9800 Pro OC speeds?

[GTX_SlotCar]

OK, this is the Sapphire 9800Pro that newegg is selling cheap.
I just installed an Arctic Cooler VGA Silencer and my own home made ramsinks
(from an old P1 heatsink, I think). The project came out great, despite
taking 2 hours to line up the 2 screws on the Silencer.
Before I installed this stuff, OCing the card slowed it down. Now it
certainly doesn't. Right now I'm running the core at 452 and the memory at
392 (784) and finally broke the into the 16,000s (16,135?) in 3DMark2001SE
with my OCd P4 1.8a. It's late, so I'm going to stop playing with it tonight
and maybe experiment more tomorrow.
So, my question is; how much OC would be typical for this card? Am I in the
ballpark yet?

Gary

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

PS.
For those who wanted to know, the memory on the Sapphire card is Hynix.
HY5DU283222AF-28 350mHz 2.8ns

Gary

 

[JTS]

What kind of memory does it have? Did you look before putting the ramsinks
on?

It's my opinion that that is a very good, maybe a great, overclock. I have
one of these cards and another on the way for a second computer. I put an
old AMD heatsink on my first one and can get 445/370. I'm disappointed the
memory didn't clock higher, which makes me wonder what kind you have.

Anyway, 452/392 sounds great to me. From reading various forums, I have yet
to see anyone go as high with that card as you. Here's hoping my next one
will be as good!!

Todd

 

[JTS]

Hey, by the way. That's a wonderful website you got there. I've been to it
many times over the years to get racing wheels configured properly. Much
appreciated.

Todd

 

[Ben Pope]

OK, this is the Sapphire 9800Pro that newegg is selling cheap.
I just installed an Arctic Cooler VGA Silencer and my own home made
ramsinks (from an old P1 heatsink, I think). The project came out great,
despite taking 2 hours to line up the 2 screws on the Silencer.
Before I installed this stuff, OCing the card slowed it down. Now it
certainly doesn't. Right now I'm running the core at 452 and the memory at
392 (784) and finally broke the into the 16,000s (16,135?) in 3DMark2001SE
with my OCd P4 1.8a. It's late, so I'm going to stop playing with it
tonight and maybe experiment more tomorrow.
So, my question is; how much OC would be typical for this card? Am I in
the ballpark yet?

My Crucial does 450/360 with a Zalman ZM80A-HP... looks like I need RAM
sinks then. My memory is Samsung 2.86ns/350MHz stuff.

Ben

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

Thanks for the kinds words.
The memory is Hynix 2.8ns 350 mHz.

Gary

 

[Leadfoot]

Whats your test for determining the overclock?

I use the Pixel shader in 3dmark03, when the shimmering stops on the baby
rhinoceros butt that mean no artifacts are being produce by the overclock

I got 414/360 using a BIOS hacked 9800 with 2.8ns samsung

 

[JTS]

I should have seen that in your second post. That seems to be the memory
that is on most (if not all) of those Newegg bulk Sapphire 9800 Pro's.
Are you getting any artifacts on any benchmark programs, like 3D Mark 03?

Todd

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

Last night I changed my OC settings. I'm not running 3DMark2003 yet; still
stuck on 2001SE. I use the dragon head then wings to see if any sparkles
start. Last night they did. The night before they weren't there. Maybe it
was my drivers. I wanted to try the Cat 3.10's and used Cat remover (from
the ATI site) to get rid of all the ATI stuff. Unfortunately, I had a hard
time installing any drivers after that. The install program would go for a
while, then I kept getting an error saying it couldn't install the drivers.
It took me an hour to finally get the 4.1's back in. That's when I noticed
the sparkles. Maybe the driver install or maybe just a higher room
temperature from the night before. Also, when I start 3DMark, I open the
"file" tab to load my "default test" settings. I click on that file to load
it and a remnant of the dialog box remains for about a half a second before
the screen refreshes it. It wasn't doing that before. My old Ti4400 used to
do that, though. It only does it the first time.
Regardless, I loaded the 3.10 Cat's and did some more testing. I use the
Hercules OC utility. It gives me about 5 point increments for the
adjustments. I still got the sparkles at 452/392 (only 3 or 4, but hey...).
I'm not sure if it was the mem or the core that caused it, but it was
getting late so I didn't try to figure it out. I lowered each one a notch
(about 5 points) and the sparkles disappeared. Oddly, my score didn't
change.The results in individual tests were different, but the overall score
remained the same. I finally went all the way down to 441/371 with the score
remaining the same. Below that it dropped a bit. I ran a timedemo in Call of
Duty and that score was also the same. I can't see any reason to OC it
higher than 441/371 if it's not going to make a difference. At 452/392, I
only got sparkles in the dragon test of 3DMark, not in GPL, NFSU or CoD.
Maybe a small fan on the ramsinks would cure that and it could OC even
higher, but I'm going to leave it alone.Touching the ramsinks with my
finger, they're no where near as hot at 371 as they were at 392. I'll run it
where it's happy.

