9600 Pro slower when overclocked!

[Rene Lamontagne]

When running at stock settings 400/300 I get the followig score in 3Dmark
2003. 3425. this is with default 3dmark settings.
When I OC the score drops to a much lower value, the higher I OC the further
it drops.
For example at 450/300 it drops to 2875, at 500/345 it drops to 1850.
I can OC the card to 550/345 and it works fine in all apps and games
including Half-life. Without any tearing or artifacts.
System is Gigabyte 8PE667 Ultra MB
Pentium 4 at 3.006 Ghz 533
512 megs of OCZ DDR3500 memory
Enermax 430 watt PSU
Latest Intel chipset drivers installed, Running Omega 4.2 Video drivers,

Things tried so far
ATI drivers 3.1, 3.4 ,3.7, 4.1 no improvement.
Installed Vantec Iceberg 4 Fan and heatsink. no help
Changed AGP aperture to 32, 64, 128, no help
Changed AGP voltage to 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 volts, no help, Runs best at 1.7
volts.
Fastwrites ON/OFF no help.
VPU recover ON/OFF no help
Removed ALL drivers with ATI and drivercleaner 2 and reinstalled Omega 4.2
set which is where I am now.
BTW the system is rock solid and stable even when OCed, and plays games
well.
I know that benchmarks are not the most reliable gauges and I am happy with
the actual OCed playing but the large drop in 3Dmarks is nawing at my mind
all the time as I Do Not understand why this is happening and it irks me no
end.
I have tried many google searches but so far have not found the answer. Any
and all thoughts welcome.
Thanking You All

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

Probably need ramsinks to cool the card's memory, if it doesn't have them
already. They work wonders. I had the same problem with my 9800 Pro and
installing ramsinks cured it.

Gary

 

[Rene Lamontagne]

--
Regards, Rene Lamontagne

(e-mail address removed)

Probably need ramsinks to cool the card's memory, if it doesn't have them
already. They work wonders. I had the same problem with my 9800 Pro and
installing ramsinks cured it.

Gary

Will follow your advise Gary,Thanks for the advice, purchased 2 sets of
Thermaltake Ramsink kits today.
Will install and report, Also purchased a Vantec Silent case fan, will cut
side hole in case cover opposite Vid card and install fan also, Yes it seems
pretty warm around the card so with heatsinks and fan it may improve, Will
report results in the next couple days.

Regards, Rene Lamontagne

 

[Rene Lamontagne]

--
Regards, Rene Lamontagne

(e-mail address removed)



Will follow your advise Gary,Thanks for the advice, purchased 2 sets of
Thermaltake Ramsink kits today.

Snip

OK, Installed the Ramsinks and cut a 3 inch hole in side panel centered
directly at Vidcard and installed fan.
Reinstalled 3Dmark 2003 ver 3.4.0 which seems to be the standard today, I
can now OC the card, Core 500 and mem 330, this seems stable and is now
showing an increase of aboot 500 in 3dmark, Good enough for me.
An added bonus to this is that my CPU temp has taken a substatial drop!!!
It always ran at 40 Deg C at idle and 55 Deg C at full load. which I was
happy with.

it now runs at 34 Deg C at idle and 49 Deg C at full load !!!!!, which is a
pretty nice bonus.
Thanks again GTX-Slotcar Gary your help is much appreciated, BTW you have a
very interesting Web site .

Regards Rene Lamontagne

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

That's a nice increase for 3DM-03, Rene.
The fastest driver version for me that still runs smooth in everything is
3.10 (using W2K). It might be one you want to try.
How's that Vantec Silent case fan? Is it pretty quiet?
All my fans are old and kind of loud. At one time it didn't bother me. I've
always had good luck OCing, so this time around I decided to go with a quiet
computer and see how it would do. I have to say, I like quiet much better
than loud So, now I'm running my computer with one side panel removed
and all case fans turned off. CPU temp is about 90° F (33° C) at idle and
jumps up about 10° F when running a game or benchmark. It's whisper quiet.
The open side of the case faces a wall, so it doesn't show; but I'd still
like to close it up. The problem is, without running my noisy case fans the
temp shoots right up there. I'm looking for a good, silent fan (that really
is quiet, not just named that way) in the 120mm size.
There's a couple of them out there, but I don't know which is better.

