XFX 9600 GT XXX Edition - INSANE 900 CORE OC

[CyberMan969]

Hi guys, I posted my OC results in this forum recently but received no comments so far. I thought I'd share my good fortune with fellow users who may be on the lookout for a middle-of-the-road graphics cards with great overclocking potential. I have two XFX 9600 GT XXX Edition (700/1000/1750 default core/RAM/shader) on sli mode on an older board running WinXP x64 SP2. Specs:

Seasonic S12 power supply 600W
DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert nForce4
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Socket 939
2 gigs of matched Corsair RAM (Corsair TWINX1024-3200XL x2 - four 512 DIMMS in total)
Creative X-Fi Extreme Music
2 BenQ IDE drives (DW1650 & DW 1655 LightScribe)
1 Pioneer BDC-202 SATA BluRay reader/DVD burner
3 SATA hard drives
Latest nVIDIA ForceWare X 185.20 graphics drivers
Latest nForce v15.23 chipset drivers

I managed to get the graphics cards all the way up to 900/1030/2250 using AtiTool and without modifying any voltages! I only kept the PC case open and positioned a small desktop fan aimed directly at the cards (about 3 inches distance). With this setup I played graphically demanding games at highest squality ettings for 5 weeks now without any problems! Played Gothic 3 - Forsaken Gods, Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Call Of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare, Call Of Duty 4 - World At War and GTA IV for hours at a time with resolutions of 1920x1200 and highest settings (I used the -norestrictions -nomemrestrict command line options to get the highest settings unlocked in GTA IV), and the cards never got any hotter than 65 degrees with no crashes or strange artifacts whatsoever! I had some crashes with GTA IV but these were not heat/OC related, had the same errors with default clock settings too on this game. What also surprised me was the Seasonic's ability to provide enough power for the graphics cards as well as all my other hardware and the thing is only 600W!

When not playing games the cards stay a cool 45 to 48 degrees even at 900 core. I haven't dared to push it higher than that. I also couldn't get the cards' RAM higher than 1030 without facing stability issues, but with a core of 900 working fine, I'd say I'm more than happy! Hope someone may find this info useful.

 

[TmdRockz™]

w00t ! Cool man , Did u see the FPS increse ?

 

[CyberMan969]

These cores can take a serious hammering! Downloading 3dmark now & will run before/after tests. Does anyone know what are the guidelines for 3dmark testing on this forum e.g in-game resolution/color depth, quality settings etc? Haven't done it before so some advice from experienced users would be appreciated. I think I will test with GTA IV v1.0.1.0 first with maximum settings at 1920x1200x32x60 (on my monitor) or 1920x1080x32x60 (on my HD TV), then install the v1.0.2.0 update and test again to see if the patch improves the framerate.

Also, I am currently running a high quality 10 metre DVI-to-HDMI cable from my PC to my Samsung 40' TV in the other room. It works great and I haven't noticed any image degradation. Does the length of the HDMI cable influence the 3dmark results?

 

[RadeonX2]

w0w that's insane... 1 thing did u keep the pci-e frequency to 100? if it's set to 90 then its possible to hit 900 on core... I can up mine to 800+ on core with pci-e frequency @ 90

 

[elixxx]

i have a 9600gt xxx same specs as the one u have. my card does slightly above 800 on the core, nice board u got there

 

[CyberMan969]

w0w that's insane... 1 thing did u keep the pci-e frequency to 100? if it's set to 90 then its possible to hit 900 on core... I can up mine to 800+ on core with pci-e frequency @ 90

Yes PCI-e is at 100 which is the default on my board. And my Corsair RAM timings are ultra fast by default (2-2-2-5-7-1T). I found that if I raise the Chipset/RAM/CPU voltages my board can go up to 215 FSB with my current fast RAM timings (which is a lame overclock when you consider the default FSB is 200 - my CPU is multiplier-locked anyway). But at anything over 210 FSB I get extreme instability when I try to get a decent OC on the nVidias. So I leave the board FSB at default, on my system this is its the only way to reach 900 core.

 

[Mr.President]

indeed insane!.....

