# OC iMac ( 2010 ) Radeon 5750M to Radeon 6870M



## JRMBelgium (Jun 5, 2011)

*If you don't want to read everything, I marked all the important information in green. So basicly that is all you need to get the final result.*

*Step 1: Simple overclocking*

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5750, wich is used in the previous generation iMac ( 2010 ) is not a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5750 in reality.

Have a look at the official specifications:
Pipelines	400 - unified
Core Speed  550 MHz
Shader Speed 550 MHz
Memory Speed 1600 MHz
Memory Bus Width 128 Bit
Memory Type GDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory 1024 MB

Now let's have a look at the real specifications of the GPU in my iMac:
Pipelines 800 - unified
Core Speed 625 MHz
Shader Speed 625 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz
Memory Bus Width 128 Bit
Memory Type GDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory 1024 MB

For those of you who have doubts, this is what GPU-Z shows:







Now I know what some of you might think. You think that the software misreads the specs of the card. And indeed that's possible.
But wait and read further and I will proove that the specifications are correct.

Now let's search for a mobile GPU with simular official specifications.
You don't have to put to much effort in it, it's the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850M.
So the GPU, advertised by Apple as the 5750M is actually the 5850M.
Why? We'll never know. But that's not important. Continue reading...

Now, I don't know if you've taken a look at the official ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870M, but if not:
Pipelines 800 - unified
Core Speed 700 MHz
Shader Speed 700 MHz
Memory Speed 1000 MHz
Memory Bus Width 128 Bit
Memory Type GDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory 1024 MB

Still with me? The 5870M is nothing more then a slightly higher clocked 5850M. *So all that is required is a small, free, tool called "MSI Afterburner" wich you can use to overclock the 5850M ( fake 5750 ) to the 5870M. 
It requires no skill, no voltmodding, etc... And it has a usefull option "Apply Overclocking at system startup".

What's so cool about it? Well, since the 6870M is nothing more then an underclocked 5870M ( beleave it or not, the 5870M > 6870M ), you just upgraded your card for free from an ATI 5750M to an ATI 6870M! 

That's not all, this GPU can easely get overclocked to 725Mhz/1075Mhz, wich results in a card that performs much better then the ATI 6870M/5870M.*

Now, in order to test the actual performance increase, I ran FurMark and 3DMark11 at 2560x1440 to see how much increase it would have on such an high resolution. Gaming on a lower resolution is perfectly possible, but would result in a more blurry view.






In 3DMark11, my score on 2560x1440 went up from 923 to 1033, in other words, the end-result was 11.92% higher. 
In Furmark, again on resulution 2560x1440, the score went up from 514 to 583. In other words, 13.42% performance increase.

For those of you who want to know the performance score if you want to compare your system performance:






*Step 2: Get rid off the Bootcamp driver, and install the latest one!*

Apple and Windows Drivers, it just don't matches. AMD sells many more GPU's thanks to Apple, but when it comes to iMac driver support, it's seems that it's not that important for AMD. You've probably noticed by know that by default, you get the ATI 10.4 driver. When you try to update, the software will search for an update, mention that 11.5 is available, download it and install it. Then, when you go check, it's still the same 10.4 driver. So basicly, iMac users are stuck when it comes to upgrading their driver.

Follow these simple steps:

*1. Uninstall the current ATI driver completely and reboot your iMac.
2. Download the following driver and reboot your iMac: 64bit - 32bit*

This small driver update from 10.4 to 11.5 will add the following improvements:
- GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 ( or higher )
- Video De-blocking support ( Reduces blocking artifacts seen in low-bit rate video during playback )
- Mosquito noise reduction ( Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback )
- Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3
- Support for OpenGL 4.1
- OpenGL ES 2.0 support
- Enhanced Pull-down detection ( The Pull-down detection algorithm has been enhanced for higher visual quality on certain types of video content )
- ATI Radeon GPU acceleration of VLC 1.1.1 ( or higher ) Media Player
- Video accleration for HD WMV video content
- Enahnced Dynamic Contrast video controls
- Enhanced Video Quality default options
- Catalyst AI Texture Filtering updates
- Tessellation Controls
- Morphological Anti-Aliasing support
- Stereo 3D gaming support
- Performance increase in 3DMark11/Vantage and many games!
- A lot more Catalyst™ Application Profiles
- Many bugfixes/resolved stability issues and enhancements for Windows 7!
- And a lote more I probably forgot to mention...

