How am I doing so far?

[Hermskii]

Today I got an Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256mb DDR3 AGP video card to replace an old G-Force ti4200 AGP 128mb DDR video card. I am a total newb when it comes to ATI so please assist me.

My system is a XP2600 on a EPoX 8K3A+ mobo with 1gb PC2700 ram at 2-2-2. I installed the new video card after uninstalling the Nvidia drivers and shutting down the PC. I put in the new card and used the driver CD that came with the new video card to install it so now I have ATI Catalyst drivers version 5.8 on my computer.

I installed the Trixx overclocker utility that came on the driver CD and have also downloaded and installed ATI-Tool ver 0.24. The ATI-Tool says that I have the R430 core on this card. It also says that 16 pipes are active. I then ran the Trixx program and told it to give me my max core and mem settings. It came back with the following results:

Mem Clock = 507
VPU Clock = 399

As you can see, these settings didn't change much from the stock settings of 490/400. My scores in benchmarking programs have all more than doubled which is great. Here come my questions:

Is the R430 core the good one for this model card?
Shouldn't this overclock more than it did?
Will newer Catalyst drivers improve the overclock at all or is overclocking strictly on the physical layer?
I hear arguments abouts more pipes being better than higher clock speeds. Is that true?

In short, should I be happy with what I have so far? What would you do if you were me? Thanks!

 

[i_am_mustang_man]

welcome welcome welcome!

the 430 core will be a huge step up from the ti4200 (although you prolly already knew that), but unfortunately, it's not the huge overclocking core.

however, that said, those are pretty low overclocks. first thing i would do is download the new catalyst drivers. because you running not quite a top of the line computer, i would maybe try to locate the newest version of the drivers that come with the control panel, instead of the catalyst control center, because the ccc will use more resources than the control panel releases.

next, i would recommend using atitool for overclocking, and make sure it displays your gpu temps. nothing is better than atitool for the x8__ series

then, with your memory at stock, slowly raise your core freq (3-5mhz at a time) and then run the scan for artifacts for a minute or two at each increment. do this until your card is about 65C-70C, or artifacts start forming. 430-450mhz is pretty standard for the r430 core.

once you find the max core freq, drop it about 5-10mhz, and then repeat the process for the mem frequency.

just remember, dont' take too big of steps, and a little time now is well worth the pay off

also, on a sidenote, i don't think many agp cards ever came with anything other than the r430 core, but i may be wrong. that's a sweet card, i love the x800 series!

 

[i_am_mustang_man]

oh! and in response to the thread title, you're doing great! you're cautious yet aware. the best for overclock. (reckless and aware is for phase change users!, cautious and unaware people shouldn't move a philips headed screw on their dell, and reckless and unaware people are fun to watch )