Help OC Radeon 9800 Pro Needed :)

[HookeyStreet]

Hi,
Ive recently upgraded my old Jetway GeForce FX 5200 card to a nice new ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (ATi branded) so I can run Doom 3 that little bit better (and be ready for Half Life 2)

Ive downloaded ATiTool 0.0.21 (awesome program by the way) so I can have a play with the clock settings but I was wondering what the optimal speeds would be? Does the CPU make a differance to this also? As I only have an AMD Athlon 2000+ XP, 1 Gig of DDR Ram etc... at the moment (cant afford to upgrade yet)

Would I need to get a better cooling system (like a Zalman heatsink kit) for the card to reach higher clock speeds?

Any help would be great, thanks in advance

Daz

 

[HookeyStreet]

Forgot to mention Ive installed the ATi Doom 3 drivers also

 

[bobo]

the processor shouldnt make TOO much of a difference, enough memory(RAM), and an upgrade in cooling would surely help ur OCing.

and can u post a website for this ati doom 3 driver? i've never heard of it

 

[HookeyStreet]

I will find the link for you now m8

 

[HookeyStreet]

Its the Catalyst 4.9 Beta:

http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4547.html

Hope this helps, it may be a beta but it works great

 

[sersalpha]

HookeyStreet - the great thing about ATITool is that it will find the optimal speeds for your GPU and your video card memory. Your CPU will not affect your optimal speeds as long as it is running at a stable speed. I upgraded from a 1900+ @133 to a 3000+@166 with no difference in the overclockability of my 9800 Pro.

Your stock cooling will probably allow you to overclock a bit. I have an Arctic Cooling rev. 3 VGA Silencer and I get 470MHz core and 380MHz mem @ 60C load temps. However, I just ordered a Zalman ZM80D-HP with the OP-1 fan to see if I can get better performance. It bears mentioning that the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer is cheaper and easier to install than the Zalman.

I recommend doing the following testing procedure for each cooling solution that you employ:

1) Start ATITool and click the "Settings" button in the lower right hand corner
2) Select "Artifact Scanning" fron the drop down menu at the top
3) Check the "Stop scanning for maximum clock after ---- seconds without artifacts" box
4) Enter 7200 for the number of seconds
5) Click the "Back" button in the lower right hand corner
6) Click the "Find Max Core" button and then find something to do for the next 2&1/2 hours
7) After 7200 seconds of stable clock speed a dialog box will appear to inform you of the max stable core speed. Click "OK"
8) Click the "Find Max Mem" button and then find something to do for the next 2&1/2 hours
[It will warn you about overclocking the mem when the core is overclocked - just click past this]
9) You'll see the dialog box again, this time with your optimal core and mem speeds! Click "OK"
10) In the "Profile" section at the top, click "New"
11) Name this speed profile whatever you want then click "OK"
12) [Optional] Set the "3D Profile" drop down menu to the left to the profile you just named - as long as ATITool is running in the tray, when you run a 3D application, ATITool will set your card to run at the optimal stable speeds you found

Hope this helps.

 

[HookeyStreet]

Thanks m8, Im now going to look into getting some better cooling for this card and I will give your method a try

Daz

 

[bobo]

ey sersalpha does your card have the r360 core?
thnx,
boris j

 

[sersalpha]

ey sersalpha does your card have the r360 core?
thnx,
boris j

Everest Home Edition indicates that my card has the R350 core.