how far should i overclock my x600 pro?

[frasierdog]

I have a sapphire x600 pro 256mb pci-e

I am finding my max core speed with ATItool and i have some concerns

my defaults are 400/300 and ATItool now has my core up to 520! but without any errors for half an hour. i'm afraid my card will melt. what should my max be at?

also i have artifact scanning set to stop scanning after 5 seconds without artifacts

aren't you supposed to only overclock by 20 mhz?

 

[djbbenn]

If you get no errors after like 15mins of scanning then your pretty good. Just watch your heat on the card. Your good to go high as long as your not getting errors and your card is not too hot...like above 70C is my limit for max temp. You have a really good oc there so you may want to consider some after market cooling.

-Dan

 

[frasierdog]

well, I manually stopped it at 520, but how do I check the temperature? Can I do this with ATI tool?

EDIT: below is a pic of the stock fan on my card. I bought this card off of eBay and I didn't get any documentation or accessories, but it did have a spiraly looking heatsink thing around the fan.

what would be the limit in mhz if i didn't want to add anymore cooling

 

[AMDCam]

wait up dude, most artifacts are caused by heating problems. If ATITool tells you it can, it's fine. ATITool is pretty accurate, every card I overclock with it always works at the speed it tells you to use (well technically tells you to use). If you can get that out of your card with a stock heatsink, awesome. I guess the X600's are great overclockers because that is huge. If there aren't any artifacts that's a good signal that your processor is still cool. All overclocking lowers the life of your hardware, but that is a con to the many pro's of overclocking. The life isn't lowered too much, like at stock maybe 4 years, at overclocked maybe 2 to 3. At max overclock maybe 1 to 2, but an X600 isn't even going to handle games in 4 years I assume, so do what you want.

20mhz overclock, maybe whoever told you that meant it's for safety, but you can overclock as much as you want until it starts getting artifacts or overheating. I have a hot 9800 Pro running at 450/410 from 378/324, but I overclock everything to it's maximum in my computer. If you want a working, normal card then use stock or 20mhz overclocks, but if you want more power then just let ATItool tell you what it can do.

 

[wazzledoozle]

Dont be surprised if it reaches 600 MHz, its basically a slightly newer version of the 9600XT in PCI-E form.

 

[wtf8269]

I'd be interested in seeing what that card could do with an ATI Silencer on it.

 

[frasierdog]

another update: I resumed scanning and I got my first artifact at 585
should I just set the card to run at like, 560 for safety?

EDIT: I did a max memory test and it only went to 301.5

 

[frasierdog]

another update: I was playing hl2 with garry's mod and it froze and i got a "VPU recover" error.

now I have my card running at 560/301

 

[AMDCam]

That's good, don't worry. With overclocking it does that occassionally, but most of the time cards are fine. Just set the clock back to overclocked and about 90% of the time it won't have that error (I'm saying just ignore it and set the clock another time). 9600XT's though, those things are barely stable at 500mhz (stock), I mean these things run HOT. Without another heatsink you could never get it higher unless you had good case cooling. So the X600 is obviously a good upgrade, not only with the software updates (HD applications instead of 2.0, 3Dc, etc.) but it can clock higher.

 

[frasierdog]

ok more stuff to add:

I started a thread identical to this one at techspot.com and one guy said he had the same card as me and he overclocked it to 580. Then his card died after 3 months.

I think my card's fan may have been upgraded in addition to the added heatsink, i have included a blurry-ass picture that I took myself:
google picture of a stock fan is above

thanks for the help guys

 

[gR3iF]

so let it run on 550 because of heat after hours in your pc

 

[djbbenn]

Heats a killer for overclocking. I agree with gR3iF about running a little lower on your max overclock. Cause after a while there going to be great heat build up in the case.

-Dan