My latest experiment

[congo]

I just found I could overclock my FSB quite a lot with my shiny new XP2800+ CPU by reducing my RAM timings. The CPU temperature seems no different at the overclock which is a good thing!

RAM timings are set to 7-3-3-2.5(cas) on my budget Kingston RAM, FSB is 364mhz DDR.

I'm trying to see how far I can stretch my new GF FX 5900XT in the frame rate war. It's getting better, but I suspect I'm getting very close to the limit.

[Gixer]

Hehehe, cool  ;D  If you were planning on o-clocking you shoulda got the XP2500mobile.  I am very temted to do this they o-clock to silly speeds with little rise in temp due to the lower voltage required.  Nice o-clock though and a good gain in your scores.  I should put my back to stock and see how much a difference it makes with my raised FSB and tighter timings.

Maybe i should get rivatuner and have a bash at o-clocking my old GF4 ti4600 but i dont wanna blow it up b4 my new card arrives.

[Gixer]

Just noticed you raised your AGP bus.  Was this set at 66MHz default?  Does it produce and unstabilities when u alter it?  Im guessing that is o-clocking your g/card a bit.

[congo]

I don't really know what effect raising the AGP bus has on the Video Card clocks, only that Aida32 doesn't show it at all, it simply stays the same according to Aida's sensors. I edged it up very slowly in small increments to over 80 in the end with no instability, and only a small performance gain.
The info I read about it was outdated, so I got anxious and went for it.

[Gixer]

I dont think your going to blow anything up unless you start increasing voltages drastically.  Be warey of altering the AGP clock thing, the site I use to get my o-clock questions answered, most people say leave it at 66MHz and clock your card seperately.

My multiplyer only goes up to 12.5 too but you dont need any more.  12.5*200 = 2500MHz and I doubt you will get near that without some serious cooling (Water) and playing with the voltages a lot.

I dont like the way your ram is not running the same fsb as your CPU.  There will be a CPU/Ram ratio in BIOS somewhere ensure this is set to 1:1   Of course you will probably find you cant hold tight timings but nForce2 boards work better with the cpu and ram at the same FSB.  

On your ram timings try setting the Tras to 11   i.e. 11-3-3-2.5  Apparently (And i am only going by what I have read here) the nForce 2 like this  ???   I did bench better though with it set at 5.

The good thing you should be able to do with your PC3200 ram is set the timings the same as mine 5-2-2-2. Thats the main reason I brought good quality PC3200 stuff to get tight timings.  

200*11 is XP3200 speed which gives 2200MHz.  My cpu is at 2255MHz though my fsb is 360, but due to the tight ram timings I score the same as if I clock the CPU to XP3200 speeds and slacken the timings off, only thing is its more stable how I currently have it setup.  I was getting a few random crashes with it set as an XP3200.  I did alter voltages but though it be best to just revert to my old settings.

I will set my PC back to standard and run the bench test then clock it and see what my difference is.  Now do I go for o-clocking the GF4 ti4600??  The 4200 was a good clocker but no so sure about the 4600.

[Gixer]

Had a go with Rivatuner but I dont think my g/card clocks well so set it back to normal.

I dont gain as much as you have from normal to o-clock system but maybe its down to my g/card???

Unclocked = 11940
O-clocked = 12732

Just wish I could hit 13000 as I am not that far away, just dont think its possible with my current components.

[congo]

I finally got the proper versions of 3dmark, The latest builds of 3DMark2001se and 3DMark'03.

After some final tweaks, My rig scored 16339 in '01se and 6094 in '03.

I put the AGP bus back to 66mhz for the tests and that's where it will stay, as it doesn't seem to do anything to help performance.

The RAM Timings in the 2003 test below were actually 6-3-3-2.5





Everything is running smooth now after a huge effort trying to Flash the video cards BIOS with anything and everything trying to get it to work better.
I ended up using the one it came with and stuck with the supplied o/clock util as it seems as good as anything else I've tried.

Trying to flash the card into an "ultra" was a complete waste of time, I tried around 10 bios files from many recommended cards, only two other "XT" bioses would run, and the card didn't respond well to them. None of the "ultra" bios files worked, I even thought I lost my card on a couple of them. I don't know how the other people are doing this, I used 3 compatible flash utilities in my efforts....... and if I hadn't tried NVFLASH. I would not have gotten my card to work again as I lost the EEPROM using WWFLASH, the leadtek util !!!!  

The Default Leadtek Flash utility runs from windows, but it was having a hard time even with the supplied BIOS. NVFLASH said the supplied BIOS had a bad checksum error, but it still flashed it when I overode the protection with 3 switches.

Well, I had to try it  ;D

[Gixer]

Still you got nice scores  ;D  after reading what you were doing and knowing that i got a 6800Ultra on order I thought I would try o-clock my g/card.  

Was risky as my card tends to run a smidge hot anyhow and like you I thought I had lost it  :-[  Screen went crazy colours with lines shooting around everywhere looked quite pretty. My g/friend was like oh oh what u done  :'(

I did a reset and its was still like it, I was a little worried then but didn't let on to her and just calmly pushed the power button and said 'ah its just needs to cool down'  Left it 2mins turned it back on and it was workin, wuickly set it back to default clock speeds b4 it went crazy on me again hehehe.

Still its all good fun  ;D  If you can get better performance for free then its gotta be done  ;D

Cant wait till my new g/card arrives, wonder what my scores will be hehehe, 3dMark01 20000? I know 3dMark03 should be 12500-13000  ;D

FS9 with everything maxed out totally 1600x1200 4xAA and 16xAF 30fps no lower here I come, well least I hope  ;D

[congo]

HeHe, you scared someone!  ;D

So, what you gonna do with the old card? Keep it for a spare?

I look forward to seeing what your new one performs like. Wow, a recent graphics card, you are moving up the ladder Gixer!  8)

I bet it will run FS9, er...  I take that back...  :P

[Gixer]

Yes Congo will keep the ti4600 as a spare.  Its been a good card and still holds its own just.  But as the 6800Ultras are so new, and there have been a few probs with some of them, it would be silly to get shot of it.

It will probably end up in my g/friends pc as she has a GF3 ti200 64ddr in there at the moment.  The GF3 will be back up for either PC.  But I wont put the GF4 in hers until I am sure my 6800 is ok  ;)

[4_Series_Scania]

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