Upping core voltage on 9800 Pro/XT

ElJerid wrote:
Interesting posts here...
Question is: what is stable overclocking? I purchases my Sapphire
9800 Pro and overclocked it successfully at +/- 415 / 370 MHz, which
in fact is only a little 10 % overclock. Because in practice, I
didn't see any difference between 378 MHz and 415 MHz, after a few
weeks I returned to a 5 % oc, which makes 397 / 354 MHz, just for
safety reasons. After 4 months however, while viewing a movie, all of
a sudden my display switched to a splendid collection of random very
small colored squares and blocks. Shutting down and waiting for 10
min allowed me to restart, but only for a pair of seconds. I had to
admit that the card was blowed up. Fortunately, it has been exchanged
under warranty and I'm not very proud about this. That's why I want
to warn other users: successfully overclocking is not only measured
by taking a single shot of impressive high frequencies. It's also
looking at what happens with the hardware a few months later. But
this evolution in time is never reported or reviewed.
Maybe some new topic for Tomshardware or overclocker's sites: "Six
months of overclocking"?
And finally, why overclocking a 9800 Pro if you can't see any
difference? Mine is now running at bios speed !!!

I agree, overclocking is only really useful if you see a difference. I kinda
went 'all the way' for my nature, and went into watercooling. This didnt
help my CPU much, but my GPU has improved a lot. I have the soft-modded 9500
NP 128 MB, which now O/C's close to 9800 Pro clocks; 375 MHz. This is
100MHz, or 36%, very noticable in high detailed settings...

Just my 2 eurocents ;-)

Thomas

Thomas wrote:
I agree, overclocking is only really useful if you see a difference.
I kinda went 'all the way' for my nature, and went into watercooling.
This didnt help my CPU much, but my GPU has improved a lot. I have
the soft-modded 9500 NP 128 MB, which now O/C's close to 9800 Pro
clocks; 375 MHz. This is 100MHz, or 36%, very noticable in high
detailed settings...

PS Running for over a year with the card, half a year with the watercooling.

Thomas

"Neil" wrote
in message
...

I'm still curious as to whether the ProPCB
undervolts the R360 core leading to it
overclocking poorly.

I've checked and I have only 1.67V. The RojackPot
articles on voltmodding these cards quote the
"found" voltages on the example (Sapphire, I
think) cards used to be 1.6-1.7V Pro and 1.8V XT.
I'd hate to get my hopes up based on a sample of
one (other card). Anyone else measured their core
voltage lately?

I'll be moving boxes in the near future, I think
I'll get my soft pencils out at the same time.

Neil

Hi, sorry for beeing late on the reply...

I have a Powercolor 9800XT that is very modified...
By default it runs on 1.81V and i'm running it now at 1.98V.

The default speed is 412/365, but for 2D normally i set it to 384/335
and for benchmarks max i've reached was 520/410 on a WC setup.

On the default 1.81V gpu core, i only managed to get to about 475/480
before getting artefacts and freezing screens...
I must say that I CAN see very diference on the card overclocked, and
it's not only on sintethic benchmarks, but in real games...

I also have a mod for the memory core, but on the R360 doesn't show
much improvements as the vgpu one.

I should say that upping vgpu is a bit risky if not done properly.
Also, get a good multimeter to check for the alterations that the
pot's outputs on the card.

If you need some help, just buzz....

-------------------------------------------------------
Stormgiant

Asus P4P800-Deluxe
NW3000@3915 FSB261 on WC
512MB OCZ BH-5 @DDR522 2-2-2-5
Power Color ATi 9800XT 520/410
-------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 23:15:42 +0100, "Neil"
wrote:

My 9800 Pro (with R360 core but Pro PCB, which I
believe is a BBA) now has an XT BIOS. (If you're
interested I had more luck in the end with a BIOS
I found for an HIS card modified with a 128MB
limit, than the modified Club3D BIOS that many
people seem to use. Both BIOS's were considerably
older than the one installed on my card
originally. I wonder what the intervening updates
might have included). My card nearly runs at XT
clock speeds (412/365) flawlessly, but not quite.
At the moment I have the case open and a desk fan
directed into it. In this fashion, ATitool tells
me I can have stable settings of about 403/373.
At those settings (needless to say) 3DMark03 runs
fine. With the default settings everything is
fine apart from a few (very few, probably fewer
than 10 or 20) single-pixel snowy sparkles that
show up in Mother
Nature. You might not even notice them if you
weren't looking. [I have run FarCry (not for very
long) at the default speeds and not noticed
anything untoward].

To be honest, I don't think there's much wrong
with the card at these speeds, but the thing is I
know it's not working perfectly. I shouldn't have
thought it was the GPU temperature that is causing
the sparkles, since I've fitted the Arctic VGA
Silencer, which claims to operate the GPU at much
lower temperatures than the standard cooler (and
the desk fan's there too). I thought I might
benefit from increasing the voltage to the GPU.

I did try changing the AGP signalling voltage to
1.6V, but that made no difference (I think) and I
can't really see why it should make any, to the
core. I've googled a little and found the Rojack
Pot articles on volt-modding the Pro and the XT.
I'm pretty certain, I need to follow the
instructions in the Pro article, as I just don't
have the components described in the XT article.
I'll almost certainly do it by pencilling my
resistors in. I think the R360 has a default
voltage slightly higher than the R350. (The
articles mention nearly 1.8V measured on a
standard XT compared with just 1.7V or less on the
standard Pro). I'm wondering whether the Pro PCB
is modified to provide the higher core voltage
when the R360 core is included. I guess I'll find
out when I measure the stock voltage.

So my questions a
Is it likely that increasing the GPU voltage will
rid me of my sparkles at 412MHz?
Is there a sensible way to measure the GPU
temperature?
Any tips on pencilling (beyond the article) from
someone who's done it?

Thanks.

Neil