X1800 series experiences / overclock results etc.

[Tatty_Two]

that blows. i see you using the 7900 now? how does that compare in real world performance. ill see if i can hit 740/900 today. oh yea, what was your load/idle temps?

I actually did get it to 748/922 but it was not that stable, only using the 7900GTO, well got it because the 1800XT fried, am STILL waiting for Connect 3D to replace it with a 1950XT. How did the 2 cards compare? The 7900GTO is faster, runs cooler on stock silent heatpipe cooling and the IQ (notwithstanding no simultaneous HDR/AA) is at least as good as the 1800, I am by no means an NVidia fanboy as most of my cards have been ATi but I was genuinly surprised just how good the 7900GTO and therefore 7900GTX really is.

When I bought the GTO it was the same price as the 1950Pro as it was at the time of launch and for nearly 2000 extra 3D Mark 2005 point more with GTO I considered it excellent Bang for Buck. I loved the 1800 however because at the time it was almost the best out there and it is still fast with excellent IQ, IMO there would never be a reason to upgrade it to another DX9 card before going DX10 in the future!

Temps on the 1800 was around 46C idle, 56-60C at load on, as I said the Accelero with AS5.

 

[chron]

yea i heard those 7900GTO's rock... Hard to find them now though.

 

[Easy Rhino]

I actually did get it to 748/922 but it was not that stable, only using the 7900GTO, well got it because the 1800XT fried, am STILL waiting for Connect 3D to replace it with a 1950XT. How did the 2 cards compare? The 7900GTO is faster, runs cooler on stock silent heatpipe cooling and the IQ (notwithstanding no simultaneous HDR/AA) is at least as good as the 1800, I am by no means an NVidia fanboy as most of my cards have been ATi but I was genuinly surprised just how good the 7900GTO and therefore 7900GTX really is.

When I bought the GTO it was the same price as the 1950Pro as it was at the time of launch and for nearly 2000 extra 3D Mark 2005 point more with GTO I considered it excellent Bang for Buck. I loved the 1800 however because at the time it was almost the best out there and it is still fast with excellent IQ, IMO there would never be a reason to upgrade it to another DX9 card before going DX10 in the future!

Temps on the 1800 was around 46C idle, 56-60C at load on, as I said the Accelero with AS5.

didnt know the GTOs were really that good. im glad i got the 1800xt when it was the best. while it doesnt have the most pipes now for dx9 cards it still flies and plays everything at high settings with most games maxed. im going to shoot for stable 750/900 and leave it at that. very high settings on air IMO.

 

[Tatty_Two]

didnt know the GTOs were really that good. im glad i got the 1800xt when it was the best. while it doesnt have the most pipes now for dx9 cards it still flies and plays everything at high settings with most games maxed. im going to shoot for stable 750/900 and leave it at that. very high settings on air IMO.

750/900 is excellent if you can, make sure you have some active cooling on the back of the PCB cause it gets HOT at those clocks, I have an 80mm fan mounted on my freezer pro with a couple of screws stuck between the fins just to blow air on the PCB, it really does help.

Ohhh and when you said that you had not realised that the GTO was so good, well its faster than a stock 7900GTX so thats gotta be something, same chip, same memory, just lower volts to memory, core overclocks as well as a GTX (same volts) memory does not clock as well (less volts) but the GTX stock memory is 800 and will reach 910, my GTO goes upto about 850.

 

[Sound_Card]

The x1800gto2 has got to be the best over clocker ever in the history of 3d cards.
All it is, is a down clocked x1800xt with lower core and memory voltages and lower memory latency.

I have my gto2 clocked at 700mhz/1600mhz from 500mhz/1000mhz.

 

[Tatty_Two]

The x1800gto2 has got to be the best over clocker ever in the history of 3d cards.
All it is, is a down clocked x1800xt with lower core and memory voltages and lower memory latency.

I have my gto2 clocked at 700mhz/1600mhz from 500mhz/1000mhz.

I had a 7900GT that stocked at 450/660, I got it to 665/900 with a voltmod then it fried

 

[sl4vik]

Hello Guys, I'm new to these forums and have also recently obtained an x1800xt 512mb for $150, which I thought was a good enough deal to carry me over till R600.

I have some questions to you guys.

Currently the card is using the super loud and annoying stock fan, but I have recently ordered the Zalman VF900 to quiet and cool it down. Currently it idles at 51 Stock, so hopefull that will change.

Anyways, the card is clocked right now at 625/750. Which I am assuming is stock?

I mainly use this card for Oblivion and Medieval Total War II.

What is a good safety range I could try for overclocking it? So far on the stock cooling it goes up to 81C after about 2 hours playtime in Oblivion.

