talking about OCing a 9600 256

[gaminfool]

ok heres one like I said earlier I am kinda new to OC'n puters as a whole really I am self tought what little i do know I just got a AGPTEK 9600 PRO 256 I am really happy with the preformance for what it is it has default settings of 400/200x2 when I use the ATITOOL it does not oc very well at all max is
440/220x2 anything over that and it looks like a acid flashback from teens [artifacts] isd there anything I can do to change that with out the risk of frying it? I just got it to hold me over for about 6 mo I upgraded from a 9550 and it would clock 325/250x2 but heat was a issue and really low FPS the new card out preforms it by 50% I really am impressed with the diffrence should I just leave it be or is there a easy fix? if so what and how and where?

thx in advance

 

[nightelf84]

at 440/220, you've overclocked both your core and memory up 10% which is not too shabby at all. In fact, 10% would generally be regarded as the limit that you should overclock your hardware (though i don't think anybody takes this seriously LOL)

Anyway, if you want to achieve higher overclocks, you would need better cooling. The Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer ATI 2, Rev2 should fit your 9600 PRO.

If better cooling does not increase your overclock, you may have reach the ceiling of your core and memory, though a voltage increase may raise this ceiling.

 

[djbbenn]

I agree with nightelf there. 10% is quite good. Could be better though. Better cooling alone can help a overclock up to or above 5%.

-Dan

 

[Rule-R]

i think 10% is not so much, as you look @ my OC.

i have a ASUS Radeon 9550GE/TD stock 250/200x2 @ Powercolor 9600Pro/XT 409.5/256.5x2. ( i downloaded pro bios, but it is shown as XT in Everest? )
For the core this is an overclock of 63.8%, and for the memory it is 28.25%.
I also tweaked the memory timings on my card.
So without better cooling i managed to crack it up higher than 15%, theres no telling what is good or bad cause you cant know the best settings for your vid card. Though better cooling would help you get higher speeds, yes.

 

[nightelf84]

I only stated 10% as 'not too shabby'. Each card has different overclock potential. SOme overclock well, some don't overclock at all.

Rule-R, I suppose you have 3rd party cooling on your card to reach 63.8%?

 

[Rule-R]

As cooling on my pc i have a big 12cm fan, a stock asus fan on my vid card, and a coolermaster fan on my cpu. More tahn that i dont ahve, that thing just overclocked real nice. ( ah, and i have an airduct )

 

[gaminfool]

I think I will be happy with leaving it at 10% I was looking at 3dmark scores and I was scoring in the 3200's and 22000's aquamark and that isnt bad that was with the new 5.5 catalyst drivers I was surpised my preformance dropped 15% with omega drivers, I got better scores from my 9550 with omega drivers rather than the ati drivers but not the case with the 9600,
now if I wanted to try diffrent bios what would I gain? and is the risk as high as flashing mobo bios?
I am really thinking I have enough preformace that I should be happy, but ya know how that urge to get just alittle bit more, but I usually wind up pushing the envelope alittle to far I need my wife to put a padlock on my case and set up parental controls on all my tweak utilities, then maybe I would quit mess'n and just game, but what fun would that be????

one thing I noticed when I was using a celeron for my cpu it was easy to oc my card the celeron is a bottleneck for a good card ocing is a whole diffrent world when you have a cpu that is quicker the card becomes the bottleneck it isnt so easy to oc a card when your cpu is already pushing it hard

 

[djbbenn]

With a bios flash you would gain only tighter mem timings and higher default clocks. It wouldn't really be worth the risk to get the timings. Theres no extra pipes to unlock either.

-Dan

 

[vlado79]

9600pro

Hi just to ask for opinion.I both GeCube 9600 pro and default clock is 400/203.
I used atitool and it found that max core/mem is 432/230.After that I got bunch of dots on the cube.
But i raised clock to 450 and had couple of runs with Mark03 without artifacts or similar.
Score was Mark03-3450 Mark05-1450.
I even tried to change latencies of ram (at 230MHz) and it was sucessfull.
But I restored them later,beacouse I don`t have a clue is it dangerous.
(this is done with stock cooler)
If anybody can tell me anything more please do.

 

[djbbenn]

One question, do you get errors in Atitool? Atitool will pick them up before you can see them in games, its the whole point of the scan. If you get dots or artifacts don't put the gpu and any higher cause you could crash or damage it. Damage is doubtful, but the chance is still there.

