Can't find a working overclock method for 5850

S

stateofjermaine

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 22, 2009
Messages
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Hey guys, I have read a lot of the threads about this, but I just can't find a working method. I was able to unlock the voltage inside of Afterburner, but I can't raise the clocks. I'm stuck at 775/1125. I tried flashing the MSI BIOS, but I couldn't get it to boot from a jump drive or a CD. I tried using GPU Clock Tool, but it won't even open (I get an error, "Failed: No devices found!"). ATIWinflash won't run.

Am I missing something? How are people getting these 900+/1200+ clocks?
 
perhaps you have to enable overdrive in catalyst before you can overclock at all, even with a third party utility.
 
I tried flashing the MSI BIOS, but I couldn't get it to boot from a jump drive or a CD
Click to expand...

So basically you havent successfully flashed the bios? Until you successfully flash the bios with a bios that has higher limits for core/mem, you are stuck at 775/1125 as the max clocks.
 
SirCumsized said:
So basically you havent successfully flashed the bios? Until you successfully flash the bios with a bios that has higher limits for core/mem, you are stuck at 775/1125 as the max clocks.
Click to expand...
I've followed several guides to create a bootable USB drive, but the BIOS just won't boot from it. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.
 
Also, I think a few 5850 owners over at the Overclock forums have figured out how to raise their clocks without flashing the BIOS.
 
AMD GPU Clock Tool will allow you surpass CCC limits with any BIOS. If you are flashing off a boot drive, make sure you're booting to it using F12.
 
You don't have to flash the BIOS.

Use the newest version of AMD GPU tool for frequency tuning.
Use After Burner to tune voltage.

Do it in this order.

1. Open your afterburner app and increase voltage and fan settings.
2. Open AMD GPU tool and set frequency.
3. After you set your frquency your fan will slow way down. You have to open up Afterburner again to enable the fan settings.


It' not hard to do.
You may have to do do a clean install of drivers if you didn't do so.
 
Thanks everyone.

I guess I'm going to stick with the GPU Clock Tool avenue for now, then. I am running Windows 7 64-bit, and I have just installed the newest 9.11 Catalyst drivers, bytheway. This is my problem with GPU Clock Tool. After installing, I try to run it, and it gives this error: "Failed: No devices found!" That's it. I can get no further. When I try to run it in Compatibility Mode, it gives me this error: "Cannot load kernel driver!" and then "Failure occurred while Loading Device Driver!" I don't even know what a kernel driver is. Any thoughts?
 
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TheQuestian said:
Thanks everyone.

I guess I'm going to stick with the GPU Clock Tool avenue for now, then. I am running Windows 7 64-bit, and I have just installed the newest 9.11 Catalyst drivers, bytheway. This is my problem with GPU Clock Tool. After installing, I try to run it, and it gives this error: "Failed: No devices found!" That's it. I can get no further. When I try to run it in Compatibility Mode, it gives me this error: "Cannot load kernel driver!" and then "Failure occurred while Loading Device Driver!" I don't even know what a kernel driver is. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
9.11 were finicky for me, Uninstall it using the ATI install manager. And get the 9.10 whql 64-bit driver. Use these for now so it'll eliminate some variables that might be giving you problems. Try that and see if it makes any difference. Also before you uninstall and reinstall all these tools, go into ccc overdrive and hit the default button to make sure your card goes back to stock. I've messed with all this stuff too, and sometimes the clocks will get stuck, and the voltage is at default. THis may cause problems if your card need extra juice. We'll just try this and that until you get something working. Wosrt case scenario is go to Walmart and by a usb floppy drive and a floppy disk. Use that to flash your bios and then just return it.
 
Yeah, I did try that, originally. I couldn't get the BIOS to boot from a USB. You did mention booting with F12, but I haven't gone back to retry it, yet. Will flashing the BIOS allow me to circumvent this clock issue without GPU Clock Tool?

Edit: Still won't boot from my USB.
 
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TheQuestian said:
Yeah, I did try that, originally. I couldn't get the BIOS to boot from a USB. You did mention booting with F12, but I haven't gone back to retry it, yet. Will flashing the BIOS allow me to circumvent this clock issue without GPU Clock Tool?

Edit: Still won't boot from my USB.
Click to expand...

Not sure.