Now let's open GPU-Z again:






Well well well... Our ATI Radeon 5750 magicly becomes the "ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850"!

And for the fun of it, let's run those benchmarks again. In case you have forgotton, the original scores were "923" in 3DMark11, and "514" in Furmark, both tested on resolution 2560x1440. 






3DMark11 => 1074! ( = 15,98% increase! )
Furmark => 656! ( = 27.62% increase! )

For those of you who want to know the performance score if you want to compare your system performance:






And offcourse, what's really important is the gaming performance. In UT3 the performance boost wasn't very high, but it's an old game and ATI does not add performance inhancements anymore.


----------



## OneMoar (Jun 6, 2011)

.......
/facepalm


----------



## DaveK (Jun 6, 2011)

If you bought an iMac in the first place, you probably don't have much interest in gaming and you can build a pretty nice PC with the €1,150 cost of the cheapest 21.5" iMac.


----------



## Kantastic (Jun 6, 2011)

Might have just been a typo on Apple's part, we all know how stingy Jobs is. 



OneMoar said:


> .......
> /facepalm



I've noticed that you go around threads posting useless crap like this all the time. Dare I ask why?


----------



## Wile E (Jun 6, 2011)

Jelle Mees said:


> The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5750, wich is used in the previous generation iMac ( 2010 ) is not a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5750 in reality.
> Have a look at the official specifications:
> Pipelines	400 - unified
> Core Speed  550 MHz
> ...


Has it occurred to you that it's possible that gpu-z just reads it incorrectly?


----------



## TissueBox (Jun 6, 2011)

Wile E said:


> Has it occurred to you that it's possible that gpu-z just reads it incorrectly?



I'm just going to second this. I doubt Apple would give you a better video card than the one it advertised. He should also really keep the M on the video cards, indicating that it's the mobile version, that confuzzled me for a while.


----------



## JRMBelgium (Jun 6, 2011)

TissueBox said:


> I'm just going to second this. I doubt Apple would give you a better video card than the one it advertised. He should also really keep the M on the video cards, indicating that it's the mobile version, that confuzzled me for a while.



It's not just GPU-Z, I installed many OC apps and all of them show the same frequencies, same voltages, etc...


----------



## Wile E (Jun 6, 2011)

Jelle Mees said:


> It's not just GPU-Z, I installed many OC apps and all of them show the same frequencies, same voltages, etc...



It just reads that stuff from drivers. If one misreads, they all do.

Besides, it's not the clocks and voltages that are important. Many vendors tweak those to be non-reference, it's the shader count that I have reservations about.

Are you using the Boot Camp supplied drivers? Have you tried using updated official ATI drivers instead?


----------



## LDNL (Jun 6, 2011)

So whats the point of this thread?


----------



## Nitroin (Jun 6, 2011)

Why don't you test with performance preset in 3Dmark11 (if a remember well in 1280x720, isn't it)?

So the number can judge peremptorily your iMac's vga.
And we can all do some comparison also...


----------



## JRMBelgium (Jun 6, 2011)

Wile E said:


> It just reads that stuff from drivers. If one misreads, they all do.
> 
> Besides, it's not the clocks and voltages that are important. Many vendors tweak those to be non-reference, it's the shader count that I have reservations about.
> 
> Are you using the Boot Camp supplied drivers? Have you tried using updated official ATI drivers instead?



