'Detect Optimal Frequencies'?

[Delitus]

Okay, I want to squeeze some more juice out of my GeForce 6800U so I'm planning to overclock it. But before I do that, could someone explain to me how the 'Detect Optimal Frequencies' button in the nVidia control panel works? Is it reliable and safe? And also, repeatedly clicking on that button apparently keeps setting the core and memory clocks higher and higher....what's up with that?

 

[imported_Harbinger]

I cant find a single reason to OC a 6800U tbh. anyway "detect optimal frequencies" is kinda random and not really reliable from my experience. If your want to overclock your card start by increasing your core/memory speed by 5-10mhz and then try some games like doom3 and far cry (those 2, especially doom are known to be very little overclocking tolerant). If you dont see any artifacts (or random restarts of course ) keep goin. I guess you should stop somewhere around 430 for core and 1150 for memory unless you are using water cooling solution for your card.
When I overclock I usually use: Doom3, Far Cry, 3dmark 03 and 05 and aquamark in order to check for artifacts etc.
Btw what brand is your 6800 ?

 

[Delitus]

Thanks for the reply. It's a PixelView GeForce 6800 Ultra.
BTW, this is kinda going off-topic, but I get a disgusting score of 56k in AquaMark, 10k in 3DMark03 and 4.8k in 3DMark05. What could be holding my system down?

ASUS P5P800 Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 550 (3400MHz, stock speed)
512MB PC2100 DDR266 SDRAM, Dual-channel<---I think this is the culprit
PixelView GeForce 6800 Ultra (400/1100, stock speed)

I think it's my RAM... but then again, can PC3200+ make such a big difference to PC2100?

 

[imported_Harbinger]

i think is the memory as well... 1gb 3200 would make a difference. check my sig for my results on mark and aqua. Well, 10k and 4.8k on mark sounds ok with your setup but 56k on aqua is too low. But you are using an intel cpu as well so we cant really compare rigs.

Back on topic never heard anything about pixelview boards tbh so I dont really know if they are good overclockers or no. Nontheless i think your memory (both amount and speed) can be a small bottleneck for your gpu.

 

[bradyapba]

I would say its your ram as well.

I am running an A64 3000+ (overclocked to 2.4)
1 gig of PNP dual channel 3200 ram
and a PNY 6800 vanilla OC'd to 360/770.

My score in mark03 is 10,500.

I have a slower processor and a slower video card, yet we are getting the same score. The only difference is I have more, and faster ram than you.

I would get more ram.

Chris

 

[zerocool84]

get more ram that is also faster. at least 3200. everyone around here seems to say that p4's benefit over dual channel so maybe you should be looking into gettin 512x2 pc3200. im not sure wut the fsb is on those p4's but im sure its more than 133 so im pretty sure ur underclocking ur processor possibly

 

[Delitus]

This is rather disappointing...

I bought myself 2x512MB PC3200 RAM. Now I get 60k in AquaMark and 10.5k in 3DMark03. Hardly an improvement, in my opinion. Shouldn't I be getting better scores than this?

 

[JBT]

10500 is really low for an Ultra. You should be around 12000

 

[Delitus]

What could be getting me such low scores?

 

[2Xtreme21]

- Motherboard chipset drivers
- Video card drivers (Install using Driver Cleaner first)
- PSU

 

[imverygifted]

ya, i agree with a few of the above posters that the optimal frequencies is usually not reliable and why would you want to overclock? above 50FPS in HL2 w/ all settings on max 1280x1024 is fine for me

 

[McArra]

Maybe AF enabled? or AA? or Vsync? Have a look at those settings and disable them for benchmarking.

 

[zakee00]

make sure windows detects your ram as dual channel, if not, you have the ram in the wrong slots. happened to me cpuz is a good utility for checking your ram/cpu/mobo settings, and seeing if your ram is actually running in dual channel mode.
good luck,
nick

 

[otispunkmeyer]

it seems to work by projected temp increase or something or at least by current temps, it tells my i can do 421 on the core and 1.14Ghz on the mem as soon as i get into windows (ie computer off all night in a cold room) then after an hour or so wen things are up to temp this becomes only about 405mhz and 1.11Ghz

totally crap

 

[Delitus]

I checked all the quality settings (AA, AF, etc.) ...nothing.
Installed the latest motherboard drivers...still nothing.
Checked whether my RAM was running in dual channel...it was.
I finally used Driver Cleaner and reinstalled my drivers....and TADA!!! It worked like a charm!

Now I am getting 64k in AquaMark and 12k in 3DMark03.

Thanks for all the suggestions!