6800GT Overclocking oddity

[Sideswipe001]

I got my PNY 6800GT a few days ago and so far it's wonderful. But I've had one odd issue in my overclocking adventures with it.

I enabled coolbits in the registry, and so have been using the sliders that enables to overclock with. Anyone who's used this knows how there's a "test settings" button you have to press before you can accept a speed change.

When I first got the card, I managed to overclock it all the way up to 418/1.2 Ghz. It ran fine like that for about a day of playing City of Heros. Then I installed NWN and KOTOR. I started playing KOTOR yesterday and had a few lockups, so I figured i'd turn down the video overclock a bit. I tried slightly lowering settings - 414 or so at first, but the "test settings" kept failing. In fact, it wouldn't let me go any higher than 399/1.1 GHz now.

I know that's still Ultra speed, and I'm not complaining. It's a fine overclock. I just wondered if anyone knew why I lost 20 mhz overnight on the core, and 100 on the memory. Could something have set this off?

Secondly, is there a way to manually set the core/memory without doing that "test settings"? A registry setting somewhere or something?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Sounds like overclocking is damaging your card already, I'd go back to defaults and play it safe for awhile to see if it's solid or flakes out all together.

 

[Keysplayr]

Why do people insist on damaging their 400+ dollars worth of brand new hardware?
People, the cards are freakin fast enough as they come out of the wrapper. You most likely damaged your core/memory. I guess its RMA time huh. Where did you buy it from?

 

[Sideswipe001]

It's not damaged. It runs fine at 50 Mhz faster than stock still. I'm just complaning because it's not running 70 over stock anymore.

I'm not going to RMA a card because it didn't overclock as much as I wanted.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Sideswipe001
It's not damaged. It runs fine at 50 Mhz faster than stock still. I'm just complaning because it's not running 70 over stock anymore.

I'm not going to RMA a card because it didn't overclock as much as I wanted.

Good man :beer: but given the symptoms I'd still go back to stock and monitor it closely for a week or 2 to be certain everything is alright.

 

[filmore crashcart]

I had the same experience..... you can't trust coolbits and your still taking a risk at overclocking. Everyone assumes that all these cards will hit Ultra speeds with no sweat - not all of them will.
Mine also dropped in overclock speed after running fine at 426/1100 for a couple of days of "no problem" and "my temps are low" so there is no other explanation to fall upon other than there is core/memory damage.
I put mine back on default settings and - you know what? I can't tell the difference in game play. It will run now at 400/1070 with no problem but I hardly see that it's worth it.
Do yourself a favor and ignore threads about 12+ 3dmark03 scores and only worry about performance if your game doesn't look good. If other people are running their cards at 435/1300+ with no problem that's fine, but it sure as hell doesn't mean your card will.