What are some good numbers I should go for with the Zalman VF900? I'm skeptical about raising the voltages, although some reassurance from you guys would help me.

Also to anyone who uses this card with Oblivion at 1680 x 1050 what kind of settings and tweaks are you getting to insure the smoothest gameplay? Right now I still drop to 21 FPS in the forest areas with HDR +2x AA 8xAF Tree Canopy shadows on, everything else maxed and grass/self shadows are off.

Thanks!

 

[Tatty_Two]

Hi and welcome!

As far as clocking is concerned, if you want to play it safe and not increase voltages in ATi Tool then 700/825 should work, if you want to raise your GPU volts a little just play with clocks but it is possible to get to 740/750 on around 1.5V but it gets kinda warm!

At 700/825 you should be able to run Oblivion on Max settings but perhaps keep AA to x2 and tinker with AF, perhaps just x8, if you Enable HDR you might have to slightly drop some in game settings, just play, you can download "FRAPS" to check what in game FPS you are acheiving and adjust accordingly.

 

[largon]

Does someone here have a Connect3D X1800XT 512MB?
I'm trying to find the original bios for this card.

 

[pt]

anyone knows why my card locks up with 1.225 voltage and everything above???
loads at 44ºc, max. clocks i can get is 550/550 (stock 500/500)
any ideas?

 

[Tatty_Two]

anyone knows why my card locks up with 1.225 voltage and everything above???
loads at 44ºc, max. clocks i can get is 550/550 (stock 500/500)
any ideas?

I am not aware of this specific problem and from what you have said it cannot be temps, are any other elements of the card/pcb very hot to the touch? You may find that it could be something else other than GPU/memory heat, if so try a fan mount blowing air onto the back of the PCB.

Some find that raising the memory voltage very slightly but lowering the MVDDQ "loostens" and stabalises things also, you could try that.

Let me know how you get on, if that doesent work we will have to try something else. ohhh, if they dont work, just try raising your PCI-E speed to say 105Mhz see if that helps.

 

[pt]

I am not aware of this specific problem and from what you have said it cannot be temps, are any other elements of the card/pcb very hot to the touch? You may find that it could be something else other than GPU/memory heat, if so try a fan mount blowing air onto the back of the PCB.

Some find that raising the memory voltage very slightly but lowering the MVDDQ "loostens" and stabalises things also, you could try that.

Let me know how you get on, if that doesent work we will have to try something else. ohhh, if they dont work, just try raising your PCI-E speed to say 105Mhz see if that helps.

about the fan on top it's a bit tight, but i will try, the ambient is also 33ºc
don't know if a part is too hot since i don't touch it
will they raising the pci-e speed

 

[Easy Rhino]

well ive beaten the crap outta my 1800xt and havnt had any problems with it. sorry i cant help.

 

[Rick Hunter]

I've got a HIS X1800XT 256MB. Stock bios, 1.425 V gpu / 1.996 V mem with modded stock cooler (kept stock heatsink & removed stock fan & added an 80 cfm Delta fan with ducting on a rheobus).
711 MHz gpu / 860 MHz mem stable for hours in Oblivion. Temps are around 53 to 55 deg under load with 23-25 deg ambient.

Haven't pushed more volts into it yet. It seems the key for good mem OCing seems to be more gpu volts. At 1.375V, I wasn't able to break 830 MHz on the mem (regardless of mem volts).

Update:
My HIS X1800XT 256MB is running fine at 1.475 V gpu / 2.050 V mem 1.945 MVDDQ @ 715 MHz GPU and 880 MHz mem - same cooling as above. The aforementioned lowering of MVDDQ compared to mem voltage has helped the mem OC. I haven't played around with the voltages enough - perhaps there's still some headroom in the mem. Temps are running to ~57 with the extra gpu voltage.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Update:
My HIS X1800XT 256MB is running fine at 1.475 V gpu / 2.050 V mem 1.945 MVDDQ @ 715 MHz GPU and 880 MHz mem - same cooling as above. The aforementioned lowering of MVDDQ compared to mem voltage has helped the mem OC. I haven't played around with the voltages enough - perhaps there's still some headroom in the mem. Temps are running to ~57 with the extra gpu voltage.

Your doing OK there and if your 57C is at heavy load (ie ati tool 3D artifact scanning) then there is headroom to push on a little more, but is there a need?.....probably not.

 

[Rick Hunter]

Your doing OK there and if your 57C is at heavy load (ie ati tool 3D artifact scanning) then there is headroom to push on a little more, but is there a need?.....probably not.

