My Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro manages the graphics in Far Cry & DOom3 fairly well, and it lags just a bit when I play in very high detail. I'm thinking overclocking it a few thousand hertz will fix this lag. I opened it up today and touched the tiny heatsink and fan thats is on the bottom of it and it was damn hot, it almost slightly burned my finger. It cooled off in about half a minute though. I'm paranoid about overclocking now that I see its friggin hot. I even stopped playing games 10 minutes prior to turning off my machine and opening it up. So whats the risk here? I read that there have been many successful overclocks to 450Mhz from 380Mhz (core) and from 350Mhz to 375Mhz (memory). I want to overlock my processor (athlon FX-53) but i get these whackout readings. MBM5 thinks my CPU is 18C and the cpu case 25. In the BIOS my mobo thinks the cpu is 22C. My comp case has a temp. probe and i stuck it to the side of the cpu heatsink and get a reading of 44C there. Apparently my on-board temperature sensors suck and can't read jack ****. Don't I run a huge risk overclocking if I can't know if it will overheat? (everything is original - original heatsink & fan came w/ cpu, original fan on graphic card etc.) thanks for your input
Heat is a major issue when overclocking any item in the computer.Good cooling is a must as is case air flow. Peek over at this site and read the stickies in the sections releted to your intrests.. I am a Senior member there and overclocking is the main focus of the site.. http://www.ocforums.com/index.php?s=
Considering how hot my radeon is even without overclocking, isn't it too risky to OC it w/out some freakin water cooling or something?
9800Pro tend to average more of 412/360 (XT speed), 450/375 is pretty extreme even for a 9800XT. With an FX53 even a stock 9800Pro should play Doom III and Farcry very well esp if it has 256MB (ideal for these top-end cards). Still there's no harm in careful o/c'ing. Raise the RAM 5mhz at a time until it artifacts in 3Dmark03, drop back 10mhz and then repeat for the core (keeping the RAM o/c'ed). You may get 385/350 or you may get 450/380. Don't worry too much about heat, modern gfx cards do run very hot by design and temp monitoring is rarely any good for more than a rough guide. The key thing is easily stability, lower temps are nice. When you find your max o/c's rem to avoid leaving it too near the absolute limit and be sure to test VERY thoroughly it truly is rock solid. If you really want the most from your 9800Pro then buy a VGA Silencer which are quieter and better than the stock cooler. Alternatively you could simply sell it on and buy a 6800 or 6800GT!
That's right! I forgot! Raising it very slithgly is a good method. My radeon only has 128MB, not 256 I'm not sure what is meant by "stability". Either it starts up and I can play my games, or it doesn't. What do you mean? In order to overclock, I am guessing, I download some software and set the speed. (ATiTool or Rage3d). No flashing the bios? No soldering? Is it really that simple? Thanks for your help. Btw can't be a new vga cooler no $$$
I have my 9800 pro sapphire 128mb 256 bit to 445/378. I just ordered the vga arctic silencer cooler for it, but when I run tests and games on my card i have 2 house fans blowing directly into the case.
You can just use the Omega drivers which come complete with a bunch of tools inc o/c'ing sw. Stability means the card will run without any visual glitches or crashes, and for hours on end. Simply running a loop of 3Dmark does not mean the card can truly handle that speed, although it is fine for a quick evaluation. When deciding on the max stable o/c you really want to stress it out to ensure it can truly handle it, or more ideally that it's stable 5mhz higher than the speed you intend to leave it at for the long term. BTW 128MB will not hurt you, in the most demanding games more is simply ideal. Going 128MB saves you a packet when buying cards in 9800 cards and is well worth the saving.
Omega drivers? What's that? I'm guessing since you didn't reply to anyhting about flashing the bios or wahtever that i'll just go ahead and use my overclocking sw and hit the road, slowly... thanks
You cant use them for 3dmark but I use the drivers from omegacorner.com included in the package is atitool. Use that to clock up 5-10mhz at a time on the core, using the artifact checker, leaving it for 2 mins at each speed to check for artifacts. When you get some, clock down until you can run it for an hour or so without any artifacts. Also, check out the "arctic cooling vga silencer", it helps the temps on those cards
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ Unofficial drivers which include quite a few little tools and tweaks. You can certainly run the 3Dmarks with these drivers and AFAIK even submit your scores, it's just that they won't be included in the 3Dmark officially certified drivers list, again AFAIK. To o/c there's no need to flash and definitely no need to solder (hardmod). Some people like to flash, usually to a higher class card. This can be because the higher cards use looser RAM timings and/or higher voltage and/or include extra (minor) optimisations but it does carry a small risk. Some people just like to get their 9800Pro recognised as a 9800XT despite the increased perf being VERY minor and obtainable through simpel o/c'ing.
alright well im in the middle of overclocking and i've got a stable over clock to 410/339 up from 378/338 I scan for artifacts each time for 2 minutes, and plan on doing a little longer later for higher overclocks. Sometimes I would get errors though. In the log it said 1 pixel didn't match when i OC'ed to 420/345. What exactly does this mean? It's unstable? Will I only get a truly successfull stable overclock if no artifacts are found?
Well yes, ideally. Gfx cards can tolerate errors better than system RAM or the CPU but it's certainly far from ideal and could easily be causing your card some harm. Don't entirely trust one program though, try running something else (ideally something demanding) and look closely for any glitches.
Stability wise, give the card a good 5 hr run on 3dmark 01 to be 100% sure of stability, or simply play a game (doom3, ut2004 are both GREAT) for a few hours and check for any visual anomolies like artifacts or tearing. 3dmark 03 is MUCH more sensitive to overclocking than 01 as well, card passed 01 fine, but core started to sparkle in 03. ATI tool is good, but dont trust it 100%, use some other method for testing stability....
