Overvolting 6850 to 6870 volts

[Xzyrus]

According to Anandtech 6870 stock volts are 1.172V and 6850 uses 1.148V. Since they are essentially the same die (i.e. 6850 is a binned 6870 AFAIK) would someone knowledgeable say it is safe to run 6850 at 6870 voltage?

I was against overvolting at first but the similarity between 6870 and 6850 got me thinking. What are your thoughts?

 

[Mr. K6]

Go for it, it's completely safe. Voltage only kills cards when you run it way past specs or run it higher and very hot. That little jump from 1.148 -> 1.172 is nothing.

 

[Ruiner]

I'm doing shakedown runs on my MSI 6850 now. Running 940/1140 @6870 Vcore using MSI Afterburner. I replaced the stock cooler with my old Accelero S1 Rev1 with small sinks taped on the ram and vrm modules. Antec 120mm tri-cool (on low) is pushing fresh air on it via blowhole in floor of case. Core temp settled at 65C in Furmark.

The card did 850/1140 at default voltage via CCC autotune. I went straight to Anand's settings after installing Afterburner. I don't plan on overvolting further, but may try to push the core higher.

Metro2033 benchmarks at 8/46/136 min/avg/max 16x12 HQ on my rig.

another relevant article at TR here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/19894


edit: settled in at 950/1150 @1.172 after further stress testing.

 

[NoForgiveness]

My card hit a nasty wall. I'm at 1.22 volts for 930/1150. I had to start cranking it up closer and closer toward the full 1.3 to get 950 without artifacts, and it was lingering in the low mid 90s as far as heat goes during Furmark burnin with 2xMSAA. 930 is pretty nice though, much smoother gameplay. Still haven't settled in on the RAM yet, next step is to see if it will do 1200.

 

[B2BigAl]

Been running my 6950 @ 6970 voltage for a while now, no issues so far. I was gonna crank it up more, but these things already run too hot for my taste.