700mhz wall on HD4850 is smashed.

[Oese]

lowering clocks and voltages works just fine with cat 8.8 as well as setting 3d-clocks in the bios the way i use it now. i do not know whether < 0.85v is possible but i think so.. i just picked 0.85v to try whether below 0.9v is possible and it is.

dont get me wrong, i did not try everything as i now first wanted a working bios after about 30 flashs in the last week *g. it seems bios/cat8.8 behaves different with the hash-mod via rbe 1.14 then without.

without that hash-mod i was able to uppen voltage via bios if the last voltage field (09) is left blank so it seems, but then downvolting is not possible, except you did that entries in the 07/08 fields (which will lead to those f***ed up gray screens and lock-ups). with that hash-mod it will blank out if a voltage higher then 1.158v is set somewhere so it seems.

hash 4870 does not work on 4850 cards (at least mine)...

and so for the moment i gave up on ccc overclocking and those mid-clocks as i do not really know when they're applied as well as on upping voltages via the bios... i have a few more ideas, will try later..

hehe and dont think the 4870's are better off. they cant neither lower nor uppen the voltages in the bios.. so i think we 4850-users are better off really *g except for the better v-regs and ddr5 on the 4870's of course...

mmh i will test medium clocks again as well.. some games seem to clock down for a millisecond and then some stutter occurs..

[jason4207]

OK, so use the last template you posted w/ the hash mod (or w/o) to get 8.8 working?



Is that working best for you so far?

I don't use CCC to OC...just BIOS.

[Oese]

this one w/o hash mod works best. 2d, low 3d and 3d clocks, at least 2d and 3d work, low 3d will do so as well i think..

0.8v gives me voltage readings that are near about 8.4v setting.. so somewhere there will be a lower borderline..

still no chance for higher 3d voltages.. dont know how that worked before ?????

[jason4207]

this one w/o hash mod works best. 2d, low 3d and 3d clocks, at least 2d and 3d work, low 3d will do so as well i think..

0.8v gives me voltage readings that are near about 8.4v setting.. so somewhere there will be a lower borderline..

still no chance for higher 3d voltages.. dont know how that worked before ?????

I'm about to try it.

Just going to stay w/ 8.7 tonight so I can play some GRID, but I'll try 8.8 later or tomorrow.

Thanks!





Edit: On 8.7 I was getting 1.32v idle and 1.30v load! Weird.

I went back to my old BIOS settings and was back at 1.05v idle/1.35v load.

I never tried 8.8, though.

[Oese]

with cat 8.7 i did not have any problems!

1.32v idle/1.30v load is INDEED weird. Perhaps with 0.8 the cat8.7 driver defaults to 1,15v instead of 0.84-0.9v...

With 8.8 it works, but perhaps one should stick with 0.9v as lowest voltage..

I think about using higher low 3d clocks.. 625/1000 with 1.15v real to avoid any powerplay related stutter when clocking down the whole way from 800/1125 to 500/750..

[Devious]

Ive just installed the 8.8's and am also having problems. My xfire cards bios are set to 160/500 idle & 750/1050 load, but now only boot with one card 750/993 and the other 625/993 powerplay doesnt appear to work at all. Also AMD GPU Clock Tool doesn't work. Back to 8.52.2 until its figured out.

[Oese]

best use the same bios for both cards and set voltages and clocks as in the above posted picture.. should work with cat 8.8

[Devious]

I have used the same bios for both cards. ill have a look at your settings.

[jason4207]

I also have this small quirk where in GRID on the 24hr races I always see my fps drop from a constant ~60 to a constant ~24 when 9:30 is left on the clock. I usually just finish the race, and then restart the game to fix it. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this problem, and I was hoping 8.8 or these new BIOS settings would fix it.

Well I fixed this problem. I just reduced the setting from 8x MSAA to 4x MSAA. It's pegged at 60fps now (I was getting dips into the 40's before and the annoying 24fps extended drop before) and I can't notice the AA hit at all. This game is so smooth and gorgeous at 60fps 1680x1050 4XMSAA 16xAF Ultra settings!

I'm stickin' w/ 8.7 until I find out exactly what's going on. I also changed my medium clocks to match my low clocks. I see no reason for the medium clocks at this point. 250/500 is plenty fast for anything except games, and the card likes to switch b/n low and medium a lot when I'm on the desktop.

I've got my settings like this now:

[Oese]

do you really see switching between medium and low clocks on the desktop??

[Mysterfix]

do you really see switching between medium and low clocks on the desktop??

Mine swithces between 2d and 3d everytime I open IE. It really flips out if I try to use windows dreamscene.

