X1800XT PE BIOS on X1800XT

[Tony DiMarzio]

I've read through dozens of pages of forum dialog on the "Topic" and have
only heard success stories.

My Sapphire X1800XT, however, will not run stably with the X1800XT PE BIOS.
I suspected it wouldn't because of the less than mediocre overclocks I was
getting with it running the standard BIOS. (this luck of the draw stuff on
silicon that overclocks well never works out in my favor) I could barely hit
760mhz on the memory with the standard BIOS where many people were
hitting 800 with absolutely no problem . With the X1800XT PE BIOS it will
get through one sequence in 3DMark 05 at PE clocks before either texture
corruption occurs or the GPU locks up.

Has anyone else tried the X1800XT PE BIOS on their X1800XT? I hope I'm not
the *only* one that has a X1800XT that's not stable at PE clocks.

 

[First of One]

Start playing with voltage and, more importantly, memory timings for best
performance.

To put things in perspective, though, from 760 MHz to 800 MHz is only a 5%
increase. Many benchmarks have an error margin of +/- 2%. The psychological
improvement is not worth the risk (and hassle), if it were my money.

 

[Tony DiMarzio]

Start playing with voltage and, more importantly, memory timings for best
performance.

To put things in perspective, though, from 760 MHz to 800 MHz is only a 5%
increase. Many benchmarks have an error margin of +/- 2%. The
psychological improvement is not worth the risk (and hassle), if it were
my money.

Actually, I tend to agree with your philosophy on overclocking. In fact, it
is not like me at all to even bother with an OverClock attempt any more.
When I was younger I'd overclock my friggin sound card if I could; it was
all about pushing the hardware as hard as I could with only minimal regard
for stability. Now then I'm getting older I'm losing the nerve and patience
for overclocking. I'd much rather have the peace of mind that the hardware
is 100% stable.

That said, on to overclocking! ( I know ... I'm a hypocrite )

I can bump the voltage using OverClocker tool, but this would only serve as
a proof of concept. OverClocker will not let you change mem timings. ATI
OverDrive won't let you change volts or timings.

Really, all I want is 10K in 3dmark05. I'm sooo close! I'll have to reroute
power from life support I guess.