Shader count is 800 and both on BootCamp as on the official ATI drivers. I installed the official ones when I noticed that the specs weren't correct.



Nitroin said:


> Why don't you test with performance preset in 3Dmark11 (if a remember well in 1280x720, isn't it)?
> 
> So the number can judge peremptorily your iMac's vga.
> And we can all do some comparison also...



I will run the test at 1280x720 this evening and share the results.


----------



## JRMBelgium (Jun 6, 2011)

I ran the test as requested


----------



## ShiBDiB (Jun 6, 2011)

Who cares what vga ur overpriced mac with an extremely over-rated and expensive wannabe windows os has. 

Unless you can open it and check and see what card you have, then we wont know if its just a driver snaffu, an OC'd card do to driver snaffu, or if they happened to change their production line without telling you. 

either way, why are u complaining about having a faster card when my system thats half the price of urs still poops on it..


----------



## Easy Rhino (Jun 6, 2011)

why are you all shitting on jelles? he is pointing out something he discovered. if you cant offer anything constructive or have nothing interesting to say then stay out of this thread. oh, and the next person who comments on his 'overpriced computer' will get 5 points.


----------



## JRMBelgium (Jun 6, 2011)

ShiBDiB said:


> Who cares what vga ur overpriced mac with an extremely over-rated and expensive wannabe windows os has.
> 
> Unless you can open it and check and see what card you have, then we wont know if its just a driver snaffu, an OC'd card do to driver snaffu, or if they happened to change their production line without telling you.
> 
> either way, why are u complaining about having a faster card when my system thats half the price of urs still poops on it..



Grow up dude. I still use Windows on my Mac. I didn't pay the full price for the system. I only bought it for it's design, silence, power-usage, etc... It also allows me to experience the Mac OS because it could come in handy for future jobs. If you want my honest opinion. When it comes to tablets, I prefer iOS, when it comes to mobile phones, I look at Android as equal to iOS and when it comes to desktop PC's, I prefer Windows over Mac OS. Unlike you, I'm not a fanboy, and not a hater.


----------



## Wrigleyvillain (Jun 6, 2011)

Jelle Mees said:


> Unlike you, I'm not a fanboy, and not a hater.



Yep that's it in a nut shell. I try to stay out of the Mac threads cause the average moronic comment makes me feel like I'm at [H] and I get pissed off.

Thanks for sharing your findings.


----------



## Wile E (Jun 7, 2011)

Those are definitely the results for 800 spus.

But I found a flaw in your idea. Apple never advertized it as a mobile 5750. If you look they advertised it as a standard 5750, which does have 800spus. So, you got exactly what you paid for. I don't know why Apple did it that way, and now that I have thought on it, I remember wondering why the gfx cards for those models weren't listed as mobile cards. Now we know.


----------



## TissueBox (Jun 7, 2011)

I'd just like to know if he dropped the M on the video card(s)' names on purpose. It's still confusing me D: It's like he's comparing mobile and desktop versions which are vastly different. I'm sure many of us here can assure you that the 5750 is nowhere near the 5850, let alone the 5870. If you're referring to the 5850M and the 5870M, that would be another story. Kindly clear that up because you jump from both the desktop and mobile versions frequently 

Also, a 6870 =/= a underclocked 5870. Surely it can't be "underclocked" if its clocks are higher yet performs "worse" 

On another note, GPU-Z's readings are correct according to gpureview if you set the clocks down to  625/2000 for the 5750.


----------



## Wile E (Jun 7, 2011)

TissueBox said:


> I'd just like to know if he dropped the M on the video card(s)' names on purpose. It's still confusing me D: It's like he's comparing mobile and desktop versions which are vastly different. I'm sure many of us here can assure you that the 5750 is nowhere near the 5850, let alone the 5870. If you're referring to the 5850M and the 5870M, that would be another story. Kindly clear that up because you jump from both the desktop and mobile versions frequently
> 
> Also, a 6870 =/= a underclocked 5870. Surely it can't be "underclocked" if its clocks are higher yet performs "worse"
> 
> On another note, GPU-Z's readings are correct according to gpureview if you set the clocks down to  625/2000 for the 5750.



