9600XT @ 594/337.5 - Can I do any better?

[abbadon]

What's the best people have done so far? I've upped the agp voltage to 1.8 and added heat sinks to the ram and water cooling to the gpu. I haven't played with the memory timings yet. I seem to be stable, played Half-Life 2 for a couple hours without any problems. I was really dissapointed with the oc of this card, was hoping for more than a measly 10%. Any suggestions on how I can squeeze out more performance? Thanks.

 

[Ripsaw]

594 is an exceptional overclock on a chip witha 500mhz factory default speed. My Sapphire 9600XT won't go past 540Mhz for the GPU. How fast you can run the memory depends on the speed of the memory chips, are yours 3.3 nanoseconds or 2.8? Look at your memory chips on the card. If the suffix on the chip code number is something like -33 then they're 3.3ns, if -28 then 2.8ns. Mine has 3.3ns chips made by Hynix. To figure out the mhz rating on the memory, divide 1000 by the nanosecond rating on the chip, for instance my 3.3ns Hynix memory's mhz rating is 1000/3.3 = 303 Mhz. Now, my memory will run @ 330.75 mhz but will not go beyond that without generating artifacts. That's 10% beyond the rated speed of the chip, and 10% beyond is pretty normal limit accross the board on clock speeds. You could get more mhz out of the memory by increasing the wait states in the memory timing settings, which you CAN do with ATITOOL, BUT its sort of like spinning your wheels increasing wait states to up the Mhz, because your're adding delays while you increase mhz. Only way to squeeze more out of your memory would be to play around with ATITOOL and reduce each memory timing wait state setting by one click then let ATITOOL scan for artifacts for at least 5 minutes. If it throws Delta's while scanning for artifacts in ATITOOL (watch the text where it says Delta of 0 in 0 ) then it is very close to generating artifacts, i.e. errors. You want the lowest memory timing wait states that lets it not throw any Delta's in while scanning for artifacts. When you first launch the artifact scan, it may show Delta's being thrown for the first second or so, that is not a problem, as long as it clears back to Delta of 0 in 0 pixels immediately and stays 0 of 0 the rest of the time it runs the scan. At least that is how I test with ATITOOL.

But consider yourself lucky to be able to do 594mhz with the GPU.

For memory timings I am using w/ memory @ 324mhz, see this post:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=1662

 

[abbadon]

Thanks for the replay. I guess I have the card working pretty well. My 9600xt has heat sinks on the both sides of each ram chip (in addition to water cooling the gpu). Is there another way to tell what type of memory is on there than a physical inspection? Thanks.

 

[ReconCX]

hey, abbadon, can you post some 3dmark03/05 scores based on your original 500/300x2 speed? I got my 9550 overclocked to 500/300x2 and I need to see if there's any difference. If there is, i'm gonna tweak memory timings on my card to match the 9600xt... and maybe experiment with some voltage =)

 

[Ripsaw]

hey, abbadon, can you post some 3dmark03/05 scores based on your original 500/300x2 speed? I got my 9550 overclocked to 500/300x2 and I need to see if there's any difference. If there is, i'm gonna tweak memory timings on my card to match the 9600xt... and maybe experiment with some voltage =)

Sounds like you have XT envy...

 

[Ripsaw]

Thanks for the replay. I guess I have the card working pretty well. My 9600xt has heat sinks on the both sides of each ram chip (in addition to water cooling the gpu). Is there another way to tell what type of memory is on there than a physical inspection? Thanks.

No other way but to eyeball the chips, but rest assured if the best you can get out of the ram is 330 or so Mhz, then you have 3.3ns ram onboard. The other speed common on XT boards is 2.8ns (Samsung ram) and the math tells us 2.8ns ram is rated for about 357Mhz

 

[abbadon]

ReconCX: I was getting around 1570 stock in 3dmark05 and about 1770 oc'd.

 

[ReconCX]

that's cool, i'm only 4 off when overclocking to XT speed =) guess there's no memory timing or volt difference between 9600 pro and 9600xt besides speed...

 

[Ripsaw]

that's cool, i'm only 4 off when overclocking to XT speed =) guess there's no memory timing or volt difference between 9600 pro and 9600xt besides speed...

There are memory timing differences, don't know about voltage though. I logged my former PowerColor 9600 pro R96-HD3 card, it had 5ns Mira brand ram onboard, and I've logged my current Sapphire Radeon 9600XT card that has Hynix 3.3ns ram. The factory-set memory timings differ, as they would be expected to since the Pro has 5ns ram running @ 200 mhz and the XT has 3.3ns ram running @ 300mhz.

 

[ReconCX]

my 9550 is 2.8ns ram, and so is his xt so =)

 

[Ripsaw]

my 9550 is 2.8ns ram, and so is his xt so =)

You just wish you had a 256mb XT. His XT is 3.3, though