Disabling ATI HotKey Poller

To disable the ATI HotKey Poller service, you must do it in Services. To get to this, simply pull up the run command by pressing "Windows Key + R" or through the start menu. Upon having the Run window open, type in "services.msc" and hit Enter.



You should then have a window called "Services" open with a whole slew of services. Locate the "ATI HotKey Poller" service and right click on it. Then go to the properties of it.



Another window will then popup. Next to "Startup type:" there will be a pull down menu with "Automatic" printed in it. Pull the menu down, and select "Disabled". After completing this, reboot your system, and then verify it has been disabled.

Other Considerations Before Overclocking

A quick rant about some, side effects or things that must be considered when overclocking...

Cooling

Before you jump into cranking voltage up and overclocking, one major side effect to overclocking that must be considered is heat - The X1900 is no exception. There are numerous parts to a video card that can get hot, very hot, including the core, memory, mosfets, and other power supplying parts.

Having a very good GPU cooler is very good, and having heat sinks on the memory chips is also very good. However, the mosfets and other parts in the power supply area are often neglected. These parts are made to take high temperatures, but they should still be cooled. The problem that arises with these parts getting hot is that they transfer heat through the PCB of the card. This in return, heats up other parts such as the memory chips.

Good air flow is an excellent and simple way of keeping the card cool. Just having airflow going over the vregs and mosfets will make a big difference. Some people are very serious about overclocking, and will most likely consider a different means of cooling. This usually ends up with water-cooling or some will even use exotic types such as peltier and phase change.

Power

Clean stable power is another vital thing needed when overclocking. X1900s are very power hungry cards, so good clean voltage with good Amp ratings on the rails are highly recommended, even running stock. The power supply unit is the most over looked part to a computer system. If you plan to run top of the line hardware and overclock it, you must have a very good PSU.


The pictures above are from SysTool, showing that the power draw is very high with the X1900. This voltage reading was taken from the system running a Generic 500 Watt PSU - As you can see there is a major drop in the voltage. This caused issues during testing that included crashing/freezing and artifacts.

If you look at the bottom of each screenshot, you can see the minimum and maximum readings. The PSU that was used dropped to 11.19v - This is extremely low and will not operate the system properly. Also, the amp readings showed a max pull of 35A. This goes to show that with high-end video cards, a high-end PSU is an absolute must.

Risks

And of course the risks - Most people know, when running anything over its specification settings, there is a risk of damaging it. As always, overclocking your video card is not 100% safe - remember that there is always a risk of damaging or "frying" your card. It can under certain circumstances also void your warranty. As usual the disclaimer, you do this at your own risk and TPU will not be responsible for your actions.