Well, he made a mistake. Apple never called it a 5750M, just a plain 5750. Taking that into account, his post basically says 5750 (non M) = 5870M.


----------



## Nitroin (Jun 7, 2011)

Jelle Mees said:


> I ran the test as requested



With my Acer 5551g (~500€) with an 5650M (400 shaders) vga I can get 1127 in Graphics Score so yours is definitely a 800 shaders card, without any doubt!

Nice to know! In this way the iMac seems to me a little little bit less overprice than I previously suppose.


----------



## Wile E (Jun 8, 2011)

Nitroin said:


> With my Acer 5551g (~500€) with an 5650M (400 shaders) vga I can get 1127 in Graphics Score so yours is definitely a 800 shaders card, without any doubt!
> 
> Nice to know! In this way the iMac seems to me a little little bit less overprice than I previously suppose.



Even if it had only 400 shaders, it still isn't over priced. It's the only all-in-one that carries IPS screens. Just a 27" 2560x1440 IPS monitor without a computer starts at $800, and goes up from there.


----------



## Nitroin (Jun 8, 2011)

Wile E said:


> Even if it had only 400 shaders, it still isn't over priced. It's the only all-in-one that carries IPS screens. Just a 27" 2560x1440 IPS monitor without a computer starts at $800, and goes up from there.



It's your point.
In my opinion IS overpriced.
Because even considering a 800$ S-IPS panel an i5+4GB+6770M still don't worth 899$.

The iMac has *many other* qualities. Surely not the price competitiveness.

/OT


----------



## JRMBelgium (Jun 8, 2011)

Big news everybody. Now I am 100% certain that it's the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850!

Today I wanted to update my driver. It sad "Current Version 10.5" and "11.5 is available". I downloaded the update and I always use the "advanced installation" option so that I can select wich parts of the software I want to upgrade. 
What was very strange is that is sad that all the parts were up-to-date. So basicly, the software allows to update, but it wasn't able to update anything.

So I tried another method. I uninstalled the driver completely, rebooted, downloaded the desktop driver, installed it, and again, it didn't update anything. It didn't eaven install the Catalyst control center!

That's when I downloaded the Mobile 11.5 driver. Now, it DID install everything as requested, and the 11.5 driver is now fully operational on my iMac. And now look what GPU-Z shows:






Now you can clearly see that this entire thread is no BS. You can actually upgrade your so called "5750M" to a "5850M" and with a small overclock get 6870M/5870M performance!

Now, without the removal of the bootcamp driver, and the installation of the 11.5 driver, you are missing out on the following performance inhancements since 10.4:
- GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 ( or higher )
- Video De-blocking support ( Reduces blocking artifacts seen in low-bit rate video during playback  )
- Mosquito noise reduction ( Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during playback )
- Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3
- Support for OpenGL 4.1
- OpenGL ES 2.0 support
- Enhanced Pull-down detection ( The Pull-down detection algorithm has been enhanced for higher visual quality on certain types of video content )
- ATI Radeon GPU acceleration of VLC 1.1.1 ( or higher ) Media Player 
- Video accleration for HD WMV video content
- Enahnced Dynamic Contrast video controls
- Enhanced Video Quality default options
- Catalyst AI Texture Filtering updates
- Tessellation Controls
- Morphological Anti-Aliasing support
- Stereo 3D gaming support 
- Performance increase in 3DMark11/Vantage and many games!
- A lot more Catalyst™ Application Profiles
- Many bugfixes/resolved stability issues and enhancements for Windows 7!
- And a lote more I probably forgot to mention...

