[Official] AMD Radeon HD 6850/6870 Owners Thread - Page 556

That's interesting, I may reroute my upgrade path because of this. Thanks a lot

Up the ram alil and you'll be fine for now. I'm running a i5 2500k with a 6870 and 16 gigs (I know overkill was just so cheap at the moment I couldn't help myself ) But with my 6870 I play on a 23" 1080 monitor everything on ultra just fine no lag very decent frames.

My 6870 almost maxed BF3.. So i assume a 6850 will do the same. There was one or two maps that ran terrible.. But this is when i had a E8500!

Yeah, thanks a lot guys. RAM first

Uh I see you upgraded matt, hows the new i5 going?
You already started trying to OC it?
Seeing more better gpu performance?

I put it all together last night! The highest stable OC so far is @ 4.3GHz on stock voltage.. a multiplier of 44 makes it not boot
Fair to say i already have found and used the CLR_CMOS jumper a few times so far..

Temps don't pass 60c at the moment either!

EDIT: I'm about to test BF3.. My graphics card drivers are playing up right now

May 2012, AMD Catalyst 12.4 drivers, MSI Z77a-gd65 + i3570k processor
Multi-Monitor – single vs. multiple video cards.
This has been discussed in other forum posts but it hasn’t really received a lot of attention.

When using a dedicated graphics card in multi-monitor mode; it will draw significantly more power than using 2 video cards with only 1 monitor attached. This is true for AMD & Nvidia solutions. What happens is that when 2+ monitors are being driven by one card; it is running the gpu at a higher frequency and running the memory at FULL speed.

In my case, I have a Asus Radeon HD 6850 / 1gb DDR5 memory.

Radeon => 2 monitors (1920x1200 + 1280x1024)
At idle => GPU 300 mhz / RAM 1100 Mhz (overclocked).

Radeon => 1 monitor (1920x1200)
At idle => GPU 100 mhz/ Ram 150 Mhz

Radeon => monitor 1 (1920x1200) + Ivybridge integrated Graphics => monitor 2 (1280x1024)
At idle => GPU 100mhz/Ram 150 mhz.

Since the discrete graphics draws a lot more power than integrated; you can see a 25+ watt decrease in power usage. This has been documented in other forums as I said but I’ve never heard of it until now!
It has to do with the way the driver’s run to prevent multi-monitor vsync tearing/artifacts and AMD/Nvidia’s solution is just to keep the graphics cards at full speed.

You’ll find that this is less of a problem for low speed cards (ie: radeon 5450 hardly makes a difference since it’s the ram that seems to remain significantly powered a full speed in idle).

I first noted this as a problem as I’m trying to drop case temperatures and noted that the video cooler was hot to the touch at idle!

So… If you have a sandybridge/ivybridge core with IGP. You now have a reason to use both. I don’t bother using Virtu MVP technology as I find that is still buggy at this time. Instead, I have IGP graphics turned on in bios and have 1 monitored plugged into my ATI card and another one to the IGP via my motherboard.

References
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=173710

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2066336

Nice system, I'm looking forward getting a bran new Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H either.
You will definitely get to at least 4.5 Ghz soon.
Here's your new 3d (Gigabyte Z77):

http://www.overclock.net/t/1239993/official-gigabyte-z77x-owners-discussion-information-support-thread-and-club-ud5h-ud3h-d3h-and-all

Funny you should mention my board.. I got 4.3GHz last night on stock voltage, now tonight I was playing COW WAW Zombies and it crashed. So i ran IBT and it crashed.. I ran IBT with a multi of 40 and it's fine now..

The whole UEFI bios confuses me... Well i get the multiplier bit, but the voltage section confuses me. I don't understand what sort of voltage if safe to apply either.. Intel state 1.52 which I know is way too much and WILL kill my board + CPU.

Eh well, i'll look at it when i have time.. 4GHz is fine for now... Not really a bottleneck anymore!

I don't get this idle clocks thingy... I have NEVER seen mine drop down. Is it because I use Afterburner and it pretty keeps the clocks that I'm overclocked at?