 

[1Kurgan1]

Yes PCI-e is at 100 which is the default on my board. And my Corsair RAM timings are ultra fast by default (2-2-2-5-7-1T). I found that if I raise the Chipset/RAM/CPU voltages my board can go up to 215 FSB with my current fast RAM timings (which is a lame overclock when you consider the default FSB is 200 - my CPU is multiplier-locked anyway). But at anything over 210 FSB I get extreme instability when I try to get a decent OC on the nVidias. So I leave the board FSB at default, on my system this is its the only way to reach 900 core.

2-2-2-5-7? Are you using DDR, I have never ever seen DDR2 that fast, but a ton of DDR is.

 

[crtecha]

Nice I never lowered my pci freq. I may try that tonight and see how far I can take my card

 

[CyberMan969]

2-2-2-5-7? Are you using DDR, I have never ever seen DDR2 that fast, but a ton of DDR is.

Yes, its an nForce 4 board with PC3200 DDR RAM. I think that where timings are concerned this model (TWINX1024-3200XL) is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) DDR DIMM Corsair has ever made.

 

[CyberMan969]

I need help with two things:

Does anyone know what are the guidelines for 3dmark testing on this forum e.g in-game resolution/color depth, quality settings etc? Haven't done it before so some advice from experienced users would be appreciated.

Also, I am currently running a high quality 10 metre DVI-to-HDMI cable from my PC to my Samsung 40' TV in the other room. It works great and I haven't noticed any image degradation. Does the length of the HDMI cable influence the 3dmark results?

 

[elixxx]

I need help with two things:

Does anyone know what are the guidelines for 3dmark testing on this forum e.g in-game resolution/color depth, quality settings etc? Haven't done it before so some advice from experienced users would be appreciated.

Also, I am currently running a high quality 10 metre DVI-to-HDMI cable from my PC to my Samsung 40' TV in the other room. It works great and I haven't noticed any image degradation. Does the length of the HDMI cable influence the 3dmark results?

Just run 3dmark, with the default settings.

And no, the 10m cable wont affect your 3dm score

 

[CyberMan969]

Sorry for the delay guys, I had to restore my boot drive from backup because of a spyware infection. Thankfully I always have an up to date backup so I don't bother repairing infections, I just boot to a Windows shell using a Norton Ghost boot CD and overwrite the drive from the backup, it take 10 minutes and everything is clean again. Anyway, I updated everything, re-installed GTA IV, removed the 185.20 driver (which was beta) & installed the latest official one (v181.22), defragged, and at last system is ready for OC testing. i also found that 3dmark doesn't work with XP x64, so I'll have to use fraps instead to get at least basic fps readings...

Does anyone know of a 3D graphics benchmarking program that works on XP x64?

crtecha, did you have any luck with you latest OC?

 

[hat]

Wow. My 9800gt only goes to 750 core. Anything over and it gets flaky. I think I saw an artifact in STALKER once, but it could just have been a leaf that hit my face. F@H runs flawlessly though. The lower-end cards can take a beating though, I had an xfx 8500gt that clocked up to 680 core from 500. However I had an 8800gts that ran 700MHz stock and didn't to too far beyond that, I think I got it to 730.

 

[CyberMan969]

Bad news... Looks like my useless MOBO/CPU is bottlenecking the OC. The cards can take it (tried with both AtiTool and latest RivaTuner), but he fps increase is minimal even at 900 and I haven't dared to push it higher, wouldn't make much of a difference anyway... I suspect the CPU is the main culprit, f***in' AMD crap... So I'll have to go for a new MOBO/RAM/CPU and one of those Tagan 1300W PSUs which I've been drooling over for a while now... My wallet trembles with fear...

 

[r9]

I bet at that clocks that it will beat heavy 9800GT 600 1500 1800

 

[hat]

Please fill out your system specs in your user CP so we can see what you have and help you along. I don't think you need a 1300w psu. 600w should be fine as long as it's a good brand.

 

[hat]

I bet at that clocks that it will beat heavy 9800GT 600 1500 1800

I'm sure two 9600GT at stock would beat a single 9800gt, overclocked or not.

 

[RadeonX2]

here is my last year's benchmark

9600GT

the benchmark below is not mine

8800GT

PWND my 9600GT bigtime.

8800GT 3Dmark06 15k!