-Dan

 

[vlado79]

Omega

I think I will be happy with leaving it at 10% I was looking at 3dmark scores and I was scoring in the 3200's and 22000's aquamark and that isnt bad that was with the new 5.5 catalyst drivers I was surpised my preformance dropped 15% with omega drivers, I got better scores from my 9550 with omega drivers rather than the ati drivers but not the case with the 9600,

As Omega wrote his drivers are optimised for more for stability then performance.
With my old card had same case: score was lower for 10% with 5.1 drivers,then with 4.12

 

[vlado79]

Owerclock

One question, do you get errors in Atitool? Atitool will pick them up before you can see them in games, its the whole point of the scan. If you get dots or artifacts don't put the gpu and any higher cause you could crash or damage it. Damage is doubtful, but the chance is still there.

-Dan

Jes I had erors in Atitool on cloch higher then 430,but in Mark03 it was OK up to 455.
I haven`t seen any artifects.
Do you have any expiriance with mem latencies tweeking?
How much is possible to gain in performance?

 

[djbbenn]

All right first if you get errors in Atitool turn your card down. Atitool is designed to pick them up before you see them. What is the error your getting?

-Dan

 

[vlado79]

All right first if you get errors in Atitool turn your card down. Atitool is designed to pick them up before you see them. What is the error your getting?

-Dan

Bunch of yellow dots in AtiTool on artifacts scan.
Can atitool be too "sensitive" on errors?
Is it so precise?
I havent tried it before,used radlinker instead.

 

[djbbenn]

Well Atitool is meant for overclocking, and its is designd to pick errors up before you seem them. You get errors due to corrupted data going though the card. Just because you don't see artfacts in a game or program, doesn't mean they are there. Thats where Atitool comes in. As soon as you start to get errors, the card is starting to be pushed. As to being to sensitive, no because you shouldn't get errors.

-Dan

 

[gaminfool]

you might want to let ATITOOL scan for errors for some time I made the mistake of not letting it run long enough to check my settings I game hard and I found about after 1 hr of gaming my card would really heat up and become unstable I read where some people let it run overnight, and I thought that was too long but I was wrong I dont think the ATITOOL will really put your card through the riggers of extreme gaming if you dont run it for a good long time I just can imagine the brush cube pivioting compares to multi explosions and the 3d fireworks we get from some of these newer cutting edge games. I m not so sure that aquamark or 3dmark compare to some IE{the hell boss sequence in doom 3} but thats just my thoughts and I dont know much, I just think I do sometimes,LOL

 

[djbbenn]

15 minutes of a scan with Atitool will be good enough for a error check when your doing overclocking. 15mins will get the card to or close to its max temp, and if you don't get errors your pretty good. But longer will provide a better result as to its stable or porducing errors/aritfacts.

-Dan

 

[vlado79]

15 minutes of a scan with Atitool will be good enough for a error check when your doing overclocking. 15mins will get the card to or close to its max temp, and if you don't get errors your pretty good. But longer will provide a better result as to its stable or porducing errors/aritfacts.

-Dan

Ok I`ll try.
Can you tell me anything about mem timings?

 

[gaminfool]

I'm getting right around the same marks with my 9600 pro also I pushed my card to the 250ish/230ish, backed it off alittle to get rid of all the artifacts , here is the kicker I got scores in aqua and mark 3d with in 10 points with my card maxed out and running at 420/210 I f you check yours and they are likewise I would think you would have less wear and tear and a longer card life if you kept your card clocked at 10% or less ,for me the 1 or 2 fps more isnt worth the life of the card, and you really cant tell the diff when it is so minimal, not to mention the stability issue, but if you get a big diffrence in your score thats a diffrent story , I have the problem Of wanting to get the best score possible, but I had to weigh things out was that minor diffrence worth me having to tell my wife "ya know that card I got a few months ago? I burnt it out and need another. I need $200 bucks out of the bank{cause when I replace this one I will get a 6600gt or better} my scores just arent worth having to hear my wife b$^%*& lol if your married you know what I mean

 

