Overclocking AMD Radeon HD 7700 GPU help/advice

[ToastOfDoom]

I've been playing games on the GPU and it's nice in it's default state, but I'd like to try to push it further to see where it's limit is. I'm a bit new to overclocking so I'm using the Catalyst Control Center because it's already on my PC. By default, its clock setting is at 1000 MHz, memory clock setting is at 1125 MHz, and the power control setting is at 0%.
at all this without any game running its tempuratures is around 30 C, and after reading a bit and seeing that the back-off area was around 80 C, I decided to step it up a bit up to about 1200 MHz. In my sorta trial-by-fire, I loaded up my most graphically demanding game, Dayz (standalone) and when I did, all I got was a black screen. The cursor changed to what the game uses but that's it. I assumed maybe Dayz was being buggy, and loaded up the second most demanding game, Planetside 2. Again all I got was a black screen. I lowered the MHz, too about 1100. The game then played, but after about 1 minute, it got SUPER choppy and I think it crashed. Is there anything I can do to boost up my GPU, or is it like not designed to overclock?Sorry if I can't give more details I'm not huge on tech-talk. Thx!

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Dont mess with overclocking cheap AMD's, my friend had Sapphire HD 7770 too and he overclocked it with CCC about 25%, in two weeks the graphics card was dead.
If you want to get some better framerates in games then get the GTX 660 instead, if your PSU can run HD 7770 then should be no problem to run GTX 660.

[mandres2002]

I have overclocked my Radeon 7700 from:
-GPU clock: 1000
-Mem Clock: 1125
-VDDC: 1175
-Power limit: 0% (factory setting)

To:
-GPU clock: 1120
-Mem Clock: 1375
-VDDC: 1300
-Power limit: +20% (the maximum)

And the temperature never exceds 78ºC and allways goes everithing right.
The FPS grows 15.5%, measuring with Unigine and Resident Evil Benchmark.

I always use it on windows light use downclocked to:
-GPU clock: 1000
-Mem Clock: 1125
-VDDC: 1150
-Power limit: -20% (minimun)

[mika]

Day z is VERY cpu limited my friend! So I hate to say it but maybe you schould be looking at a diffrent game.Also I had a 7770 not saying its a bad Gpu but its more like mid-range dont expect to be able to max games on it and get 60 fps ( not gonna happen ) What cpu do you have btw?

[Oblivio]

Escrito originalmente por mandres2002:

And the temperature never exceds 78ºC and allways goes everithing right.

It'd probably be a good idea to have a replacement card or fan(s) (if you can find any). Bearings last longest under constant temperatures and it seems your video card runs in a 40ºC range. Powering down a system when not in use will induce futher thermal stress.

The HD7770 has 1-2GB 128-bit GDDR memory so, even though it's in a PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot, its memory bandwidth maxes out at 72-82 GB/s (based on OC setting) which is on scale with the GPU's 10 compute units. Models with 256 or 384-bit memory provide approximate memory bandwiths of 154 & 240 GB/s to 20 & 30 comput-unit GPUs repectively. One compute unit provides 64 stream processors and 4 'texture units' (buffers). So your 7770 has 640 stream processors and 40 texture buffers. Something to consider when setting graphics options in games.

On to OverClocking... While performance-tuning your 7770, use a benchmarking program (fi, GPU-Z (free)) as opposed to launching games that may not handle a video-driver reset gracefully. RAM speed is the primary factor in determining the operating tempurature, so set that first and dial it in to the bottom of your thermal goal. Next, bump the GPU speed by 0.8888 x the increase you made to the RAM speed (1000/1125 = 0.88888). This ratio is very sensitive, 1 MHz GPU speed will be your final tweak value as you gauge performance after the initial bump. If the driver resets during the process, it's likely you need to increase the 'power' slider. This process can take some time and you may have start over using a different memory speed if you're not satisfied with the performance gain. Keep notes so you can always go back to better settings.

Once you do get the memory and GPU clocks tweaked for best performance, it may be possible to decrease the power a bit which will help thermally and use less power. There should be no need to change any bios setting since the PCI-E x16 slot can easily handle the memory throughput.

The 7770's has dual compute engines onboard and no geometry engine while the 7790 has dual geometry engines and no compute engine. So, overwriting the 7770 firmware with 7790 firmware has no chance of improving the performance of your card and a good chance that you will regret trying to "unlock disabled features."

gl

[mandres2002]

I use Sapphire TRIX program to OC the card, for me it´s the most stable.
The CPU between it is i5-3450; nothing of another world, and 8GB G.skills RAM of 1600mhz.
I have been using this settings since 2 year ago, and the card it is perfect.
In every game, and not only benchmarks, I can see perfectly the better performance with this OC settings, specially with Assassins Creed Black Flag.

In my opinion the Radeon 7770, rebranded now as R7 250x, it is a very castrated card, so if you lend it to get some flesh then you can see its true power. Maybe the original fan would be quite poor for this OC? in my opinion no if you OC it too. In any case I have putted the fan control on custom, starting refreshing at 50ºC at 7% scaling on 65ºC to 80%, and finally scaling to 100% the fan on 80ºC.

I repeat I have been using this settings since 2 year ago so are very secure.

See you.

P.D: Excuse my english because it isnt my native language; I´m from Euskadi (north of spain), here we speak Euskera and Spanish.