 

[CyberMan969]

Please fill out your system specs in your user CP so we can see what you have and help you along. I don't think you need a 1300w psu. 600w should be fine as long as it's a good brand.

Thank you, I filled up the details and any recommendations would be more than welcome! My system is power-heavy (I have 3 optical drives and 3 hard drives among other things), still my Seasonic PSU copes quite well. My next build however will definitely feature a decent Tagan or Thermaltake of at least 1200W. I would definitely buy a Seasonic again, but as far as I know Seasonic hasn't released anything above 850W yet...

 

[CAPITAL LETTERS]

yeah agree'd. i had a xFx 9600GT XXX AD edition and i overclocked that bitch like a whore.

the stock clocks were 720/1000/1750 (core/mem/shad)

and on (stock) air cooling i had maxed it too 840/1265/1835
meh its not that great......

but when i hooked it up to my watercooling loop i was hitting a load temp of 49 degrees
with these clocks: 895/1850/2010

i say this card is the cheapest OC'er card and will get the job done well and truely!

oh and i just had a peice of shit system then too:

• asus p5ke-wifi
• q6600
• xFx 9600GT XXX AD
• 2x 500GB HDD
• 500w Silverstone PSU

and i was getting a 3dmscore of 15000~ on stock clocks and an easy 16500 on OC'ed clocks.

i will post screenshots when i get home to proove it

overall, great card
value *****
OCability *****
Preformance ****

 

[CyberMan969]

yeah agree'd. i had a xFx 9600GT XXX AD edition and i overclocked that bitch like a whore.

the stock clocks were 720/1000/1750 (core/mem/shad)

and on (stock) air cooling i had maxed it too 840/1265/1835
meh its not that great......

but when i hooked it up to my watercooling loop i was hitting a load temp of 49 degrees
with these clocks: 895/1850/2010

i say this card is the cheapest OC'er card and will get the job done well and truely!

oh and i just had a peice of shit system then too:

• asus p5ke-wifi
• q6600
• xFx 9600GT XXX AD
• 2x 500GB HDD
• 500w Silverstone PSU

and i was getting a 3dmscore of 15000~ on stock clocks and an easy 16500 on OC'ed clocks.

i will post screenshots when i get home to proove it

overall, great card
value *****
OCability *****
Preformance ****

You're lucky to get video RAM good enough to go all the way up to 1265 and even 1850! My cores do go up to 900 (or maybe even more if I was to watercool), but my video RAM seems quite limited: When I try above 1030 I get BBSODs. Maybe I need to modify voltages, or maybe I'm doing something wrong, I don't know... It doesn't matter anyway because I see no decent fps increase in games, my crappy CPU/chipset/ bottlenecks the living crap out of my OC...

 

[Tatty_Two]

Nice I never lowered my pci freq. I may try that tonight and see how far I can take my card

On a 9600 series card, overclocking the PCI-E bus actually overclocks the card..... although it does not show as such in rivatuner/ntune etc...... its all about trhe cards PLL frequenxt that shifts from 25mhz to 27mhz.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I need help with two things:

Does anyone know what are the guidelines for 3dmark testing on this forum e.g in-game resolution/color depth, quality settings etc? Haven't done it before so some advice from experienced users would be appreciated.

Also, I am currently running a high quality 10 metre DVI-to-HDMI cable from my PC to my Samsung 40' TV in the other room. It works great and I haven't noticed any image degradation. Does the length of the HDMI cable influence the 3dmark results?

1. All settings on default ie 1280.
2. No the cable will not make any difference
3. Good luck!

 

[CyberMan969]

1. All settings on default ie 1280.
2. No the cable will not make any difference
3. Good luck!

Unfortunately, 3dmark refuses to run on XP x64 I'm seriously thinking of reverting back to XP x32, not only for 3dmark but also because I want to use Sandboxie again. There is an older x64 version of it but it causes a lot of BBSODs. Latest Sandboxie versions only support 32bit Windows because of the x64 kernel protection as implemented by Microsoft... I could use virtualization software but I can't be bothered to start installing virtual OS etc., and also hate to use appz like deepfreeze. Sandboxie is really easy to use, light on resources and really good in isolating dodgy appz. There is currently no sandboxing app that runs on x64 Windows, isn't this just plain stupid?