2X 512MB HIS HD3850 ICEQ 3 Turbo Crossfire

[saaya]

very nice eva!
and thanks for all the details roger!

powercolor 3850 512mb extreme cards use 1ns samsung chips according to ixbt and techpowerup

my club3d 3850 512mb oc edition MUST use 1ns samsung since i played games on it all day with 2250 memspeed havent tried higher yet

gecube 3850 512mb oc edition uses hynix 1.1ns chips!
they dont seem to oc well...

[The Stilt]

gecube 3850 512mb oc edition uses hynix 1.1ns chips!
they dont seem to oc well...

My cards have 1ns Samsung
The one reviewed in TPU had 1.1ns Hynix.

[saaya]

My cards have 1ns Samsung
The one reviewed in TPU had 1.1ns Hynix.

hmmmm i did some research and a guy on ocers.com bought one from newegg and his highest 3dmark result is with 775/1025. so it sounds like hynix right?
but coolaler has this card as well it seems and on the pics he posted you can see his card is using samsung mem.
but the highest mem clocks he posted are 950?

the heatsinks on the gecube and HIS cards look really nice, i think they are better than the one on this club3dcard but im not sure...

[AliG]

hmm, well you could always pass an his iceq3 turbo and a club3d down to me and I'll be sure to test them out for you

[saaya]

2250 mem clock showed some small artifacts in crysis and the it crashed, gonna check now if it was the mem or gpu oc that caused this.
i hope its the gpu! ^^

EDIT: damn crysis sure stresses videocards
max stable and artifact free clocks in crysis are 760/2100, i can play c&c3 all day at 777/2250 without lockups or artifacts, so this shows how demanding crysis is i guess in rivatuners gpu load monitor c&c3 results in the gpu being loaded only 80% on average while in crysis its loaded around 99% on average.

[eva2000]

nice going eva , nice aquascore re 3dmark03 increasing the gpu core frequency makes a massive difference to score i found with the 2900s in crossfire the gpu frequency made a massive difference to score if you can up the clocks of gpu in 3d03 with a modded bios maybe

thanks mate, yeah GPU clocks seem to max out around 783mhz for now.. i'm hoping software voltage control will eventually help heh

My score does not last when compared to eva´s by clock-to-clock

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4217109

probably my QX9650 helping me along

2250 mem clock showed some small artifacts in crysis and the it crashed, gonna check now if it was the mem or gpu oc that caused this.
i hope its the gpu! ^^

EDIT: damn crysis sure stresses videocards
max stable and artifact free clocks in crysis are 760/2100, i can play c&c3 all day at 777/2250 without lockups or artifacts, so this shows how demanding crysis is i guess in rivatuners gpu load monitor c&c3 results in the gpu being loaded only 80% on average while in crysis its loaded around 99% on average.

interesting

[toddm27]

very nice results, any word on when the modded bios's for both 512 and 256mb 3850's will be available?

[aiaN]

I have the setup below and 2x HD3870 running with fan fix bios, and i get Crossfire enabled in CCC and i can see 2 gpu cores in ATItool, but i only get about 15.000pts in 3d mark 06, and my games does not seem to get any multi-gpu advantage!! Please help!!

[eva2000]

very nice results, any word on when the modded bios's for both 512 and 256mb 3850's will be available?

check xtreme bios forums

I have the setup below and 2x HD3870 running with fan fix bios, and i get Crossfire enabled in CCC and i can see 2 gpu cores in ATItool, but i only get about 15.000pts in 3d mark 06, and my games does not seem to get any multi-gpu advantage!! Please help!!

use CCC to oc CF.. not ati tool

[Blacklash]

Nice.



My 3850s only do 760. Of course that could be a voltage thing. Under Vista x64 when I set above 760 my driver "stops working" and the application crashes. The cards aren't overheating.

Thanks for the BIOS I will have to take a peek at it.

[SeLecT]

Nice testing!

Do you have a Blitz Extreme at home, to test CF on this board with these little cards? i ask because PCIe 2.0 and the second slot...

[eva2000]

thanks guys..

Select question directed to who ? as I am using Blitz Extreme for these cards already seen screenies and system specs listed above

[Amey]

excellent scores there Eva ! very detailed posts, i love reading them

[eva2000]

Update with 45nm Wofldale power heh

System

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Q740A493T 2L7**** / **0909
• CPU Cooling: Dtek Fuzion Rad Tower Box
• Asus Blitz Formula 1205 bios
• 2x 512MB HIS HD3850 IceQ3 Turbo Crossfire stock hsf + 7.12 Cat
• 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500 dual channel kit (white dimm slots)
• Memory cooling: 120x25mm Thermaltake 81cfm fan
• 80GB Hitachi 7K80 SATAII
• Pioneer DVD-RW
• 620W Corsair HX620 PSU supplied by Corsair
• WinXP Pro SP2 Nlite Fully Updated.

Started to play with my 2x 512MB HIS HD3850 IceQ3 Turbo Crossfire pair with their stock bioses so I can use ATI CCC to overclock both cards.

