Overclocking Success

I just used Catalyst to automatically detect optimal overclock settings on my hd5870 last night, with the result of it increasing the core and memory frequencies to 850/1095. Holy cow, what a difference! I haven't ever overclocked anything before, and was not very hopeful for any kind of big change, but the difference is massive. I had been lowering my settings in multiplayer SC II to Medium for optimal performance, and now I can do Ultra on 2v2 without any detrimental lag. The "All In" final mission was a lagfest on Ultra when I played through it before, and now it runs almost like butter, and even the most hectic attacks only stutter a little bit. Crysis and Assassin's Creed II also had very tangible improvement.

 

What driver version are you using? Most mobile sets I've seen don't allow catalyst overdrive.

Also, watch your temps. I don't know what machine you have, but I know my card gets much too hot at 850 for long term use.

 

I've been meaning to ask about that--I got the vague impression from looking at a few guides that under 100C is acceptable; is that about right? I have an iBuyPower that has a really fan system, which fortunately seems to match it's rather loud noise output with good cooling ability--nowhere on the laptop gets any more than just warm to the touch even after hours of gaming, and overclocking doesn't seem to have made it noticeably warmer, although I need to go back to stock frequencies and see how much different the actual GPU temp is. I downloaded Catalyst Control Center from ATI by selecting my card, and the version is 2010.0527.1242.20909

 

Haha, that was supposed to read "bad-arse" fan system; apparently profanity is automatically filtered out.