ATI 4770 Vmods

[Quailane]

Just a quick question. Do you guys add mem heatsinks. I'll be receiving my 4770's during the week somewhere & i'll just test them with the stock cooler & when i get my back plates back for the maze4's i'll be watercooling them.

On my HD4850 I did a couple days ago I get 1200Mhz stable in Farcry2 and Furmark without artifacting at 2.137v and that is without ram heatsinks. However, you should see how much the memory clock affects the core temperature and at those speeds it limits the core overclock. GDDR5 should run considerably cooler but I would still get some heatsinks on it.

Here you go. Usual disclaimer applies: flash this at your own risk etc.

Download ASUS HD4770 TOP bios

Works on both lite and full PWM version and allows voltage adjustment via ASUS Smart Doctor.

Cool. I'll probably try it out but I'm slightly more nervous about the bios flash than soldering.

[Quailane]

So I've been testing it with furmark for the past hour and out of the box this card appears to be stable at 859Mhz core and 1131Mhz memory. At 1140Mhz memory there was one visible artifact after 5 minutes but nothing else after that for another 10 minutes. The card peaked at 64C core inside the mATX case. It is probably 70F with the window open right now.

[Quailane]

Ok, I flashed to the ASUS bios and now in smartdoctor, I see that I can't up the memory voltage? It didn't cross my mind that the memory voltage controller chip wasn't quite of the same caliber as that for the core voltage. I will definitely have to get into there with a soldering iron.

[Clint]

Ok, I flashed to the ASUS bios and now in smartdoctor, I see that I can't up the memory voltage? It didn't cross my mind that the memory voltage controller chip wasn't quite of the same caliber as that for the core voltage. I will definitely have to get into there with a soldering iron.

Waiting for info on clocks with max voltage.

[sabe]

I flashed to the TOP BIOS as well. With SmartDoctor installed, max voltage is 1.3V.

No idea where to measure the voltages with a DMM.

I can bench @ around 920mhz/1075mhz with 1.3V and max fan speed. There are visible flickers at this clock but no crashes.

Setup is Q9550 + P45 + 2x4770

[Quailane]

I flashed to the TOP BIOS as well. With SmartDoctor installed, max voltage is 1.3V.

No idea where to measure the voltages with a DMM.

I can bench @ around 920mhz/1075mhz with 1.3V and max fan speed. There are visible flickers at this clock but no crashes.

Setup is Q9550 + P45 + 2x4770

What were you able to get stock? I thought I was stable at 954Mhz and 1.072 volts in smartdoctor, but I got a BSOD out of nowhere. I was creeping up the clocks very slowly until I saw artifacts, then I would up the voltage a smidge and go back to creeping up the clocks.

The stock cooling is pretty crappy though. Dropping the memory from 1100Mhz to 1000Mhz dropped the core temps by 4 degrees C. 100% fan of course. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get the clips off the Accelero S1 attaching the fins to my HD4850. At the same time I'll wire up a molex connector to read the actual voltages.

Just in case anyone cares, I read 2.020 kOhms between FB and ground on the GPU power controller. Here is the data sheet: http://www.st.com/stonline/products/...e/ds/15341.pdf

[Lightman]

What were you able to get stock? I thought I was stable at 954Mhz and 1.072 volts in smartdoctor, but I got a BSOD out of nowhere. I was creeping up the clocks very slowly until I saw artifacts, then I would up the voltage a smidge and go back to creeping up the clocks.

The stock cooling is pretty crappy though. Dropping the memory from 1100Mhz to 1000Mhz dropped the core temps by 4 degrees C. 100% fan of course. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get the clips off the Accelero S1 attaching the fins to my HD4850. At the same time I'll wire up a molex connector to read the actual voltages.

Just in case anyone cares, I read 2.020 kOhms between FB and ground on the GPU power controller. Here is the data sheet: http://www.st.com/stonline/products/...e/ds/15341.pdf

Just push for 1GHz and show some scores
Great work man!

[G.Foyle]

[sabe]

What were you able to get stock? I thought I was stable at 954Mhz and 1.072 volts in smartdoctor, but I got a BSOD out of nowhere. I was creeping up the clocks very slowly until I saw artifacts, then I would up the voltage a smidge and go back to creeping up the clocks.

The stock cooling is pretty crappy though. Dropping the memory from 1100Mhz to 1000Mhz dropped the core temps by 4 degrees C. 100% fan of course. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get the clips off the Accelero S1 attaching the fins to my HD4850. At the same time I'll wire up a molex connector to read the actual voltages.

Just in case anyone cares, I read 2.020 kOhms between FB and ground on the GPU power controller. Here is the data sheet: http://www.st.com/stonline/products/...e/ds/15341.pdf

At stock voltage, the max I could bench was around 865mhz core, but that was not stable at all, sometimes I pass, sometimes it just crashes. Max 100% stable at stock voltage seems to be around 840~850 for me.

