How high can you clock your Radeon?

[Merc7]

I have the Radeon 64meg DDR VIVO (5.5ns ram). I can clock it at 212/212 without any probs. Anything greater than that starts corrupting the screen with purple lines, mainly when it's clocked at 215/215 or above. I have it running at 200/200 now because of the degrading performance issue, but it actually seems to gain more fps as it's clocked higher than 200/200. I put a blue orb and ramsinks on the board, which may be overkill, but I like voiding my warranty so it's cool. Anyway, what are some good overclocks people have been able to get with the Radeon? I've heard of 220/220 on a 32 meg version (6ns ram), but this seems high.

 

[Taz4158]

You're pushing it as is my friend!

 

[nitrousninja]

I have no problems at 200\200 and i now get 117fps in the Q3(1.17 w\o sound) 800x600 everything maxed timedemo and about 5500 in the 3Dmark2000 demo version default benchmark(between test screens disabled). At stock speed Iget 104fps and 5100 3DMarks. Clocked any higher I get a little artifacting.

 

[Taz4158]

200-205 is as high as you want to go.

 

[Merc7]

Yeah it probably is Taz. I think when the Powerstrip bug is fixed (if ever), we may be able to see some better performance gains above 200/200 though. Then 210/210 may be something to look into if you're using better cooling methods.

 

[RDSport323]

thats awkward...

i can't get mine past 185 w/o weird little splots... I have the AIW Radeon 32mb... I think the default setting is 148? I have it set at 184.. and its running ok...

any advice as to how i can get it higher?

 

[oldfart]

166 is default on AIW.

 

[Engineer]

I'm running at 190/190 right now....Nidec Blower blowing across the card. Nice and cool

 

[Merc7]

RDSport323, maybe try better cooling. I put a blue orb and ram sinks on my card. Many might consider this overkill, or even dangerous to do, but i'm sure at the very least it will prolong the life of the card. I used to get little white dots (or artifacts) showing up in Q3A when it was clocked around 202/202 or above, but now I only get that at 212/212 or above. Sure that's not a huge improvement, but i'm sure it will make the card last longer at the very least.

The Radeon LE is clocked at 148/148, the AIW should be 166/166 by default. I had an LE that I could get up to 190/190 without artifacts with additional cooling. It had the 6ns ram like your AIW probably has. It's up to you about adding any additional cooling though. I ended up spending a total of like $40 - $45 on all of the stuff needed to add the blue orb and ram sinks (blue orb ~$12, Ram sinks ~$15, Arctic Silver Epoxy ~$15). I can use the epoxy on other projects, as I buy a lot of graphics cards for some reason, but if that price doesn't seem worth it to you, then i'd advise against it. I don't even know why I spent that much money just to gain few extra mhz, but it really comes down to the sport of it, if there is such a thing...

 

[RDSport323]

Merc7,

thanks for hte info, I just might do that... I already have some Arctic Silver lying around, but, where would you recommend I get those heatsinks? from 2cooltek?

I was thinking about getting a GeForce Ultra also, but, was wondering if it's worth the wait for the NV20?? Does anyone have any opinions on this?

thanks

 

[Merc7]

Yeah either 2cooltek, or millisec.com. I've had good experiences with both companies. I got the ramsinks for my Radeon 64 from 2cooltek because they had the smaller size that fit the ram for that card. I went with the sinks from millisec for my LE since they're much bigger and fit the bigger sized chips on that board. Although, 2cooltek has bigger sizes as well. You probably have the same size ram I have on my LE, so i'd go with the bigger millisec sinks, but it's up to you.

As for the Ultra. I want to get one as well, but i'm going to wait until the NV20 is out and then buy an Ultra, since the price will probably drop once the next generation cards are released. But if you want to stay with the current technology this probably isn't the best way to do it. I never usually buy products when there first released, since they tend to drop in price if you wait a while, especially if something newer and faster is released.

 

[cs1205]

hmmz..

 

[Taz4158]

I've hit 210 but run it anywhere from 195-200.

 

[Merc7]

I'd like to run at 210/210, but the extra performance you get is so minimal that i'd rather clock at 200/200 and have the card last a bit longer. Some even get degrading performance after 200/200.

 

[oldfart]

From what I understand, the decreasing performance after 200 is a Powerstrip bug. It is supposed to be fixed in 3.0??

 

[OlivarBandwidth]

how do I up the clock setting in powerstip for my radeon?

 

[TuOni]

Yeah you are riding the line

 

[kingz]

Becareful when you put on the ramsinks with Arctic Silver. First time I did it, my card stoped working. I had to rip them suckers off, which is VERY VERY dangerous. A lot of force will be needed to take them off if you do them wrong, like me. First insulate the area around the ram, such as the pins, then put them on

 

[Taz4158]

<< how do I up the clock setting in powerstip for my radeon? >>


The easiest way is to save this as a batch file&quot;c:\windows\pstrip.exe /clk 190 /exit&quot;
substituting your path and clockspeed, create a shortcut to it and run it in your startup group.

 

[Merc7]

kingz,
I was afraid of that also. I ended up just putting a small layer of arctic silver epoxy in the middle of the ram chip so it wouldn't come in contact with the connectors. Then once the ram sink was put on it spread out a little to cover a little more of the chip. Some people say you should spread silicon on the connectors before you put arctic silver on the chips, to prevent it from getting on the connectors. I think if you're careful silicon is not needed. I did get a little of the epoxy on a couple of the connectors, but I wiped it off before putting on the sink and it seems to work fine.
How did you get the sinks off? I thought arctic silver epoxy was permanent. I guess if you pulled hard enough... How did you get the epoxy off the connectors though? Did you weaken the epoxy (putting some arctic silver paste into the mix) like if mentions in the instructions? I haven't tried that yet.

 

[PlunX]

I have an older Radeon 32MB DDR with a default speed of 166/166.. With a Blue Orb on the GPU and copper heatsinks on the RAM, I can achieve 203/203 without any problems.. 204/204 gives me some graphic corruption after playing games for about forty five minutes.. 205/205 works perfectly, but it's way slower than 203/203.. I think it's a bug with PowerStrip..

 

[MustangSVT]

all using scrap i had laying around the house.

 

[cbuchach]

I can hit 196/196 with a retail unmodified 32DDR. At that point however, screen artifacts begin to pop up.

 

[hclarkjr]

is there way to overclock the radeon without any third party software like coolbits with nvidia cards?

 

[Yoshi]

210/210 for me, start to see artifacts on the screen at 216Mhz. Pushing about 100fps in QIII demo1 at 800x600x32, 75fps at 1024x768x32, and 35fps at 1600x1200x32. Results are rounded to the nearest frame and were run with the detail cranked to the max.

At 1024x768 I realized a 12% (67fps to 75fps) increase in performance from clock speed change of about 15%. Not too bad.

No exotic cooling used, case is well ventilated.