@715/909 Stock speeds



@783/1098 Oc'd speeds







Still looks like 3dmark06 is cpu limited unless you use quad core but 3dmark05 is nice nearly 30K!



E8500 @4616Mhz 3dmark06/05 no probs



Sooo close to 30K!




New personal best scores for 3dmark05 and AM3, first time over 30K and 270K respectively!

[eva2000]

Now did the pencil GPU volt mod on my HIS HD3850 cards, very hard to pencil ended up reducing card's stock resistance from 2.262k ohm to 1.938k ohm (1.294v 3D load) and other card from 2.258k ohm to 1.900k ohm (1.305v 3D load), so that cards do 810mhz and 823mhz GPU respectively by themselves.

Together in CF mode, 810Mhz GPU seems to be max which is up from default 789Mhz GPU, so a 21mhz GPU gain from some 2B lead magic

• 3Dmark06 = 19,732 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4740247
• 3Dmark05 = 30,327 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=3912964
• 3Dmark2003 = 69,643 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=5693449
• 3Dmark2001 = 85,653 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=9320122

[Timbosan]

man youve been having fun havent you? nice results, well written & detailed posts as usual. Those 3850's sure are nice little cards, and the wolfdale sure helps things along. congrats on the PB's, damn good scores

[eva2000]

Thanks.. yup alot of fun.. would be nicer if modded HD3850 bioses worked with ATI CCC + CF... modded bios i can do 837Mhz on GPU.. but for CF need to settle with stock bioses + 2B pencil

Managed to gain 1394 pts in 3dmark2003 with higher GPU clock 823mhz vs 796mhz and more memory bandwidth 1:1 vs 4:5

2x512MB HIS HD3850CF Stock hsf @823/2196



So close to dual core cpu 20K 3dmark06



Added another 6.8+ k to my AM3 score

click image for full details

[blossa]

Really nice results!! Especially AM3. I will try another mod and try to get the first spot again.

[eva2000]

thanks.. that AM3 run was done in a same windows session as other benchies so not the best run yet

[wittekakker]

Can't wait to get my dual 3870's

Nice results eva

[fwhomeboy]

I have a Powercolor HD3850 - 512M (Not the extreme) card running on a P5K-Deluxe with a E6750 CPU, OC to 3.6MHZ. I have 2 input fans, 2 exhaust fans

and a Zalman 9700 CPU fan installed. 1-G corsair PC6400-c4 Ram. I use Rivatuner 2.06 to clock my card to run at 799 / 999 and get a 3DMark06 score of 11,677.

I tried to set it higher but it freezes at 810 / 1010. Keeping it stock, what are the best numbers to input to increase my score ?

Should I go up on the core clock and down on the memory clock or vice versa? I haven't done any bios swaps or voltage settings at all.

Anyone got any ideas on this one.

The default clocks were 720 /900.

[GLENBOY]

hiya eva i know you have probably already answered this but why not using the 9.5 multiplier on cpu , is it the motherboard won't allow or do you just prefer the 9x, thanks mate got an e8400 and e8500 coming monday so that'll be a late night

[vanovich]

always a pleasure reading your reviews ,nice work and results.

[eva2000]

Can't wait to get my dual 3870's

Nice results eva

thanks

I have a Powercolor HD3850 - 512M (Not the extreme) card running on a P5K-Deluxe with a E6750 CPU, OC to 3.6MHZ. I have 2 input fans, 2 exhaust fans

and a Zalman 9700 CPU fan installed. 1-G corsair PC6400-c4 Ram. I use Rivatuner 2.06 to clock my card to run at 799 / 999 and get a 3DMark06 score of 11,677.

I tried to set it higher but it freezes at 810 / 1010. Keeping it stock, what are the best numbers to input to increase my score ?

Should I go up on the core clock and down on the memory clock or vice versa? I haven't done any bios swaps or voltage settings at all.

Anyone got any ideas on this one.

The default clocks were 720 /900.

for 3dmark06 cpu score and thus cpu matters, clock cpu higher and you'll get higher 3dmark06 score

hiya eva i know you have probably already answered this but why not using the 9.5 multiplier on cpu , is it the motherboard won't allow or do you just prefer the 9x, thanks mate got an e8400 and e8500 coming monday so that'll be a late night

used 9x as i want to bench at higher cpu FSB 9x519FSB vs 9.5x492FSB

always a pleasure reading your reviews ,nice work and results.

thanks

[fwhomeboy]

The video card settings was what I was really asking about. The CPU is as high as I can get it, I think. Is there aynthing you can tell me about the video card tweaks ?

Question :

I tried to set the video higher but it freezes at 810 / 1010. Keeping it stock, what are the best (core and memory) numbers to input to increase my score ?

Should I go up on the core clock and down on the memory clock or vice versa? I haven't done any bios swaps or voltage settings at all. Maybe there is nothing else

I can do and maybe I should leave it where it is ?