Overclocking
Every HD 7850 sold to consumers comes with a Catalyst Control Centre limitation, much like the HD 7790 has, and this limits maximum overclocks to 1050MHz on the core and 1450MHz on the memory. With XFX’s HD 7850 we were easily able to reach that. In our opinion there is no point in going further because it is not easily done and you’d need a custom BIOS and/or custom overclocking program that is able to circumvent these limits. Given these custom software/BIOS’ are not regularly updated or easily accessible they don’t really represent what everyone can achieve or real world targets.
Our overclocking saw an extra 190MHz on the core clock and 250MHz on the memory, that was a rise of 22% and 20.8% respectively. In terms of real gains we were able to rise from P6206 to P7119 – that’s a 14.7% increase in real performance – very impressive. With overclocking the HD 7850 smokes the GTX 650Ti Boost and has a lot more overclocking headroom (especially if CCC limits are circumvented). We were in fact breathing down the neck of a HD 7870 but the CCC limits prevent you from reaching that. Of course if you were able to disable these limits you’d easily be able to reach and even surpass HD 7870 levels – making the HD 7850 a very versatile overclocker.
XFX used to be exclusively a nVidia partner before jumping ship to AMD. They haven’t been partners with AMD/ATi for nearly as long as Sapphire for example. I think they swapped partners about halfway through the HD 4000 series, I remember the last XFX/nVidia card I tested was a GTX 9800.
epic (:
typo page 3, Testing Procedure, “The test the performance of video cards… ” should be “To test …”
thank you!
ur welcome 🙂
You mentioned there’s no point going beyond 1050Mhz core. Why not? bypass the limits and you could squeeze another 100mhz (at least) from that core, no voltage changes needed
I say there is no point because most driver/software loopholes that allow you to circumvent these limits have been shut with updates. If you can find a way around the limit without voiding your warranty then definitely – it’s worth trying to go further but if you can’t I wouldn’t recommend risking your warranty to go further.