but a 20% overclock is typcial, like it or not but it's true.

 

[gar818]

1GB ram chips have higher density, overclocking them above 950 seems very unlikely, i had 3 1gb 4870's one did 925, the others did 950, ive seen some hit 975 or 1000, but very rare with 1gb 4870's, 512mb overclocks much higher, but i would rather have the 1gb than higher bandwidth as games take advantage of higher memory rather than bandwidth, bandwidth doesnt make too much difference.

 

[RADEoN]

The sad thing is you might actually believe that maxing that slider is a good overclock, it's really not and if you want more you have to use 3d party software and play round with the voltages.

That overclock you seem proud of is a rather pathetic 7% overclock, get upto around 20% and then we can talk.

Yeah dude that overclock had me STOKED!

Which is probably why the only time this card is running at stock clock is when I'm playing a game, any other time it's idles itself at ~500/500.

(protips: 1, If I felt I needed to overclock this card to do anything other than test 3dmark overclocked and non-overclocked, I'd liquid cool it and get maybe even get 22 percent of an overclock out of it, just so I can associate myself with you, and 2, I'm not worried about not being able to talk to you because my video card isn't overclocked high enough for your standards.)

 

[Comte]

I've had my Powercolor 4870 1GB that I recently got.

The bios says its from 08/19/08

Overdrive tells me the max core is 780 and max ram is only 935. With so many people saying how easy it is to reach 1100 on their ram, this is odd to me. If I set the ram to 950 and hit the Test button, I get screen artifacts and a BSOD.

I opened the bios and checked the setings.. the bios votlage table looks like this:

0: 1.083v - Boot
1: 1.143v - Power saving for notebooks in battery mode, High performance, Optimal performance.
2: 1.203v - UVD
3: 1.263v - Power saving for notebooks in battery mode, High performance, Optimal performance.

I'm reading the bios with RBE v1.17

The Clock Info list in the bios looks like this:

Clock - GPU - RAM - Voltage

00 - 750 - 900 - 1.263
01 - 500 - 900 - 1.203
02 - 500 - 900 - 1.203
03 - 750 - 900 - 1.263
04 - 500 - 500 - 1.203
05 - 500 - 500 - 1.203
06 - 500 - 500 - 1.203
07 - 500 - 900 - 1.203
08 - 500 - 900 - 1.203
09 - 750 - 900 - 1.263

What should I change or modify, obviously along with fan settings, to get my ram to the same frequency as others.

Could the fact that its 1 GB and not 512 be the real problem?

Anyone with 1GB of ram and over 1000 mhz ram clock?

Is my card just a dud and I should return it?

Whats wrong? You bought a ATI 4870 with 1GB ram guarenteed to work at certain specifications, and it doesnt work when you exceed those specifications. Nothing is wrong, it works just fine...

 

[AltTabbins]

Whats wrong? You bought a ATI 4870 with 1GB ram guarenteed to work at certain specifications, and it doesnt work when you exceed those specifications. Nothing is wrong, it works just fine...

Agreed. Plus as mentioned many times, overclocking does very little for real game performance (usually nothing). The only bigger numbers you will see is in 3dmark (who cares?).

 

[Jeffredo]

As others have said, you're never guaranteed a card that can OC. It will preform within the advertised parameters, but OCing to "what everyone else can do" is never promised. I have an 8800 GTX. Great card, performs well. But it can't OC at all - just a very small amount on the core and none on the memory. There's nothing wrong with it though.

 

[MrGuvernment]

This alone puts me off ATI cards, they don't clock as well and it's not straight forward as you have to mess round with voltages just to get half decent overclocks

same applies to NVIDIA my friend, after X point you need to mess with voltages and pencil mods and such.

 

[StealthyFish]

same applies to NVIDIA my friend, after X point you need to mess with voltages and pencil mods and such.

Agreed. It's not like the ATi cards perform like junk and need overclocking to get where they should be. If you want to play with a good overclocking card, get an Nvidia 6800GS. I could get 25% overclocks on my card with the stock cooler and after a variable-resistor mod (Fugger on xtremesystems showed this), the card could perform like a 7900GT, lol. But you actually need it on those 6800GS' cause they're so damn slow stock

 

[aekel]

I love how far my 260 GTX overclocks.. and the overclock really makes a difference of night and day at 1920x1200. It goes from somewhat choppy to silky smooth in many games.

 

[Slade]

You're an idiot to buy a card simply for the overclocks.

You are supposed to buy the card that plays the best with the system you have (which includes the max res you want to stick with).

The overclock is for the extra bit of eye candy above and beyond.

 

[gmkmay]

It all depends on the card, obviously.

However it isn't exactly fair saying that buying a product based on the OC ability is a poor decision. I would never have bought an E8400 if it didn't OC fairly well. That being said, the performance increase on the ram of the 4xxx cards offers very little in actual fps.

 

[legcramp]

It all depends on the card, obviously.

However it isn't exactly fair saying that buying a product based on the OC ability is a poor decision. I would never have bought an E8400 if it didn't OC fairly well. That being said, the performance increase on the ram of the 4xxx cards offers very little in actual fps.

Well the extra memory might not offer much fps increase ( which is not true for actual gameplay and not recorded demos aka why Hardocp reviews are so much better compared to anyone else's ) the 512mb version loses A LOT of AA compared to the 1gb version due to the lack of memory.

The minimum FPS is WAY lower also.

 

[ebilcake]

same applies to NVIDIA my friend, after X point you need to mess with voltages and pencil mods and such.

Well yes thats a given, but the point is on GTX280/260 you can clock allot further before you need voltage adjustments, I don't really want to be mess round with the voltage if I don't need to.

 

[gmkmay]

Well the extra memory might not offer much fps increase ( which is not true for actual gameplay and not recorded demos aka why Hardocp reviews are so much better compared to anyone else's ) the 512mb version loses A LOT of AA compared to the 1gb version due to the lack of memory.

The minimum FPS is WAY lower also.

True, when I said performance of the memory I actually meant the clock speed. The 1gb is a much better option it seems.

 

[Deleted member 143938]

I have a Sapphire 4870 1GB

It's artifact scanner stable to 805/1100

And for the record I enjoy the drivers, software and design 200x more than my previous 8800GT