I used stock BIOS on Diamond HD5850.

Go to http://www.techpowerup.com and make sure you have the newest version of GPU tool.
 
Yeah, I'm actually not too concerned about the BIOS for right now. Since it seems there are work-arounds, I'd rather just deal with my GPU Clock Tool issues.
 
I don't know why everyone is having you run around in circles. I'll help you out.

If you followed the USB boot drive creation guide, and cannot boot from the USB drive, this may be a BIOS configuration or limitation issue. If that's the case, then you're pretty stuck. To check, you'll need to go into BIOS and see if (with your USB drive plugged in) the drive is listed in the possible options of bootable devices. It may show up as a Hard drive, it may show up as a USB thumbdrive, a floppy drive... this depends on your BIOS, but the idea is the same. It needs to be selected in the BIOS bootable devices order, and it needs to come before your hard drive that has your OS installed, or it won't work.

Creating the USB flash drive as a bootable drive will require you to use the following guide (file repository links are included in the guide): http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

After you have the USB key formatted, and the Win98 boot files on the drive, then you will need to add the 5850 BIOS file, and the flash utility to the thumb drive, before having your system boot to it to do the flash. The BIOS flash utility and the BIOS file for the card (I'm going to link you to the MSI one, so that you can use MSI Afterburner) are here: http://www.overclock.net/ati/592901-ati-5850-775mhz-cap-bypass-core.html

After you get the flash tool and the BIOS file on the thumb drive, you will likely want to back up the original card BIOS. This can be done by loading up GPU-Z, and saving he original card BIOS out to somewhere. Then you just make sure your BIOS (note that the person who suggested you try to boot with F12 has a board that says something like "press F12 to select boot device" you may or may not see this message. If not, this does not apply to you) is set to boot form the USB drive.

Then you just have to bang in the command to perform the flash of the card. then you reboot, and verify in CCC and MSI Afterburner that the clocks have been unlocked. if you ever brick the card, or need to RMA it, you're going to need to flash it back to the OEM BIOS, or they will likely reject your RMA, just FYI there.
 
sabregen said:
If you followed the USB boot drive creation guide, and cannot boot from the USB drive, this may be a BIOS configuration or limitation issue. If that's the case, then you're pretty stuck.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the response. Yeah, I have tried the steps at least a half dozen times. I have tried selecting everything from "USB:HDD" to "Hard Disk" in the boot menu, but nothing works. I may be out of luck regarding the BIOS flash. According to some users here, tho, my stock BIOS can be unlocked using GPU Clock Tool.

I just can't get it running, which is my current problem.
 
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msi bios gets you all of the MSI Afterburner functionality for voltage, core, memory and fan controls. with the asus you cannot use the MSI tool, as it's looking for a vendor hardware ID on the card. to keep it simple and get full control i went with MSI.
 
Yup, it should allow up to 1090/1300. Those are the limits I get on my 5850 with it.

Afterburner will still work if it doesn't see your card as an MSI, btw.
 
sabregen said:
msi bios gets you all of the MSI Afterburner functionality for voltage, core, memory and fan controls. with the asus you cannot use the MSI tool, as it's looking for a vendor hardware ID on the card. to keep it simple and get full control i went with MSI.
Click to expand...
you can use MSI Afterburner with the Asus bios just fine. I got an Asus card so I didnt have to flash anything. Just installed drivers, Afterburner, and off I went.
 
Painman said:
Afterburner will still work if it doesn't see your card as an MSI, btw.
Click to expand...
So, just to be clear, what is keeping my clocks at 775/1125? Is it the BIOS, or I am just not using the right tool? I have heard that GPU Clock Tool will unlock the clocks, and Afterburner will unlock the voltage . . . yes?

Edit: GPU Clock Tool gives this error when I try to run it: "Cannot load the kernel driver!"
 
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k... Just checking, because I am able to run Afterburner to set voltage and fan speeds and AMD GPU tool to set clocks on my XFX 5850 / W7 64 Bit installation. I seem to recall having to run as administrator though.
 
TheQuestian said:
So, just to be clear, what is keeping my clocks at 775/1125? Is it the BIOS, or I am just not using the right tool? I have heard that GPU Clock Tool will unlock the clocks, and Afterburner will unlock the voltage . . . yes?

