overclocking video card, how many loops of 3dmark?

[Corporate Thug]

i oced my 9800 pro to 9800XT speeds. how may loops of 3dmark2001 are necessary to test for stability?

thanx

 

[Nebor]

Erm, usually none. Honestly, a video card that is clocked too far will either lock up during regular (internet explorer) applications if the core is clocked too high, or you'll see wierd white snow if the memory is clocked too high. Also keep in mind that if your core is simply too hot, you may get strange black polygons appearing.

 

[MDE]

Whatever you want, but 5 is usually enough to build up some heat to stress it.

 

[BenSkywalker]

i oced my 9800 pro to 9800XT speeds. how may loops of 3dmark2001 are necessary to test for stability?

At default settings? Probably a few hundred thousand or so(few million?). You have to wait for your processor to heat up enough to raise the ambient temp in your case so it can then start warming up the GPU, that likely won't happen until after your case fans fail, so you have to loop it for at least as long as that would take at default settings. What's the MTBF on your fans? I think typically they last for a few years, if it takes you six minutes to run through it once then about, give me a sec.... 262,266.66 times and your case fans should fail and it should start warming up your GPU- if your fans are higher quality it could take much longer though.

2K1 won't stress your vid card at default settings, it is mainly a processor bench at this point.

 

[McArra]

3dMark03 should stress your hard enough to see if it is stable in only one run. Test 3 and 4 will do it for sure, it's where I see artifacts when overclocking.

 

[Matthias99]

2K1 won't stress your vid card at default settings, it is mainly a processor bench at this point.

It does if you set it to just run the 'nature' scene at a high res and with AA/AF on and set it for continuous loop. Heats up my video card in a hurry.

The 'Troll's Lair', 'Mother Nature', and 'Pixel Shader 2.0' tests in 3DMark03 are also very tough on overclocked cards, although you need the Pro version of 3DMark03 to run tests selectively.

 

[dgerard]

Just curious... how much perf gain do you get when stable? what speed are you running the 9800pro

 

[Matthias99]

I'm running my 9800Pro at 425/365, the highest stable overclock I can hit with it fitted with a Zalman silent heatpipe. It runs maybe 5-10% faster than at stock (380/340) -- noticeable, but not earth-shattering. These cards get more benefit out of RAM overclocking, but unfortunately mine doesn't go so far.