[DJSUB]

is there anybody know where to adjust the 2d settings in ATi 4850? i already tried adjusting almost all the values in RBE but it seems no improvement in 2dbench in pcmark05

thanks in advance

[DemonEyez]

For people who are having trouble with modded bios and new drivers Cat 8.7 Cat 8.8. Here my story and possible fix:

My voltmodded (full load 1.35v) HD4850 runs with a modified bios which has 2D set to 160/300 @ 0.89v and has 3D set to 850/1150 @ 1.158v.
With Cat 8.6 i had no problems at all. These bios settings ran fine and were completely stable. Also I didnt have any blinking whatsoever.

Then Cat 8.7 came out. Right after installed those drivers (clean install) I started to have problems. I got blinking when the card was switching from 2d to 3d and got black screens and even lock ups when the card was under full 3d load during games. Reflashing my modified bios didn't work. I even changed it to higher clocks in 2d (500/500) and lower clocks in 3d (800/1100) But I didn't help.
So I reverted back to Cat 8.6 and all ran fine again.

Then Cat 8.8 beta came out. I hoped that my problem would be solved now, but alas, I experienced the same problems I had with Cat 8.7.
So back to Cat 8.6 it was.

I was beginning to suspect that there had to be something going on with my modified bios (based on the MSI bios) that wasn't working well with Cat 8.7 and 8.8 beta. perhaps it had something to do with PowerPlay in the new drivers

Then I did the following. I turned of my voltmod and I reflashed my card to my old original Asus bios and installed Cat 8.8 beta. All run fine now. Games ran fine and i had no problems, as is to be expected with a fully unmodded card
Then I turned on the voltmod, now the card only gets more juice. Still i had no problems, so I concluded that there was notihning wrong with Cat 8.8 beta and with my voltmod.

Then I redid the bios mod on a fresh copy of the MSI bios with RBE 1.13.
I modded it to the same values I had before (2d 160/300 and 3d 850/1150) flashed, and kept my fingers crossed.
And lo and behold: it runs fine now with Cat 8.8 beta. I get no blinking, black screens or lockups in games

So the trick for me was to install Cat 8.8 with a default unmodded bios in the card, and after the drivers installed then flash a new modded bios (which was modded with RBE 1.13) into the card

[TI66ER]

I tried to mod my 4850 bios with rbe,i flashed the modded bios ok but it does not seem to have worked.
the first pic is the stock one and the second is what i edited in rbe,the second pic is a from the bios that is on my card now,which i dumped with gpu-z.What have i done wrong? My card seems to be working ok still,but the clocks have not changed.

[Caped Crusader]

For people who are having trouble with modded bios and new drivers Cat 8.7 Cat 8.8. Here my story and possible fix:

My voltmodded (full load 1.35v) HD4850 runs with a modified bios which has 2D set to 160/300 @ 0.89v and has 3D set to 850/1150 @ 1.158v.
With Cat 8.6 i had no problems at all. These bios settings ran fine and were completely stable. Also I didnt have any blinking whatsoever.

Then Cat 8.7 came out. Right after installed those drivers (clean install) I started to have problems. I got blinking when the card was switching from 2d to 3d and got black screens and even lock ups when the card was under full 3d load during games. Reflashing my modified bios didn't work. I even changed it to higher clocks in 2d (500/500) and lower clocks in 3d (800/1100) But I didn't help.
So I reverted back to Cat 8.6 and all ran fine again.

Then Cat 8.8 beta came out. I hoped that my problem would be solved now, but alas, I experienced the same problems I had with Cat 8.7.
So back to Cat 8.6 it was.

I was beginning to suspect that there had to be something going on with my modified bios (based on the MSI bios) that wasn't working well with Cat 8.7 and 8.8 beta. perhaps it had something to do with PowerPlay in the new drivers

Then I did the following. I turned of my voltmod and I reflashed my card to my old original Asus bios and installed Cat 8.8 beta. All run fine now. Games ran fine and i had no problems, as is to be expected with a fully unmodded card
Then I turned on the voltmod, now the card only gets more juice. Still i had no problems, so I concluded that there was notihning wrong with Cat 8.8 beta and with my voltmod.

Then I redid the bios mod on a fresh copy of the MSI bios with RBE 1.13.
I modded it to the same values I had before (2d 160/300 and 3d 850/1150) flashed, and kept my fingers crossed.
And lo and behold: it runs fine now with Cat 8.8 beta. I get no blinking, black screens or lockups in games

So the trick for me was to install Cat 8.8 with a default unmodded bios in the card, and after the drivers installed then flash a new modded bios (which was modded with RBE 1.13) into the card

Funny thing happened to my 4850 as well, similar to your story. But first you should know that:

- I have no voltmods whatsoever, PCB is untouched except for an aftermarket cooler and MEM/VRM heatsinks.

