Suitable Overclock!

[Alig]

I want to overclock my Sapphire X800PRO but ive never overclocked a videocard nevermind one that only got delivered today so i want to know what a safe overclock would be? I've heard it overclocks well...hardocp got theres to 567mhz core and 1.1ghz memory on STOCK cooling from 475/900 :O

My cpu idle atm is 45c on air and 51c underload on the most demanding game i have, Farcry. Ive got 7 case fans...4 of which are _almost_ staring my graphics card in the face funnily enough 2 of them are intake and 2 of them are outtake so i think my card gets nice fresh air..but i could be wrong.

I've currently oc'ed it to 500/950 and i havent seen any artifacts...and i keep putting my hand right next to a live electrical component to make sure it isnt hot...it feels only warm to the touch (when i touch the fan)...how hot do graphics cards get? what is there maximum?

Im not entirely impressed with it because i think my cpu is really bottlenecking it...im so sure something is. On ut benchmark i got 200 flyby and 67 botmatch...there are people on there that have 9700 and 9800 pro's that get like 300flyby and 80 - 100 botmatch *sniff* but they all have high end cpu's like A64's and overclocked P4's. Im only using a 2.6XP+ @ 2.2ghz... :/

Apart from that dissapointment im chuffed with the gain ive gotten from my GF4 ti4600.

Shot 1 is my GF4 ti4600 on med/high @ 1024x780 ress no AA/AF on farcry
Shot 2 is my X800PRO on super duper high settings @ 1280x1024 with 6xAA / 16xAF :cheese:
Shot 3 is my X800PRO at the same as above but the lowest i could get the fps to drop too...zooming + tree's = bad on the fps on all cards...still quite playable

Shot 1
Shot 2
Shot 3

Sorry to go a little OT ...Im just glad my card has come finally after waiting 2 whole days :bounce: *saves for A643000+*

 

[blahblahblah]

For the X800 Pro, you should be fine as long as you don't break 100 C (above that starts affecting the life of the GPU). As it stands, my X800 Pro hits 73C under load. You will notice artificats long before your graphics card gets that hot.

I currently have mine OCed to 569/533 but I haven't finished playing with it. Here is a link telling you how much people have overclocked their X800's.

As for the CPU, I have a Athlon XP 2800+ and I am pretty sure that is bottlenecking too. You can get rid of the bottleneck by enabling AA and AF on your graphics card.

 

[Asus]

I wouldn't look to other OCs when determining how high to go. It's on an individual basis.
Clock it up slowly. I used ATItool to get an idea how high it would clock it but I currently use Powerstrip to OC my 9800pro. Better IMO

UT2004 improves with each GFX card AND CPU. You have to have a good combination to score well in that game, especially the botmatch.

Tom's CPU UT2K4 reviewed
Tom's Graphic card UT2K4 reviewed
Firing Squad Athlon XP/A64 and 9800/X800 reviewed

 

[Alig]

Thanks. How do i know the temp of my graphics card? do these have a hidden thermo sensor or have you got a 3rd party hardware piece to get your temps? Its been 1.5 years since i last bought a gfx card so new technology is all new to me.

Yeah i thought my gfx card did quite good in farcry when i had max AA/AF in higher ress and a better graphics game overall....must of been the AA/AF pushing the card.

I believe the ut benchmark forces no AA/AF so maybe thats why it seems so low in that with much lower settings overall than i have in farcry.

I need to buy an A64 3000+...i read a review that you can overclock it to its £500 brother, the A64 3800+, obviously with proper bo' cooling but im sure i can overclock it quite high when i get a Thermalright heatsink.

I might just aim for something like 500/1000...im being fussy because i want to see an uber high benchmark but it just wont happen with my current pc hardware ..the x800 is hardly in need of overclocking with current games heh. I just hope i dont smoke it.

 

[blahblahblah]

If you have the latest Catalyst drivers, the control panel should have a tab labeled "overdrive" which also gives you your temperture. Or you can download ati tool and enable the temperture option (though it is off by 10 C).

AA/AF doesn't technically eliminate the CPU bottleneck, it just gives the video card more stuff to do (and thereby making it more productive). In the future when games force you to stop using AA/AF (in like 1 or 2 years) a CPU upgrade will help frame rates.

Far Cry

- Don't be worried if you see orange trees with you X800. It's a bug on Crytek's part since they haven't set up an official rendering path for the X800 series. There is work around which requires you to set the shadow settings to medium (or you can wait for patch 1.2).

 

[Asus]

Yeah, I have an A64 3000+ (10x200) and I have it currently OCed to 2.3Ghz (10x230). I have pushed it to 2.4Ghz (10x240) but I wanted it to be 100% stable. It's at stock voltage (1.5) too. I have Cool&Quiet enabled so when it's at idle or mildly working it is sitting at ~1.3V and 2GHz (9x230).

Cool&Quiet drops the voltage when performance is not needed and also heat and power consumption. It drops the multiplyer to the level that it can sustain at that voltage. BTW my CPU is the new C0 core, rather than the CG core. Cooler along with a few other improvements with the memory controller.
It usually pays when you get the next revision of anything new in hardware.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

Far Cry

- Don't be worried if you see orange trees with you X800. It's a bug on Crytek's part since they haven't set up an official rendering path for the X800 series. There is work around which requires you to set the shadow settings to medium (or you can wait for patch 1.2).

From what I've read on the Far Cry forum's, its a shader bug on the engine with the X800's experiencing it. I experience this with vehicles sometimes too

 

[blahblahblah]

From what I've read on the Far Cry forum's, its a shader bug on the engine with the X800's experiencing it. I experience this with vehicles sometimes too

Do you notice frame rate drops when you have these orange textures? I do and it's rather annoying.

 

[Gajdycz]

so they have x800's for agp, right blah? weird thing is, i seee review with peopel writing about PCI-Express cards... just a thought

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

Do you notice frame rate drops when you have these orange textures? I do and it's rather annoying.

Oh I hate it, makes me puke :frown:

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

so they have x800's for agp, right blah? weird thing is, i seee review with peopel writing about PCI-Express cards... just a thought

Yes agp, how can they review X800's for PCI-Express when there isn't a X800 for it?!?!

 

[blahblahblah]

so they have x800's for agp, right blah? weird thing is, i seee review with peopel writing about PCI-Express cards... just a thought

The X800 was designed as a AGP card and a PCI-Express Card. That means there is two versions of the X800, code named R420 and R423. The R420 is the AGP version of the X800 while the R423 is the PCI-Express version. The R420 and R423 are identical to each other except that one uses AGP and the other uses PCI-Express.

So yes, they have the X800 for AGP. I should know, I have one.

 

[Alig]

Well i finally found my temps...it is 42 idle oc'ed 25mhz on each? You say that the ATItool is out by 10c...which way? do say down