So I've spent the past couple of days looking up all kinds of info on the 2900XT and OC'ing it with ATiTool. And here are my results (The 1.40% in the second table should be .14%). By the way, I consider stock as 752.63 Core and 837 @ 1674 (3DMark06 SM3.0 score = 3020) because ATiTool originally had them both under stock, figured a bit higher was better than a bit lower. Also, all results are running at the stock voltage and all the GPU temps ranged from 66-70.5C with the fan at 44% while the PCB hovered around 49-53C.
All of this was done using Catalyst 7.7
Results:
Oddities:
I don't know if this is really odd for the 2900XT or any card for that matter (I didn't do much substantial testing with my old X800XT when I OC'ed it) but increasing the speed has a smaller impact on performance than I would think when compared to increasing the core speed. Even with an increase of 324Mhz for the memory at stock core speeds only netted 156 Marks (About 137 when the core and mem were OC'ed vs. OC'ed core and stock mem).
I also found that going over 874 core would lock up or cause my computer to automatically reboot. 887 Core was stable for about a minute before locking the computer up. a 21% OC on the core instantly rebooted. I read somewhere else that other people couldn't get above a 875 core. What I'm wondering is is the card limited in it's BIOS to 875 or is an issue with the card not getting enough power. Does anybody think upping the voltage would allow for an 875+ core clock? Does only having 2x6 PCI-E factor into it vs. 1x6, 1x8 PCI-E factor into the problem at all? I've seen people get well over 1,000Mhz mem clock but I haven't tried yet, would upping the mem allow for a higher core clock, I'm thinking no. And I highly doubt heat plays into this at all yet.
I don't know how well memory plays into real games and whether clocking the mem would give much a performance boost when it didn't do a whole lot in 3DMark06. I don't have any games with built in benchmarks so I can't test it reliably.
Any thoughts or ideas?
All of this was done using Catalyst 7.7
Results:
Oddities:
I don't know if this is really odd for the 2900XT or any card for that matter (I didn't do much substantial testing with my old X800XT when I OC'ed it) but increasing the speed has a smaller impact on performance than I would think when compared to increasing the core speed. Even with an increase of 324Mhz for the memory at stock core speeds only netted 156 Marks (About 137 when the core and mem were OC'ed vs. OC'ed core and stock mem).
I also found that going over 874 core would lock up or cause my computer to automatically reboot. 887 Core was stable for about a minute before locking the computer up. a 21% OC on the core instantly rebooted. I read somewhere else that other people couldn't get above a 875 core. What I'm wondering is is the card limited in it's BIOS to 875 or is an issue with the card not getting enough power. Does anybody think upping the voltage would allow for an 875+ core clock? Does only having 2x6 PCI-E factor into it vs. 1x6, 1x8 PCI-E factor into the problem at all? I've seen people get well over 1,000Mhz mem clock but I haven't tried yet, would upping the mem allow for a higher core clock, I'm thinking no. And I highly doubt heat plays into this at all yet.
I don't know how well memory plays into real games and whether clocking the mem would give much a performance boost when it didn't do a whole lot in 3DMark06. I don't have any games with built in benchmarks so I can't test it reliably.
Any thoughts or ideas?
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