I've modded my 3850 agp bios

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Hello everyone,

Yesterday I've decited to play around a little with my bios settings, which resulted in a nice performance gaming boost :) Below are my tuned bios settings. My card boots at 725/900. 3d speeds are set at 735/950 :) The ATI control panel had a limit of 720 Mhz for the core speed. I've downloaded the bios of the 3850 oc'ed edition and used that signature file to raise my overclocking headroom. I carefully tested my card at 720/950 first and it seemed to be performing well, so I felt comfortable using that signature file. Please note it's risky to just use a signature file of a faster card, because those clocks usually exceed the cards capability. Also you will be using a wrong device id in that case, so the driver won't detect your videocard. I've also raised the vgpu a little from 1.214v to 1.254v in 3d speeds. I was able to select that higher voltage in my bios. I've also increased the FAN percentage to make sure the gpu gets enough cooling.

3850agpbiosmod.jpg

3850agpbiosmod1.jpg

3850agpbiosmod2.jpg


I've tried a 3dmark03 run without pushing my cpu and ram too hard:
http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6416692

A very cool thing is that NFS Shift is now playable full screen 1900x1050 with AAx4 and AFx16 settings :) It's just a whole lot smoother. Before around stock speeds that was unbearable :) Tweaking my Windows installation by disabling unneeded services and start-up programs have also contributed to this.
 
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GFreeman

Coastermaker
How come, did the new drivers not recognize your videocard anymore? When not using a hash (signature) then this happens to me as well. The trick is to find a modified or an overclocked signature file..
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Nice work on that overclock GFreeman! I admit I haven't used that BIOS editor before, but damn, does it look thorough. I might have to look for an NVIDIA counterpart so that I can force the card to run at 60% fan speed all the time (summer is here, don't need a 60~80°C GPU adding to the heat!).
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
NiBiTor.v6.02 supported changing fan speed in 3d mode as well. Although I have to agree RBE is more advanced. I really like you can change the fan speed when the card reaches a certain temperature instead of just fixing your fan to run at the certain percentage in 3d mode all the time ;) You can do that with NiBiTor as well I believe, although the user friendliness is not as great.. You probably have to be some guru to do this LOL!

Well this tutorial I found might help you, but it does require quite a lot of reading.. I'd say K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) haha! But oh well....

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=314493
 

OriginalJoeCool

Tech Monkey
I'll check this out. The 5850 in my laptop is always very hot. Sometimes during long gaming sessions, the keys actually get so hot I can't keep my fingers on them. I wonder if I might be able to do something to help with this.
 

DarkStarr

Tech Monkey
No it read the card, it just locked it. No matter what I did it was lock at stock 700/1150 unless I did the ATT workaround and changed it to 870/1370 but then it was locked there.

Also Rob, NiBiTor is great. I used it to up both my cards vcore from 1.17 to 1.18 and OC them to the max. Once I put them on water I also zeroed out the fan speed and upped the OC as far as possible.
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Well I've just ordered a Zalman VF1000-LED VGA cooler for my ati 3850 agp videocard :) I've noticed that that card runs a little hot after softmodding the vgpu a little higher. It sometimes reaches 90 degrees and I have seen 105 degrees max on a hot day. Before that the card reached about 82-85 degrees max, which still is quite a lot. I think my cooling is going to improved enough after this modification :) After I'm gonna search for some more overclocking headroom :)
 

DarkStarr

Tech Monkey
Mine are under water, they now hit a max of about 42C. :p go OC!!! If temps hit about 60c or so they start crashing due to the shaders being too hot.
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Well here's 30k on FM03.. Running on Windows 7 and I haven't got overclocking ram in here.. This ram doesn't like overclocking so much so it could be better. Card running on 735/950. CPU at 2907 Mhz, ram at 207Mhz.. 2,5-3-3-6 2t..

http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6422707
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Well this is my highest score so far. I tried popping to the DDR333 memory divider, but that meant I couldn't get my cpu that high the ram just wouldn't cope. I'm happy with this 2gb DDR ram, but it's Kingston so not the best overclocking stuff.. I used to have a 1gig kit with Windows XP. I remember getting the ram way higher. The board cuts out around 270htt.. The A8v won't do much more. I have been able to do 272-273 once.. lol! Around there the PCI lock sometimes stops working.

Well, here is 30,5k :) I was at 268htt with 210 Mhz on the ram or so.. 2,5-3-3-7 1t timings. http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6422748
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
I didn't quite expect my puppy to do this lol! I've tried some more bios modding and set the 3d clocks at 750/950 and it actually ran the clocks no sweat at 1.254v vgpu.. I wonder what more this card can do actually. But I gotta improve cooling for that matter. It does have an effect though on my load wattage LOL! Stock this thing comes at 669/829 so I'm pleased with it so far :)

Here's the new score! Same settings on the cpu and ram as the last bench. Except the card tuned up a bit. http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6422763
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
I have some more left in it :) VGPU set to 1,3v, and here's 800/1000 :D And 32K obviously :) I had to lower htt, due to the videocard being on higher clocks.. CPU and the ram really has to work to keep up. You could say I'm CPU limited now lol!

scoreub.jpg


http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6422895
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
I have done some more bios editing and have the 3850 stable now at 837/1020 with 1,214v. It seems the card is fine with stock voltage at these clocks. All adding vgpu did was adding heat for me so far. I feel there's still room the find :D Tomorrow I will do some more benching!
 

Kayden

Tech Monkey
I have done some more bios editing and have the 3850 stable now at 837/1020 with 1,214v. It seems the card is fine with stock voltage at these clocks. All adding vgpu did was adding heat for me so far. I feel there's still room the find :D Tomorrow I will do some more benching!

I worry that thing is going to die on you in a blaze of glory, if it does take pics!

j/k

Glad to hear your getting so much out of that little card! I can't believe your getting so much out of an AGP card seriously.
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Thanks! Well the above clocks that's about it, it's running nicely. I've tried some testing with NFS Shift and I can tell the difference :D I'm also keeping the temps in check. That's about it for stock air cooling. The cooler I wanted to order was out of stock. The temps are good for the clocks though.. idling around 52-53 and after some serious NFS Shift gaming it maxed out around 98c. There is room for improvement left there. At 700/850 it was hitting around 85-86 degrees. So that's not even that much of an increase I have to say. Promise made I will keep it allive. It's the strongest AGP card out there at the moment. Don't want to lose it ;) LOL!
 

GFreeman

Coastermaker
Some more benching done today, and I came to this sweet spot!! :D What do you think of this score? I am CPU limited unfortunately. The RAM I have doesn't overclock great as well.. Pff this has been costing me quite some hours to get here.. haha!

scoreez.jpg


http://3dmark.com/3dm03/6423099
 
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