Source: Tom's Hardware – Keywords: overclock, graphics, card
Categories: Graphics
CRABE and Flash
Now that we’ve found the maximum frequencies our Radeon can handle, it’s time to make the overclocking permanent by writing it to the BIOS. The procedure is very similar to what we did for the GeForce card. But it requires specific software, since the GeForce BIOS editors aren’t compatible with Radeon.
As before, the first stage is to save the card’s original BIOS settings. There are different programs capable of doing that. One of the best known is GPU-Z, which can also provide you with all kinds of information about the card. You extract the BIOS settings by clicking the little green arrow to the right of the BIOS version number.
The .bin file that’s created can be modified using CRABE (Computer base Radeon Bios Editor), the Radeon BIOS editor put out by our colleagues over at Computer Base. This utility is extremely simple to use, as you’ll see as soon as you launch it. All you do is set the cursors to the frequencies you want (and also, in this case, the voltage) and save. To avoid errors, the modified file automatically gets saved with the suffix _mod.
This file then needs to be written to the EEPROM on the graphics card. Once again, you copy it to a bootable removable medium (a diskette or USB key) and reboot to that medium. In addition, the medium also has to contain the original BIOS settings and the flashing utility. In this case it’s ATIFlash, a program created by ATI themselves. After reboot, enter:
ATIFlash -p -0 -newbios rv670_mod.bin -f
Press Enter and... voilà!
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mi1ez: Be careful, many 3850s have bad overheat issues under OC, and mistakenly pumping up the voltage will make that situation worse. I found out the hard way... With boosted voltage a 3850 can reach crazy speeds... if you decided to use watercooling, that is...
David345: Manufacturer-OC will yield lower speeds than DIY while costing a whole lot more. But the cards are usually much more stable and if you don't mess with them then its not your problem if the card gets borked. DIY saves (money)... unless you bork the card, in which case, good luck. You'll need it...
I havent read all of the article so forgive me if it already answers this questtion but what would be better overclocking a graphics card yourself or buying one factory overclocked?. Also couldn't there have been a list of the overclockability of some graphics cards
Of course, getting hardware that is already overclocked by the manufacturer is better. It however costs you considerably more money, too. Money which you could have invested into a completely different graphics card perhaps.
I personally avoid manufacturers who overclock hardware since I like to overclock it myself. If you then buy a card from a manufacturer that sells overclocked as well as standard hardware you will get only a little gain out of their standard offerings simply because they ones with a high gain got sorted out. Therefore best for overclocking is hardware that is being sold only as standard without an option of getting an overclocked version. These provide a better chance for a high gain and cost only little.