[Quailane]

Ok, no matter what I do I can't get it 100% stable over 900Mhz core. Even with the accelero S1 on there and didn't change anything. I'm pretty sure this is a power management issue. Even at stock clocks, running furmark the voltage doesn't stay steady. For example, at 1.05 volts in SmartDoctor, I got a first reading of 1.01 volts, and then later a reading of 1.03 volts. At stock voltage and clock settings of 800Mhz and .95 volts, I read between .90 and .91 no matter when I did the measurement. Also, setting the voltage to .90 volts in SmartDoctor, Furmark immediately crashes. Unfortunately I don't have any polymer capacitors with the same or similar capacitance and voltage ratings as the ones on the card. I will try to find some though. Also I'm not very hip on mosfets. I think I can just put some on with same or better current and voltage rating; is this correct?

The memory voltage is very consistent at between 1.49-1.50 volts under load and idle.

I also added to that picture:

[G.Foyle]

Quailane, what DMM are you using? Are you sure the measurements are accurate?
Our card reads 0.95V idle and 1.05 loaded.

[Quailane]

Lol. You are right. I was using a cheap Sperry multimeter I bought a month ago. I whip out my nice 6 year old radioshack multimeter and it gives much different readings. .968 volts idle compared to .87 volts idle on the Sperry. I tested my psu voltage rails with the Sperry and they were way low so I adjusted them up. My radioshack tells me the 12v is 13.41. Haha.

[Meaker]

I run at 900/1075 stock and seem to reach around 975/1075 at 1.3v. Not a huge improvement, will experiment if I need that voltage to get there. Will have crossfire numbers on Tuesday.

Reference Giga-byte cards with VRM heatsinks and arctic accelro S1s fitted and the ASUS top bios.

[Quailane]

I run at 900/1075 stock and seem to reach around 975/1075 at 1.3v. Not a huge improvement, will experiment if I need that voltage to get there. Will have crossfire numbers on Tuesday.

Reference Giga-byte cards with VRM heatsinks and arctic accelro S1s fitted and the ASUS top bios.

Was there a difference before and after the Accelero S1? My core is cooler but the overclock did not improve at all. Also my card has bare mosfets. All the cards are reference, but do you have the full power circuitry or the light version?

[Meaker]

Light version. No difference to clocks but a nice difference to noise lol. I placed my own coolers on the mosfets. A mix of the ones with the S1 and some left over from another HS.

[Meaker]

Current results:

960/1075

Core voltage: 1.175v

3dmark vantage GPU score: 8614

I am running up the voltage to see if there is a sweet spot atm.

[Meaker]

First card can do 980mhz at 1.230v, second 975mhz at 1.240v.

[overcrash]

First card can do 980mhz at 1.230v, second 975mhz at 1.240v.

There is something called an "Edit" button

Anyways i'm impressed with the result. I'll sure be getting a pair of 4770's in the near future.

[Astennu]

Over here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=223573

The guy is running also light cards at 1000-1000 with the Asus TOP bios and 1.2-1.3v. But maybe he has handpicked cards ?

[sabe]

Its funny how people get such high clocks, I must have ty luck on both my cards. Mine won't do even 950MHz on _any_ voltage I tried, low or high. I can only pass Vantage *occasionally* with 950MHz with 5 billion artifacts :P

[gurusan]

What make is your card sabe?

[Quailane]

What make is your card sabe?

AMD. The cards were all made in the same factory and shipped to the different companies who just put their own sticker on the fan and threw it in a box. Next weekend I should have my card with the extra mosfets and loaded up with Nichicon 470uF LF's for the 16v and 1500uF LE's for the 2.5v sections. I'm also working on finding some really good copper cpu heatsinks to cut up for the memory and mosfets.

Oh, I just want to add one more thing. I don't think a volt mod can push more than 1.35 volts through the card because according the spec sheet the controller chip is limited to 1.35 volts.

[celemine1Gig]

...
Oh, I just want to add one more thing. I don't think a volt mod can push more than 1.35 volts through the card because according the spec sheet the controller chip is limited to 1.35 volts.

Wrong.
1.35V is just the limit for setting the voltage via the vid pins.
According to your theory, not a single Socket775 board could provide more than 1.6V Vcore. And you know why? It's because 1.6V is the vid limit.

However, you can use much more than that, by not using the vid pins to set the voltage, but the feedback loop. In fact the datasheet says that OVP is 140% of the voltage set by VID. So you could run 1.35V * 1.4 =1.89V VGPU.

[sabe]

AMD. The cards were all made in the same factory and shipped to the different companies who just put their own sticker on the fan and threw it in a box. Next weekend I should have my card with the extra mosfets and loaded up with Nichicon 470uF LF's for the 16v and 1500uF LE's for the 2.5v sections. I'm also working on finding some really good copper cpu heatsinks to cut up for the memory and mosfets.

Oh, I just want to add one more thing. I don't think a volt mod can push more than 1.35 volts through the card because according the spec sheet the controller chip is limited to 1.35 volts.

Asus Smartdoctor allows you to set it to 1.3V. However, when I took my DMM to the card, I measured in excess of 1.4V, on both my cards.

[BulldogPO]

Anyone of you has ASUS TOP bios?