5870 memory overclocking results/questions

[BeavermanA]

Well I got my water block on my card last night and proceeded to overclock.

Unfortunately my memory only seems to be able to get from 1250mhz to 1290mhz. Weak indeed. Above that it starts screen glitching, 1325 and crash.

Didn't flash the bios, but using afterburner and the amd gpu tool, I cranked the voltage on the core up to 1.35v. This gave me a good overclock on the core, from 850mhz to 1070mhz so far, passed Vantage at 1070/1290.

Does increasing that voltage do anything to the memory voltage? If not, is there a program or bios you can flash that will allow you to bump up the memory voltage as well?

 

[SicKlown42012]

Increasing the V-Core will do nothing form memory. It has it's own power regulation and distribution. AMD released a tool for hte 5970 that will allow for a slight raise in mem voltage, but I don't know if it'll work on a 5870. Also, the 5870 doesn't really benefit from overclocking the mem. In my test, pushing it 10% on ram gave me a 3-4% frame-rate gain, while pushing the core 17% resulted in a 10-15% gain. These test were all done at 1920*1200 with 8xAA and 16xAF. Games included COD4, COD:WaW, Red Faction Guerilla, HAWX, Mass Effect, STALKER Clear Sky, and Dirt 2. Crysis and Warhead at 1920*1200, 0xAA, 16xAF all settings at highest also followed the same trend.

 

[PS3]

Is this just for a benchmark? I would definitely not overclock this card for teh aformentioned games above. That 10-15% gain doesn't translate into smoother game play, but could definitely translate into shortening the life of your video card.

 

[BeavermanA]

Increasing the V-Core will do nothing form memory. It has it's own power regulation and distribution. AMD released a tool for hte 5970 that will allow for a slight raise in mem voltage, but I don't know if it'll work on a 5870. Also, the 5870 doesn't really benefit from overclocking the mem. In my test, pushing it 10% on ram gave me a 3-4% frame-rate gain, while pushing the core 17% resulted in a 10-15% gain. These test were all done at 1920*1200 with 8xAA and 16xAF. Games included COD4, COD:WaW, Red Faction Guerilla, HAWX, Mass Effect, STALKER Clear Sky, and Dirt 2. Crysis and Warhead at 1920*1200, 0xAA, 16xAF all settings at highest also followed the same trend.

Alright. Guess I won't mess with it too much. Just kind of disappointing the memory oc is so low.

Is this just for a benchmark? I would definitely not overclock this card for teh aformentioned games above. That 10-15% gain doesn't translate into smoother game play, but could definitely translate into shortening the life of your video card.

Benchmark / Seeing how much more performance I can get out of the card in games. Try to get the most for my money. No I will not run the card at those settings unless something comes out that really needs it, but I'll have most likely moved on from this card by that time, unless Hydra works well and it'll just add to my next card's performance. My 4890 only lasted 5 months before I sold it for this.