Yah, 57 degrees under heavy load.
I'm now running at 715 MHz GPU and 891 MHz mem stable artifact free.
VGPU is 1.475 V
VMem is 2.095 V
VMDDQ is 1.925 V

900 MHz artifacts within a few minute regardless of voltage (went up to 2.120 V and played with VMDDQ).

Now if only I'd have 512 MB memory - Oblivion really needs a lot of vid mem for the best texture mods. I'm spending more time tweaking/resizing texture packs than playing the game

 

[damian911]

I had a situation recently arise with my Sapphire X1800GTO. When I initially purchased it about 3 months ago I was able to get stable speeds of ~650/650 using stock voltages and stock cooling. Wanting to push things, I installed a VF900 and was able to easily get the same results but with much lower temps (~20C lower under load, 15C idle). The voltages still had not been adjusted.

In the last couple of days, my card started locking up at these OC'd speeds when I loaded the OC profile in ATITool (0.26). Isolating the problem to my GPU (I can still OC the memory just fine), I am suddenly capping out at about 550MHz before artifacts appear in the 3D test, and at anything above ~620MHz, it locks up forcing a restart. All of this has been done with a software mod with ATITool, the BIOS is still the default. I have tried this with my E6400 OC'd up to 3.2GHz, or stock at 2.1GHz, memory set above and below the rated 800MHz. I can't seem to figure out what caused this issue.

I can't seem to figure out what may have happened in any of the settings to limit this. Is there a chance that the board got too hot (I don't see how considering that all the voltages are stock) and this has permanently damaged/limited the OC capabilities? Something else?

Also, what are the safe voltage limits on this card if I wanted to try raising this to improve stability? I plan to limit the GPU temps to around 60C. I've seen several people with 1.5V+, but I believe that was on a XT and I wasn't sure if those tolerances were different.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Tatty_Two]

It may be temps on the other components of the card, with stock cooling at best you get GPU and Ram cooled, all the other bits and pieces get hot also, you could try an active fan mounted so it blows cold air onto the PCB see if that helps.

 

[DrunkenMafia]

Hey PT

I have the same card as you, the powercolor X1800GTO. I found that with mine if you raise the volts on the gpu more than 2 steps I get artifacts, I believe this is called the voltage bug or something.... does your card have 5 or 6 vregs on the pcb?

 

[damian911]

Mine has 5 voltage regs on the PCB. If I remember right, only the HIS has 6 on it (I'm not certain which version has 6, but I thought it is the same one with all the success unlocking the add'l pipes).

This is all happening at the standard 1.075V. And the weird thing is that I was able to OC much further on 1.075V before. I can't figure out what may have changed.

 

[pt]

Hey PT

I have the same card as you, the powercolor X1800GTO. I found that with mine if you raise the volts on the gpu more than 2 steps I get artifacts, I believe this is called the voltage bug or something.... does your card have 5 or 6 vregs on the pcb?

5, and it doesn't like votlage at all, nor high overclock at stock voltages
the highest i got was 550/550

 

[Filip]

EY! I need help! I have sapphire ati radeon x1800gto 256mb with samsung 2.0 memory and zalman vf900-cu, and I want clock my card and flash a bios of XT/XL version. But I dont know how! Can you explain me how to do that? I am from Croatia and dont speak english so good but I can understand what you say! Thanks advance!

 

[chron]

EY! I need help! I have sapphire ati radeon x1800gto 256mb with samsung 2.0 memory and zalman vf900-cu, and I want clock my card and flash a bios of XT/XL version. But I dont know how! Can you explain me how to do that? I am from Croatia and dont speak english so good but I can understand what you say! Thanks advance!

Sapphire cards have not had a very good unlock rate. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=12138&highlight=Radeon+X1800GTO% This is a good forum for your questions.

Basically, if your card does not unlock, you can still raise the voltages (given the propper cooling.) At 1.45v I ran my x1800gto at 700/700 which i think was the best it could do period.

 

[Filip]

Sapphire cards have not had a very good unlock rate. http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=12138&highlight=Radeon+X1800GTO% This is a good forum for your questions.

Basically, if your card does not unlock, you can still raise the voltages (given the propper cooling.) At 1.45v I ran my x1800gto at 700/700 which i think was the best it could do period.

How raise temp. is on 700/700, and have you stock cooler or some better?

 

[chron]

My cooling for my X1800GTO was a VF1-Plus. Newegg has them for sale. Excellent heatsink. Kept load temperatures under 70C and idled at arround 45. Very safe. For some reason I never needed to mess with my memory voltages. When I would raise my core voltage, I found I could raise my core clock AND my memory clock for some reason. It might not be the same for all cards, but thats how it was for me.

Good luck.