I will update the first post with all this information and new benchmarks with the current driver as soon as I can.


----------



## cdawall (Jun 8, 2011)

there is a huge difference between those cards. i think the driver is reading wrong like everyone else is saying. if you dont want to believe that cool.


----------



## WarraWarra (Jun 8, 2011)

Nice improvement. 
Yeah like someone else said if you are serious about gaming then buy a decent i7-2nd gen +6970m/485m for the same price or less and your not stuck with a PDA OS on your hardware.

Alternatively, So why go thru all this trouble when you can get another MXM card and install it instead of this 5750m. You can reuse the same heatsink, just add some Thermal Grease.
You might want to install the latest ATI OSX drivers so it could recognize the new card or the Imac will go stupid and not start OSX then new OSX install needed.
The generic OSX works best for this, not sure if the Imac osx disk would work.

I had to help some unfortunate sod with his 2009 Imac, added 6970m + Vertex3 SSD and runs like hell now.
Just check power supply capacity or get similar power consumption card as the 5750m.

They are all hardware / Intel inside, you just payed $1k ~$2k too much for the logo.


----------



## LordJummy (Jun 9, 2011)

I found this thread pretty interesting. Thanks to the OP for posting all that info. I bet you're psyched you got more than you originally thought. That's one of the best feelings in the world. It's like buying a pair of pants at a thrift store for $10 and finding a $100 bill in it. 

I'm interested in playing with a used recent iMac for fun. Where did you pick yours up?


----------



## Wile E (Jun 9, 2011)

Nitroin said:


> It's your point.
> In my opinion IS overpriced.
> Because even considering a 800$ S-IPS panel an i5+4GB+6770M still don't worth 899$.
> 
> ...



You are forgetting form factor. The all-in-one form factor is a feature. You can only compare to other all in ones. Show me another all-in-one with this level of hardware. Even if you find one that has this level of hardware, but doesn't have IPS, I bet it isn't cheap enough to account for the lack of IPS.



Jelle Mees said:


> ...snip....*Now you can clearly see that this entire thread is no BS. You can actually upgrade your so called "5750M" to a "5850M" and with a small overclock get 6870M/5870M performance!*.....snip......


Sigh, Read my posts again. Apple NEVER SAID it was a 5750M. They marketed it as the equivalent of a desktop 5750. It never said anywhere that it was a mobile part. It always just said 5750. Makes perfect sense, because that's pretty much 5750 stats.

Look here: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP588

Absolutely no mention of the cards as mobile cards.


----------



## crazyeyesreaper (Jun 9, 2011)

which would mean the op is an idiot blowing smoke for no reason over the performance of a 5750 that is OMG a 5750 lolz


----------



## Wile E (Jun 9, 2011)

Yeah, but it's not his fault. It's Apple's for marketing it like a desktop card. In reality, it is a 5870M, labeled as a desktop 5750.


----------



## crazyeyesreaper (Jun 9, 2011)

yup which is utterly asinine but of course Apple is awesome so yea they cant possible screwup in that regard


----------



## Wrigleyvillain (Jun 9, 2011)

Sense is the first thing to go out the windows when it comes to many marketing decisions.


----------



## johnnyfiive (Jun 10, 2011)

For all the Apple haters in this thread... go to an Apple store and play with the 27" iMac. Don't you dare lie and tell me that the screen isnt amazing. If you fail to see it, you're seriously stupid. The display on the 27" iMac alone is worth $1,100+. I'll be having a wonderful time gaming on my 27" iMac IPS display (thanks to mini display port capable cards) while you play on your POS TFT/LCD/LED display. I'm sick of tired of the Apple hater threads, take your stupid comments somewhere else and learn to be a positive thread contributor for once.

Jelle, nice find. Thanks for the thread and follow up posts.

\[0_o]


----------



## Black Panther (Jun 10, 2011)

They see me rollin', they hatin'.


----------

