Minor overclocking causes artifacts

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ofn01

I have an Abit 9600XT 256Mb (Full system specs at the bottom of this post)

Using ATITool the card is by default set to 499.50Mhz Core and 297MHz RAM
Using ATITool to try and find the max core and mem, when the core is at
515Mhz and the mem is at about 310Mhz the 3D image in ATITool is either
missing a piece or funny bright yellow sections show up.

Im not really looking to overclock hard out - but thought that generally you
could bump things up a bit above that? Also could I have done any damage to
the card? The memory chips on the 9600XT say the following:
Hynix HY5DU561622CT-33 and on this site it does say its rated for 300Mhz
http://www.hynix.com/datasheet/eng/dram/details/dram_04_HY5DU561622CT.jsp

There are no ramsinks or anything on the card - just the fan & core heatsink
plus an eliptical shaped attachment on top of the fan/heatsink.


Full specs:
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz (1MB cache, 800FSB) with HT (Prescott)
MSI 865PE NEO-2 P MS-6728 Ver 2 (No D-bracket) 3.50 AMI BIOS
Nanya 2 x 256MB dual channel DDR RAM (PC3200) 400MHz
256 Mb ABIT 9600XT (Catalyst 5.1)
FSP Group FSP300-60PN 300W +3.3@28A, +5V@30A, +12V@18A,
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Western Digital 160GB 7200rpm hard drive with 8MB buffer
Onboard Realtek AC'97 Audio
Sony DVD-ROM drive (16x)
Sony DW-D22A Dual-Layer IDE DVD+/-RW (black)
Speedtouch router via onboard Realtek lan port
Windows XP Pro SP2
memtest86 1.27: 7.5 hour all tests no errors
Motherboard Monitor Voltages: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
3DMark2001: 13200, 3DMark2003: 3800, 3DMark2005: 1600
 
ofn01 said:
I have an Abit 9600XT 256Mb (Full system specs at the bottom of this post)

Using ATITool the card is by default set to 499.50Mhz Core and 297MHz RAM
Using ATITool to try and find the max core and mem, when the core is at
515Mhz and the mem is at about 310Mhz the 3D image in ATITool is either
missing a piece or funny bright yellow sections show up.
Click to expand...


Some 9600XT's just won't take much over stock clocking on the memory. Others
do. Friends 9600XT takes 525/325 on stock cooling without ramsinks. It's
almost certainly a memory issue. Ramsinks would help, as would airflow over
the card as well. I had an 8500 128Mb that would do exactly this type of
thing when memory was pushed into the 290Mhz range from 275. Ramsinks and
improved airflow allowed it to do 305/305 without articating. I also had a
9100 128Mb with crapola 200Mhz memory that would artifact when pushed past
207Mhz. This one I just sold.
 
In addition to the post below,

Today I tried out the ATI 'Overdrive' utility - seemed to work fine, clocked
my 9600XT upto 527Mhz or 513Mhz depending on temp. I ran 3Dmark01/03 & 05
and they all got small increases.

However I noticed that of course the memory is still 297Mhz by default So I
opened up ATITool and bumped the memory upto 300Mhz. (with overdrive still
enabled)

I then left it on the windows desktop and went away for five mins, when I
came back the screen had lots of flickering blocks everwhere! I managed to
shut the machine down and when it started again it was fine. I made sure
overdrive was OFF and that my memory according to ATITool was back to
297Mhz.

I ran 3DMark 2003 a couple of times which seemed fine. I then played HL2 for
an hour and also left the ATITool 3d fuzzy cube running for a while. Didn't
see any artifacts.

Could I have damaged my card???

Seems like the Hynix ram (3.3ns) does not like even being at 300Mhz if the
GPU is clocked - I am assuming that the blocks in this case were caused by
the memory?
 
Divide the memory's latency by 1000 to get its "rated" speed. 1000/3.3ns =
303 MHz. Don't expect to get more out of it unless you are prepared to do a
voltage mod. Blame Abit for being cheap.

Ditch Overdrive and find a common, fixed speed that will give artifact-free
performance across all your games and benchmarks.
 
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