7850 Benchmark Comparison.

[Josh Weston]

So, my MSI r7850 Power Edition came yesterday, and straight away I wanted to run some tests.
These tests are far from exhaustive, but I think they show the differences overclocks make on the 7850.
All information is provided in the images.
I only wish I knew how to create a line graph with the data on, as it would prove a far better way of demonstrating the differences. Alas, my Excel skills are not what they used to be.

Without further ado;

I know that they're far from the best, but it's the best I could do.

Be gentle...it's my first time.

Hope this helped someone out there!

 

[Master&Puppet]

That's interesting stuff. It really is a good little card!

For reference I just benched a single 7950 @1060/1575 on stock volts and got this:

Your's isn't far behind for the clock and was probably quite a bit cheaper than mine!

 

[Josh Weston]

Probably not all the much cheaper - the 7950s really are priced well.
Interesting though, as they're not too far appart
I'm happy with the card at the moment, just wish I could overclock further. Still, it shall do for now.

 

[seumasbeathan]

Nice work Josh

 

[Josh Weston]

Well, this would be a great time to have an 'edit OP' button.
Here are some updated screen grabs, showing some lovely charts and whatnot.
Still have yet to find a fix for my Afterburner woes, but oh well

http://imgur.com/a/i16m7 <-- All there, as the formatting of this website does not work well for multiple images.


*Restricted-Overclock: as of the 31st August, 2012, I am unable to push my clocks any higher than the standard Afterburner is allowing. All attempts at 'unlocking' Afterburner have not worked, so I am awaiting further updates and revisions until I go for a 'max' overclock of the card.
**Max Overclock: this table shall be left free until I am able to fully unlock Afterburner.

Notes about the tests:
The 'Reference card' portion of the results is where I underclocked the card to the same clocks as a reference, non-factory-OCd, 7850.
The 'Factory-Overclock' portion of the results is where I let the card run as MSI shipped it to me. Nothing was changed.
The 'Restricted-Overclock' portion of the results is where I maxed out Afterburner as far as it would allow.
Core Clock @ 1050MHz, Memory Clock @ 1450MHz.
The card's fan profile was left at 'Auto' at all times.

Other PC Specs:
Processor - Intel i7 3770K @ 4.5GHz
Motherboard - MSI Z77A GD65. BIOS revision 10.5
RAM: 8GB 2133MHz 10-11-10
MSI Afterburner 2.2.3
Catalyst Control Center 12.8
Monitor: 1920x1080

 

[Master&Puppet]

Better with graphs

You are right about the whole MSI thing by the way. Today my profile (which was working) decided to stop working. Unofficial Overclocking isn't working on AB atm for me.

 

[Josh Weston]

Well, that really sucks.
I did read somewhere that since CCC 12.3, AMD have stopped containing certain .dll files that are needed by AB for the Unofficial Overclocking. An MSI representative said that this may mark the end of Unofficial Overclocking, which would really, really suck.

 

[NRG!]

Tried this?
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18431335

Apologies if people already know this, but ive only just discovered it and doing it this way has fixed a few of my problems with screen flicker, flash problems, and the GPU not clocking down when idle.

Two ways of overclocking with AMD 7970 cards. The official way using CCC and overdrive and the un-official way using MSI afterburner which involves editing a CFG and cutting and pasting the two dll files into the msi afterburner folder.

The problem is the un-official way throws up some problems in terms of screen flicker, especially when switching between profiles. As well as other problems. It also affects powerplay, meaning cards don't always clock down as they should.

As i recently discovered the best way to overclock is with the official method. Doing it this way you will find less problems with power play and ULPS as well as the other problems i mentioned.

The problem with the official way was the limits imposed by CCC. To get around that do the following.

1. Install the ATI 12.8 drivers. http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=367183
2. Install the latest version of afterburner. http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
3. Download and run and install this file. http://www.sendspace.com/file/r7jys0
4. Right click afterburner desktop shortcut.
5. Select properties and add /xcl to the target box. It should then look like this. "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner\MSIAfterburner.exe" /xcl
6. Click apply and run the shortcut. It will say ccc limits increased.
7. Delete /xcl, apply, and restart your pc.
8. You can now use the official overclock method without those crappy ccc limits.
10. Now you can overclock using AMD's optimal method. There are no CCC limits and you can adjust the voltage. This is SO much more stable than overclocking the Un-official way using msi afterburner.

I also found this removed the flicker problem and flash problems that AMD users have been complaining about recently.

EDIT

You shouldn't unlock overdrive in CCC using this method otherwise it might interfere with afterburner.

You can set everything with afterburner once you've done this. Clocks, volts, power level and fan control.

 

[Josh Weston]

Hmm, I may just have to give that a whirl.
Strange though, the only times i've heard of the unofficial AB method causing flickering etc. is when the overclock was simply unstable, and the limit of the chip/cooing solution was reached.
Thankyou for this
Let's see if I can get this working.

 

[NRG!]

I'm not really clued up on this situation but I see this thread bumping a lot on ocers sothought it might be of use

 

[Josh Weston]

Come here so I can give you a hug! - it works!
M&P, give that a go - it's worked wonders for me.
Now, to find the limit of this card...

 

[Master&Puppet]

Oohhh. Exciting! I'll have a look later!

 

[Josh Weston]

The only issues i'm having is the fact I have to open AB twice to actually get it to open. Got to 1260MHz on 1.3v but that was the most I could get.
Settling for 1200MHz, as the chip starts to get a little toasty.

 

[Master&Puppet]

I could live with that! 30% improvement in clock sounds sexy

Looking forward to the final tables now. I think you could well beat that 7950 score I posted with the stock volt OC.

 

[Josh Weston]

I'll get the graphs and whatnot up as soon as i'm done testing for stability on the 24/7 clock

 

[Master&Puppet]

Cool cool.