So, I was until a couple days ago with CAT 8.7 and a modded BIOS found here at Xtreme forums made by Factotum. This modded BIOS had manually tweaked voltages both for 2D and 3D clocks (0.968 and 1.158 respectively) and the upper limit for the core was raised to 950. The normal operation clocks were unchanged to let the user do its own OC using CCC.
All was fine except for the fact that I could not go above 710/1100 without crashing on some games (725/1100 was fine with Vantage 'though). I assume this was related with a vGPU too low. Anyway, 710 was just fine for me and my daily gaming purposes.

Yesterday I went and update to CAT 8.8 while keeping the modded BIOS. BAM, blank screen while loading up Vista 64! Since this happened to me before when I upgraded from 8.6 to 8.7 (I was at the time using the 'famous' MSI modded BIOS), I knew this was somehow related with the ATI drivers not recongnizing the new voltage parameters.

Ok then, today I went and flashed the card back to a SAPPHIRE default BIOS (the most recent one I think, version 011.004.000.000.029193) and proceeded to upgrade the drivers to CAT 8.8.
Vista booted fine, I checked if the OC was well between acceptable values (tried the usual 700/1100). All fine, no artifacting and so on.

Ok, so now all that was left to do was to try a modded BIOS based on the SAPPHIRE default, edited with the newest RBE 1.14. To keep track with changes, I just modded the HASH values to method #1 (uper limits to 720 core) and reflashed. No voltage or clock info settings changes for the moment.

Vista 64 booted fine, as I expected, but the funny thing is that, although I haven't changed any of the clock info settings, the 2D clocks are now 500/500 and not 500/750 as I expected them to be.

Any idea on why or how this happened?
Is now safe for me to try and change some of the voltage, specifically in the 2D part?
Is there any way to raise the upper limits for the core a bit more, say 750?
Will these changes be compatible with the CAT 8.8?

Thanks in advance for the help

[jason4207]

do you really see switching between medium and low clocks on the desktop??

Yep. Just grab the GPU-Z window (Sensor tab) and drag it around real fast. You should see the clocks change...at least I did.

Dreamscene locked my clocks at default 675/1000, and seemed to block any other program from being able to change clocks. *This was w/ a previous BIOS, though. I haven't re-tested w/ the BIOS pic I posted above.

[Caped Crusader]

Hey, has anyone tried Gainward's HD4850 Golden Sample BIOS with a reference Sapphire/Powercolor/ASUS/whatever ? Gainward's GS uses Samsung 0.8ns VRAM. Would this be a problem with reference 4850's that use Qimonda?

[Oese]

Interesting read here in the last few days.. i will try installing cat 8.8 drivers with a stock bios and then mod it..

@ tigger: you set the clocks in the wrong place. clock info 03 is your 3d clock you have to set..

@ caped crusader: i saw even 250/500 with cat 8.8 at stock bios with an 250/500 setting NOWHERE in the bios. I suspect cat 8.8 has powerplay profiles built into the driver which will be chosen at first install dependent on the card/bios... something like this...

[Caped Crusader]

Interesting read here in the last few days.. i will try installing cat 8.8 drivers with a stock bios and then mod it..

@ caped crusader: i saw even 250/500 with cat 8.8 at stock bios with an 250/500 setting NOWHERE in the bios. I suspect cat 8.8 has powerplay profiles built into the driver which will be chosen at first install dependent on the card/bios... something like this...

Yeah, that makes sense... never thought of that. But it's unusual for ATI for add a feature and not publicize it...

[praesto]

Hey, has anyone tried Gainward's HD4850 Golden Sample BIOS with a reference Sapphire/Powercolor/ASUS/whatever ? Gainward's GS uses Samsung 0.8ns VRAM. Would this be a problem with reference 4850's that use Qimonda?

Just a question: Does 0.8ns allow you to overclock higher? Or are they just faster...what exactly does this value mean? :P

[Draxx]

It's the speed of the memory in nano seconds. The lower the value the faster the memory can run in Mhz.

[praesto]

It's the speed of the memory in nano seconds. The lower the value the faster the memory can run in Mhz.

Cool, I just ordered one, they only cost 15 bucks more than the cheapest reference 4850 in my country. How much should I be able to overclock my hd 4850 vram to?

[regenade]

So anyone tried this Gainward bios on reference boards
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/2...12.080806.html

This has 700/1100 stock clocks and a limit of 750Mhz/1150Mhz on CCC

Dnt have my PCI card in hand so a bit iffy to try out :P

[Barr3l Rid3r]

Hey, has anyone tried Gainward's HD4850 Golden Sample BIOS with a reference Sapphire/Powercolor/ASUS/whatever ? Gainward's GS uses Samsung 0.8ns VRAM. Would this be a problem with reference 4850's that use Qimonda?

Yes definately its not a good idea to put a bios made for samsung memory in a reference qimonda card.

[Caped Crusader]

Yes definately its not a good idea to put a bios made for samsung memory in a reference qimonda card.

And why is that exactly? Different timings/volatge maybe? (noob question)