5850 and voltages

im running m 5850 BE at 900/1200 with 39c idle and 59c load.

But then again its a black edition card.

They are easily adjusted without any sort of mod or anything.
Just use MSI Afterburner.

Max voltage you should go safely is about 1.35v on air.
Try to keep it under that.

I think (this is from memory)
1.87v

POST 2200

1.087v is the stock 3D voltage of the 5850.

The stock 3D voltage of the 5870 is 1.15v.

I've killed two 5850s, one of which had 80 dollars of aftermarket cooling on it, with less than 1.3v.

Had to make sure, and I got my money back.

Anyway, now I know not to bother with the 5xxx line until someone starts making non-reference PCBs with real VRMs.

How in the world do you kill a 5850, it's over-voltage proof.

....unless there was a thermal problem, which is really hard to achieve.

How did I kill them? They are virtually the most delicate PC components I've ever encountered.

The VRMs cannot handle the power that can be drawn with even a modest overvolt/OC under heavy use.

First card was a Sapphire with stock cooling. I ran it at 900/1200 with 1.15v, it lasted three weeks then started to artifact in everything no matter the voltage or speed (even well below stock). Second card was an ASUS (which advertises overvolting/ocing right on the box). It got pretty warm past 1.15v so I replaced the cooling and dropped GPU temps 20C and VRM temps 10C. Ran that one at 1.25v, 950/1250, and it started to rapidly degrade after a week of use. When I sent it back it was not stable at stock clocks/volts.