[vlado79]

too much

I'm getting right around the same marks with my 9600 pro also I pushed my card to the 250ish/230ish, backed it off alittle to get rid of all the artifacts , here is the kicker I got scores in aqua and mark 3d with in 10 points with my card maxed out and running at 420/210 I f you check yours and they are likewise I would think you would have less wear and tear and a longer card life if you kept your card clocked at 10% or less ,for me the 1 or 2 fps more isnt worth the life of the card, and you really cant tell the diff when it is so minimal, not to mention the stability issue, but if you get a big diffrence in your score thats a diffrent story , I have the problem Of wanting to get the best score possible, but I had to weigh things out was that minor diffrence worth me having to tell my wife "ya know that card I got a few months ago? I burnt it out and need another. I need $200 bucks out of the bank{cause when I replace this one I will get a 6600gt or better} my scores just arent worth having to hear my wife b$^%*& lol if your married you know what I mean

You are right.Few extra FPS isn`t worth to turn your card into still-smoking-pile-of-silicon.
This is data for my card:

[ AGP 8x: GeCube Radeon 9600 ]

Graphics Processor Properties:
Video Adapter GeCube Radeon 9600
GPU Code Name RV350
PCI Device 1002 / 4150
Transistors 76 million
Process Technology 0.13u
Bus Type AGP 8x
Memory Size 128 MB
GPU Clock 436 MHz (original: 398 MHz, overclock: 10%)
RAMDAC Clock 400 MHz
Pixel Pipelines 4
TMU Per Pipeline 1
Vertex Shaders 2 (v2.0)
Pixel Shaders 1 (v2.0)
DirectX Hardware Support DirectX v9.0
Pixel Fillrate 1744 MPixel/s
Texel Fillrate 1744 MTexel/s

Memory Bus Properties:
Bus Type DDR
Bus Width 128-bit
Real Clock 231 MHz (DDR) (original: 203 MHz, overclock: 14%)
Effective Clock 462 MHz
Bandwidth 7392 MB/s

Memory Timings:
CAS Latency (CL) 4T
RAS To CAS Delay (tRCD) 4T
RAS Precharge (tRP) 4T
RAS Active Time (tRAS) 8T
Row Refresh Cycle Time (tRFC) 14T
RAS To RAS Delay (tRRD) 3T
Write Recovery Time (tWR) 3T

Basicaly its in your 10% margin

 

[vlado79]

9600pro data

Can anybody post detail data for his card? I want to compare. Just to see is my crap or is worth
something.
Make report with Everest (home-totally free) www.lavelys.com (3,5 Mb)

 

[gaminfool]

looking at the specs I guess what they say is true my clock speeds are the sameas yours, but I have a 256 mb pro and it looks like that extra 128 mb of ram dont do squat,at least not in todays gaming in a couple yrs who knows, when I was reseaching to buy my card I came across a really old post and they were saying how you'll never need more than 128 mbs of ram for your computer and a 64 mb video card was a waste that you will never use more than 32 mb MY,OH MY HAVE THINGS CHANGED

 

[vlado79]

looking at the specs I guess what they say is true my clock speeds are the sameas yours, but I have a 256 mb pro and it looks like that extra 128 mb of ram dont do squat,at least not in todays gaming in a couple yrs who knows, when I was reseaching to buy my card I came across a really old post and they were saying how you'll never need more than 128 mbs of ram for your computer and a 64 mb video card was a waste that you will never use more than 32 mb MY,OH MY HAVE THINGS CHANGED

Yes its true,256Mb isn`t bether.Adleast in mainstreem class.
Allmoust allways they put cheaper (slower) VRAM.
In my expirience usualy 128 versions are bether then same 256Mb.
So by my opinion 256 is just show off (atleast for 9500,9600,9800).
Can you mesure performance of your card with Everest 2.0?
I just want to see the difference.Get it on Lavalys.com (its free)

 

[gaminfool]

YEAH i GOT EVEREST i WILL TRY TO POST IT ON LINE A SEND YOU A COPY IF YOU WANT TO SEND ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS VIA PRIVATE MESSAGE

 

[chrispycrunch]

Hi y'all - I luckily found out the 256mb cards sometimes come with slower memory, and that because the card isn't very fast, you'll never use memory/resolutions that high.
Anyway, my max o/c is 429.55 (core) and 345.6 (memory). However, I can only use 401.14/337.5 for a stable (no artifact) overclock.

Having read the thread I'll have to run an artifact scan for at least 15 min to check the clock is okay.

Also, I have a Sapphire card - they come with cheap cooling fans and now after 2 mths it makes lots of noise. I tried to oil it but it's not working. Please recommend a solution (preferably if i can get it in Toronto/Canada). Arctic VGA Silencer? Zalman?