How do I overclock my HD3850?

Use Catalyst Control Centre.
At the bottom is the overclocking tab.
Click the lock symbol to unlock clocking and then read some guides on how to clock it sensibly :)

Alternatively you can click the autoclock button (cant remember the name) but often it will be too optimistic and give you a clock that isnt stable.
You can use this feature and then clock it down a little. check for stability and hopefully it will save you some time getting close to the max clocks.
 
Experimenting with overclocking can be a long process and you might find something is stable, boots, etc.. but it really isn't and at which point, you have to back down, but by how much? Generally, you bump the speed up by 10mhz and test it and if its unstable, back off by 5mhz. On the other hand, you can simply blast the mhz up and hope for the best. :p Goodluck! Alternatively, you can use RivaTuner or ATITool to overclock your card. ATITool has the added bonus of an artifact checker that you can run for any length of time to check stability.
 
Also be careful, my 3850's fan was always stuck at 25% so the temps got out of hand real quick when overclocking. Idle was 68-70c. Using rivatuner I changed the fan to run at 60% and now it idles at 45c, which is light years better.

My 3850 is not what I would call a steller example, but for reference, it clocks happily to 730mhz core and 2100 memory with maybe a bit more room to OC. Catalyst Control Center found my clocks at 770 core and 2220 memory which was not at all stable.
 
I cannot get ATI tool to work with my 3850, it just freezes and ends up not responding. Throw in my 8800GT and then it works fine. Have the latest version so I am not sure what is up.
 
jhatfie said:
I cannot get ATI tool to work with my 3850, it just freezes and ends up not responding. Throw in my 8800GT and then it works fine. Have the latest version so I am not sure what is up.
Click to expand...
I don't think the latest stable version of ATiTool (0.26) will work on the 3850. You have to get the beta versions of 0.27.
 
Thanks guys I used the tool built into the ati control panel...my screen went black so I lowered both the memory and the core clock everything is running good.....I think I lowered it too much so I'll go up 5mhz like someone recommened and see how far I can go.
 
Good idea and welcome to the world of overclocking, please watch your step as you exit the BIOS and have a great day! :p It's always best to go up or down in clock speed in little increments as then you can better diagnose any problems that arise while performing this task.
 
I would just use the built-in OC if it's your first time. Just go to Overdrive, click the lock, hit ok, and then hit AutoTune. It will automatically do some tests and go up in 5mhz increments until it finds it's stable. After this, I would try to run 3dMark 06 and see if it will go through without artifacts. Using AutoTune, it upped it from 629/829 to 769/1069, however it didn't load 3dmark at all so I backed mine down to 750/1050 just fine. Got over 11,900 on 3dMark06, however at the high end of autotune it was registering like 90 degrees celsius... That's death, especially in my HTPC box but I'll do some tests.

EDIT: I noticed a poster up above was idling at 60-70, with my OC stated above I'm idling at 50 celsius right now. Are you sure that it's downclocking itself in 2d mode for windows usage?

Good luck!

BTW, catalyst 8.1's are out as of two days ago!
 
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