Edit: GPU Clock Tool gives this error when I try to run it: "Cannot load the kernel driver!"
Click to expand...
I don't know if it's the same in Windows 7, but try hitting F8 when you boot into Windows and select the "Disable Drive Signature Enforcement" option if it's present.

As far as what the exact problem is, I don't know if I'm clear any more, but I'll summarize, let me know if I'm correct. You have a 5850, which, using CCC, can overclock to a maximum of 775/1125. Using MSI Afterburner, you can adjust the voltage and the clocks, but you can't get the clocks to go higher than the CCC limit, right? As far as I know, there are several ways to fix this. Evidently the newest version of MSI Afterburner includes a config file that bypasses CCC overclock limits, at the cost of disabling/hindering PowerPlay. You can also try AMD GPU Clock Tool now and see if the boot option fixed it. Personally, I bypassed the limit by flashing my XFX 5870 with an ASUS 5870 BIOS, which already has much higher CCC limits coded into it. I understand you tried to flash, but I'm not clear on where exactly it went wrong.
 
Mr. K6 said:
I don't know if it's the same in Windows 7, but try hitting F8 when you boot into Windows and select the "Disable Drive Signature Enforcement" option if it's present.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this is actually something that I just learned about, but I am almost positive I have tried it, already. Still, I will probably download Clock Tool and make sure.

As far as what the exact problem is, I don't know if I'm clear any more, but I'll summarize; let me know if I'm correct. You have a 5850, which, using CCC, can overclock to a maximum of 775/1125. Using MSI Afterburner, you can adjust the voltage and the clocks, but you can't get the clocks to go higher than the CCC limit, right?
Click to expand...
Right.

As far as I know, there are several ways to fix this. Evidently the newest version of MSI Afterburner includes a config file that bypasses CCC overclock limits, at the cost of disabling/hindering PowerPlay.
Click to expand...
Is this a recent development? I DL'd Afterburner about a week or two ago. Good to know.

You can also try AMD GPU Clock Tool now and see if the boot option fixed it. Personally, I bypassed the limit by flashing my XFX 5870 with an ASUS 5870 BIOS, which already has much higher CCC limits coded into it. I understand you tried to flash, but I'm not clear on where exactly it went wrong.
Click to expand...
Well, I went through all the steps of creating a bootable USB drive (used the specialized application, along with the boot files, the ATI Flash file, and the MSI BIOS). I put the drive in and rebooted. I tried setting the boot order in the BIOS, I tried F12; no matter what I did, the most my computer would do is pause for 2 seconds, and then start Windows.
 
Try disabling/unplugging every bootable device except for the USB drive to eliminate the possibility that your thumb drive is bad. Try messing around with USB settings in BIOS as well.
 
Well, it turns out that by dumb luck, I figured out how to boot from the USB (I selected Hard Disk Drive in the F12 menu, and it unexpectedly gave two options). The only files on it now are ATI Flash and the "MSI.A11" BIOS file. Bytheway, I am useless in DOS. Anyway, I am about to try this again, but last time I arrived at the C:/ prompt and tried typing: "atiflash -f -p 0 msi.a11". The error I got was "Bad command or file name."

What have I done wrong, here?

UPDATE: SUCCESS!

After figuring out the USB issue (thanks for all of the suggestions), and getting stonewalled at the C: prompt, I ran the only command that I know: "dir". As it turns out, the "atiflash" command wasn't working because for some reason ATIFLASH was showing in the directory as ATIFL~1. Heh, weird. Anyway, I ran "ATIFL~1 -F -P 0 MSI.A11" and it worked! Afterburner is doing all the right things now, and I am turning cartwheels. I hope this thread is helpful to others having the same frustrations!

Thanks again, everyone.
 
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Wow, guys. I am amazed at the performance boost after setting clocks to 950/1300. For anyone interested, I ran a quick and dirty Fraps session (30 mins.) using Crysis gameplay. Sure, it's not very scientific, but take it for what it's worth.

Very High, 1920x1200, 4XAA
MIN 26 | MAX 51 | AVG 36

If I remember correctly, that's about a 14 FPS boost from stock MIN and AVG. Of course, being Crysis, that's something like a 60% increase. LOL.

Not bad, I don't think.
 
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Not trying to rehash an old thread, but does this method work with nonreference boards??
 
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