Gary

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

Whats your test for determining the overclock?

The dragon head in 3DMark 2001SE. That's the first place they show up for
me. I haven't started using 3DM-03, yet.

Gary

 

[Jon Danniken]

The dragon head in 3DMark 2001SE. That's the first place they show up for
me. I haven't started using 3DM-03, yet.

Try using AtiTool to determine your max o/c; I find it's pretty sensitive:
http://atitool.ocfaq.com/

Jon

 

[JTS]

Oh well. You still got a good card card. From what I am reading, running
the core at 441 is a nice overclock for this card.

Todd

 

[GTX_SlotCar]

Here's some updated info. I downloaded ATI Tool as you suggested. It is very
sensitive. Although I can play any game and 3DMark with the core at 441 and
have no artifacts, ATI Tool set it at 432. But, it set my memory at 398,
which is higher than I had it set. So I figured, what the heck, give it a
try. My 3DMark went up a little to 16279. It just 100 or so points higher
than before, but at least it's not down. I'm leaving it here.
Last night my other DDR stick came in and I tried that. Getting it to work
in Dual mode went from frustration to understanding to triumph. When I
figured out that I had to slightly change the timing on the sticks, my score
jumped to 16712. Overall, upgrading to this card has been a success and I'm
getting higher frame rates than I expected. A far cry from my original post
about it complaining that the rates were lower than I had hoped for.
There are some differences in running dual channel memory as opposed to
single. First, I had to lower one of the timing aspects. Then I had to turn
off 2, instead of only 1, aspect of GAT (Abit's version of PAT), which is
the Game Acceleration in the Abit AI7. My SiSoft Sandra memory benchmarks
went from about 2879 to 3617 with dual channel. That's a 25.6% increase.
The only problem I'm having with dual channel is that it takes about a
minute before I can open my first non-system application after I start the
computer. That depends on the application. For example, if I start the
computer and run CPU-z or 3Dmark, it takes a minute of doing nothing before
the program runs. But, if I start task manager or Display properties, they
load right away. After the first program has started, all will run right
away. Also, if I wait a couple minutes before starting any program, they
load right away.
I've tried everything I can think of to cure this, including taking out all
the OCing. Each memory stick works great alone. Maybe reinstalling W2K would
fix it, but I'm not going to do that. Maybe dual channel likes to be
combined with hyper-threading, which my old P4 1.8a doesn't support. I
suppose I'll only know that when I upgrade to a P4 2.4c.
I've always been lucky when it comes to OCing, but this is my best project
yet. 16712 out of a P4 1.8a ain't bad

Gary

 

[JTS]

Here's some updated info. I downloaded ATI Tool as you suggested. It is very
sensitive. Although I can play any game and 3DMark with the core at 441 and
have no artifacts, ATI Tool set it at 432. But, it set my memory at 398,
which is higher than I had it set. So I figured, what the heck, give it a
try. My 3DMark went up a little to 16279. It just 100 or so points higher
than before, but at least it's not down. I'm leaving it here.
Last night my other DDR stick came in and I tried that. Getting it to work
in Dual mode went from frustration to understanding to triumph. When I
figured out that I had to slightly change the timing on the sticks, my score
jumped to 16712. Overall, upgrading to this card has been a success and I'm
getting higher frame rates than I expected. A far cry from my original post
about it complaining that the rates were lower than I had hoped for.
There are some differences in running dual channel memory as opposed to
single. First, I had to lower one of the timing aspects. Then I had to turn
off 2, instead of only 1, aspect of GAT (Abit's version of PAT), which is
the Game Acceleration in the Abit AI7. My SiSoft Sandra memory benchmarks
went from about 2879 to 3617 with dual channel. That's a 25.6% increase.
The only problem I'm having with dual channel is that it takes about a
minute before I can open my first non-system application after I start the
computer. That depends on the application. For example, if I start the
computer and run CPU-z or 3Dmark, it takes a minute of doing nothing before
the program runs. But, if I start task manager or Display properties, they
load right away. After the first program has started, all will run right
away. Also, if I wait a couple minutes before starting any program, they
load right away.
I've tried everything I can think of to cure this, including taking out all
the OCing. Each memory stick works great alone. Maybe reinstalling W2K would
fix it, but I'm not going to do that. Maybe dual channel likes to be
combined with hyper-threading, which my old P4 1.8a doesn't support. I
suppose I'll only know that when I upgrade to a P4 2.4c.

P4 2.4 C is a real nice deal and very overclockable. I think they can be
had for $160 or so. I have mine running at 3.3