HD5830 Endeavour

[Ket]

Contents

Part 1 - Basics of performance
Part 2 - Advanced performance improvements


Some may call this going above and beyond the call of duty, but I really want to see what this Sapphire HD5830 can do. Its unfortunate not many own a HD5830 as by the time I'm done experimenting no doubt I would of discovered some ways to get quite considerable improvements out of the card. Anyway, onward and upward.

Part 1

Theres much I hope to accomplish in my experiments with the HD5830, so starting from the top lets begin with a brief history of what I tried, and move on to what I'm currently doing with the card.

1. Anyones first stop with a graphics card is to identify what is the best driver to use. From countless drivers tested currently I found Catalyst 10.3 to be the best performing drivers. Unfortunately I couldn't try Catalyst 10.4 as they just wouldn't install properly. It goes without saying but avoid Catalyst 10.5 and 10.6 drivers. Not only do they perform like crap, they have a bug where if you try to OC your card 2D GPU and memory clocks skew themselves. These drivers also showed to have strange graphical corruption in Crysis Warhead (Frost level).

2. With the basics done my favorite part starts, modifying the vBIOS of the card. To do this I tend to use RBE these days instead of a hex editor. To grab a copy of your vBIOS download GPU-Z. The changes I recommend to make to any HD5830 vBIOS is as follows;

- Change 2D GPU speed from 157MHz to 250MHz (this should avoid the screen flicker on multi monitor setups)

- Change memory frequency to 1000MHz for all power states (except 2D, 300MHz is fine)

- Extract signature file from a Asus or Gigabyte HD5830 vBIOS. The point in this is very simple. With the Sapphire card the stock signature file is rubbish, GPU tops out at 875MHz in CCC and memory tops out at 1200MHz. Hardly stellar. By injecting a Asus or Gigabyte HD5830 signature file you will get CCC limits of 1200GPU, 1400vRAM and 1200GPU, 1500vRAM respectively.

- Edit default fanspeed. What you find inaudiable is of course subjective, but I recommend 40%. No more than 50% for Sapphire cards though.. it'll just sound like a 747 taking off inside your PC otherwise.

With those basic changes done to your Sapphire vBIOS just reflash it to your card. You can use ATIwinflash to do this.

3. Identify your maximum stable OC. This is a no brainer, increase GPU and memory frequency individually until the card becomes unstable, then back down 20MHz. Whether you decide to modify your vBIOS with these overclocked settings is entirely up to you.

That concludes the basic changes to squeak out every last bit of performance as well as ironing out some bugs and keeping your GPU nice and cool.

Part 2

With the basics established it was time to start doing my research. Did any HD5830 vBIOS have voltage adjustment supported and was it supported in RBE? After some googling it became apparent if you have a reference HD5830 (thats the really long PCB, like Sapphire and Gigabyte use) then there should indeed be a software controllable voltage regulator chip. However, as of RBE 1.25 it does not support HD5830 vBIOS voltage adjustments. So, the next step is to use a totally different vBIOS on the card. Specifically, one that feeds the GPU more voltage (and thus, also the memory controller which AFAIK is on-die with the GPU).

Enter the Gigabyte HD5830 vBIOS.

This vBIOS from Gigabyte offers up 1.15v to the GPU instead of the 1.068v which the Sapphire vBIOS gives. A modest improvement it may be, but a improvement none the less for those who don't like taking a pencil to their graphics cards. Do be aware Gigabyte have 2 flavors of their HD5830 vBIOS, one for Samsung memory, the other for Hynix memory. So do be sure you grab the right one. You will need to make the vBIOS changes described in part 1 to this vBIOS obviously, and when you have done that flash it to your card. Flashing will be slightly different this time as you will need to use ATIflash 3.79 which is a DOS based command line utility. To use this utility you will need to make a bootable CD/DVD/floppy disk/USB stick (pick your poison) and add the ATIflash utility and modified vBIOS to the boot media. With that done restart setting your mainboard BIOS to boot from your chosen media if necessary. Once at the command prompt the commands you need to know to flash your vBIOS is as follows; ATIFLASH.EXE -f -p 0 filename.bin Now just wait for the message to say to restart you computer.

If you followed all that carefully Windows will then reinstall the graphics driver (you may need to restart again after this) and your set to go about overclocking even further Heres the results I ended up with;

Sapphire BIOS: 935MHz GPU, 1300MHz vRAM
Gigabyte BIOS: 970MHz GPU, 1300MHz vRAM (haven't tested further vRAM clocking yet)

Thats a healthy 35MHz GPU increase for a paltry 0.082v increase. Not bad eh? These results are tested stable with Unigine Heaven v2.1. As I discover more tricks I'll let everybody know.

DISCLAIMER! Most of these methods are for intermediate to advanced users. If you screw something up its YOUR fault.

[topman]

Nice post Ket
so how do you know what memory I have Samsung memory, or Hynix memory

[Ket]

You have to take the cooler off and have a look

[topman]

Just updated my two Sapphire's with the Gigabyte bios and they now have 1.15v to the GPU Thanks for the post and keep them coming

[Splave]

nice ket!

[madmaxx]

Nice work Ket

[ReverendMaynard]

nice work Ket

[Ket]

Done some more tweaking. I dismantled the cooling on the card to see what could be tweaked. The gains aren't anything substantial but rather vastly improved stability for the card. Anyway, people with Sapphire cards take the HSF off and remove the black heatsink. You will notice where the heatsink screws in thre are a couple standoffs, sand these down until proper contact is made with the ICs with thermal paste and not the naff thermal pad. Doing this simple mod allowed me to run 1000MHz on the GPU in Heaven 2.1 for about 5 mins where before this adjustment it would only run for about 30 seconds. As I said, this is a stability over a performance mod

[Cookiesowns]

Subscribed. SHOW ME MORE. I realized something though, If you mod the voltage in RBE CCC goes crazy in the over clocking tab ( shows as 000 for core clock ). But this is what you do ( learned this with my 4870, after i tried it with my 5830 and bailed because of CCC )

But this is what you do, enable unofficial overclocking in afterburner, and what other things that at on your own risk. Voltage monitoring etc. Now then set the clocks in afterburner to see if it changes, if it does, I win, if it doesn't. Sorry for the waste of time, it was worth a try though right? Don't worry about CCC, if it doesn't work, close afterburner and open it up again. It "should" work.

PS: You have to RESET the afterburner config file whenever you mod the bios for some stupid reason.

[Ket]

If CCC doesn't work with a voltage increase through the vBIOS its probable that voltage is LOCKED, or simply not supported. As yet I haven't found a way to go over 1.15v vBIOS set without CCC refusing to work properly. Its unfortunate really. With 1.25-1.3v pretty much every HD5830 would do 1GHz+ on the GPU which make no mistake is a magical number where performance really pops a gear. With 1GHz GPU and around 1250MHz vRAM your getting performance around a stock HD5850 for £55-£60 less minimum.

[Cookiesowns]

If CCC doesn't work with a voltage increase through the vBIOS its probable that voltage is LOCKED, or simply not supported. As yet I haven't found a way to go over 1.15v vBIOS set without CCC refusing to work properly. Its unfortunate really. With 1.25-1.3v pretty much every HD5830 would do 1GHz+ on the GPU which make no mistake is a magical number where performance really pops a gear. With 1GHz GPU and around 1250MHz vRAM your getting performance around a stock HD5850 for £55-£60 less minimum.

What I meant CCC doesn't work is the overclocking tab. It just like twitches out, same as my 4870 with custom 2D and 3D voltages.

Since i don't have the card with me, I am unable to personally try it out on my 5830.