MSI afterburner or ASUS GPU tweak

[Lord Tumnas]

hey everyone,

planning on attempting my first overclock once my new computer arrives and is assembled.

the card to be overclocked is a Powercolor 7850 running at 860mhz (core) and 4800mhz (effective memory)

the plan is to gradually increase to 1050 or 1150 and 5800 (respectively) after fitting an Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo II (just to be safe)

so my questions are:
is the aftermarket cooling nessecary?
are these overclock numbers to high?
if so what should i go to?

should i use MSI afterburner or ASUS GPU tweak to do this with?

 

[Cromat88]

Personally ive never used Asus GPU tweak but i do use MSI Afterburner which is a great tool for overclocking. If you going to overclock, download MSI afterburner and MSI kombuster and run the MSI Furmark tool while you overclock to test for stability and overclock your GPU clock by 5mhz at a time as a safety margin. As soon as artifacts start showing back down your overclock by 15mhz-20mhz. Apply the same theory to your ram. It takes time to find the best overclock and stability point for your graphics card. Be patient and it can pay off.

 

[Lord Tumnas]

Personally ive never used Asus GPU tweak but i do use MSI Afterburner which is a great tool for overclocking. If you going to overclock, download MSI afterburner and MSI kombuster and run the MSI Furmark tool while you overclock to test for stability and overclock your GPU clock by 5mhz at a time as a safety margin. As soon as artifacts start showing back down your overclock by 15mhz-20mhz. Apply the same theory to your ram. It takes time to find the best overclock and stability point for your graphics card. Be patient and it can pay off.

i think i will go with afterburner then.

i was planning on using the heaven benchmark as my test,would that suffice as a replacement for Furmark?

and with adjusting cooling, do i just increase fan speed as the temp goes up?

when you say "by 5 MHz at a time" do I run the bench after every increase?

how noticable are the artifacts?

Thankyou, LT

 

[Cromat88]

you will see once you have installed MSI after burner and MSI kombuster, in the msi afterburner menu you will see a button in the top left area which looks like a capital "K", click on that and then the windowed furmark tool will startup allowing you to overclock and watch the furmark benchmark as you increase your clock. Artifacting will appear as white snow like dots or white lines in the furmark tool, when you see these dial back your clock by 15mhz or 20mhz or more depending on level of artifacting . Keep the kombuster furmark tool open so you can observe any changes as you overclock. You can also increase voltage for higher and more stable clock but i wouldnt recommend it if your not 100% sure what you are doing. Once you have found the sweet spot try out a game or 3d mark 11 or Unigine test of your choice to make double sure its stable

 

[Lord Tumnas]

you will see once you have installed MSI after burner and MSI kombuster, in the msi afterburner menu you will see a button in the top left area which looks like a capital "K", click on that and then the windowed furmark tool will startup allowing you to overclock and watch the furmark benchmark as you increase your clock. Artifacting will appear as white snow like dots or white lines in the furmark tool, when you see these dial back your clock by 15mhz or 20mhz or more depending on level of artifacting . Keep the kombuster furmark tool open so you can observe any changes as you overclock. You can also increase voltage for higher and more stable clock but i wouldnt recommend it if your not 100% sure what you are doing. Once you have found the sweet spot try out a game or 3d mark 11 or Unigine test of your choice to make double sure its stable

that actually made a lot of sense....
i was planning on increasing the voltages by only .2v or so, depending on what the voltage is at stock

 

[Lord Tumnas]

and one last question. is an aftermarket cooler required? such as the accelero twin turbo II? or is that just overkill?

 

[Cromat88]

well yes it would keep the tempretures lower but if you want to overclock id recommend you rather get the MSI 7850 Power Edition. Its got much better overclocking ability and support than the Powercolour version and comes with the famous Twin Frozr Cooling system here the link http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R7850-Power-Edition-2GD5-OC.html

 

[ibjeepr]

Not to hijack the thread but I have a related question.
Why does Afterburner show my stock mem clock at 2004 and GPU Tweak shows it as 4008?
I've been using GPU Tweak with my Asus GTX 560 TI for the built in bios check.

 

[Lord Tumnas]

if im not mistaken, GPU tweak i showing the "effective" or total clock while afterburner is showing a "relative clock of the two seperate memory channels, dont quote me though