Gary

 

[Rene Lamontagne]

F when running a game or benchmark. It's whisper quiet.

The open side of the case faces a wall, so it doesn't show; but I'd still
like to close it up. The problem is, without running my noisy case fans the
temp shoots right up there. I'm looking for a good, silent fan (that really
is quiet, not just named that way) in the 120mm size.
There's a couple of them out there, but I don't know which is better.

Gary

Snip

Hi Gary, the Vantec stealth fan I got is very quite, Its an 80 MM I wanted
a 120 but dealer didn't have any in stock.
It is rated at 27 CFM and 21db which is pretty good, I find today that I can
turn my 2 front intake fans to Low and maintain the 34-35 Deg temps so that
really helps reduce noise.
I have a total of 9 fans in this box and it is somnewhat noisy but I am 70
years old and my hearing is not top notch so It doesn't bother me too much
)

Regards Rene Lamontagne

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

Wow Rene, 70. That makes me feel young. I don't often talk to anyone on-line
that's older than me. Most of the people I know think I'm in my late 30's
(my hair hasn't turned gray yet and my kids are young), but I'm 53. That's
a proud, old French name you've got there, too. It's not one you hear every
day, but coincidentally, I'm building a house for a Lamontagne here in
Maine. Some distant relative of yours, no doubt
Thanks for the info on the fan. I'm checking into Vantec and another brand.

Gary

 

[Minotaur]

Probably need ramsinks to cool the card's memory, if it doesn't have them
already. They work wonders. I had the same problem with my 9800 Pro and
installing ramsinks cured it.

Gary

Good idea, but the RAM sinks ain't needed. They would be if he was
experiancing tearing and artifacts, but he isn't, so it's very unlikely
the RAM is overheating.

I would suggest he flashes his BIOS, with an unlocked version.
Just because you can appear to overclock it, dosn't mean it's running
overclocked.

 

[Rene Lamontagne]

Good idea, but the RAM sinks ain't needed. They would be if he was
experiancing tearing and artifacts, but he isn't, so it's very unlikely
the RAM is overheating.

I would suggest he flashes his BIOS, with an unlocked version.
Just because you can appear to overclock it, dosn't mean it's running
overclocked.

Snip>

Thanks Minotar, The ramsinks and fan have helped a lot, But I am intriged by
this bios update, After googling and searching for a while I have not found
an unlocked bios for the ATI 9600 Pro, have found for other makes but am
sure that I shoud stick to finding the exact bios I need.
BTW the card does not *seem* to be locked or as you say, am I deluding
myself, a lot of searching I have done say it is locked, Any Ideas or sites
that may have the bios file I need?
Yes Gary the years roll on but I still enjoy Building computers and gaming,
Half-Life and it's mods are my favorites, Patiently waiting for HL2
Any Pointers appreciated.

Regards Rene Lamontagne

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

Well, you could be right. I don't know Rene's card, but the ramsinks seemed
to help it.
With my 9800Pro, the memory chips were hot to the touch at stock settings,
but when OC'd I actually burned my finger when I touched a chip. I don't
think my bios is locking the memory. If I set it to 500mHz, the screen goes
haywire. Also, using ATITool.exe, you get a visual representation of
artifacts. At some core or memory speeds there are none, and at others they
are all over the place. I think this indicates that the settings are doing
something. Like Rene, I also got slower 3DMark scores when I OC'd. In my
case, my scores actually went up a little when I underclocked the memory.
After adding the ramsinks, my scores went up as I OC'd, up to a certain
point. Before the ramsinks, when I OC'd but didn't get speed gains, I also
didn't get tearing or any other anomalies; just slower speeds and hotter
chips. All the other video cards I have or have had would always show
tearing and sparkles when OC'd too much, but they still got faster the more
I OC'd.
I don't know what it is with this card, but the benefits of OC'ing stop well
before any anomalies show up. It's a real puzzle to me. Is there any way the
bios could be doing this?

Gary