Can you trust ATITOOL anymore?

kypron7

Member
Nov 6, 2006
86
0
0
Hi, as the topic states, I get artifacts with any of the new versions of atitool within about 10 secs. The card doesnt even have a chance to get up to 70c in that time, the highest I've ever seen it is 73c after playing crysis for a couple hours.

Now, is atitool actually going to support these newer cards? Seems to me a new version hasnt come out in a long time, so I don't know if it really is accurate. I should note that I haven't seen any artifacts or crashing in Crysis Warhead, it seems stable enough....
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
That's a good question. I stopped using ATi Tool because it told me my card had artifacts when I couldn't get the card over 85c in any test. Even furmark. This was at stock speeds.

I do not rely on it at all. My games work, don't crash, don't artifact.
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
7
81
For heating up the card you can always try Furmark. I've heard that it heats up GPUs faster than ATI Tool.

As for whether ATI Tool can determine whether a GPU is unstable through artifacts during scanning, well, who's to say for sure?

Anyone remember when Doom 3 came out? Suddenly a lot of people had artifacts in that game when their video card overclock was stable in everything else. Turned out that Doom 3 worked video cards more rigerously and in different ways than other games, thus causing overclocks to fail.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
Originally posted by: Zap
For heating up the card you can always try Furmark. I've heard that it heats up GPUs faster than ATI Tool.

As for whether ATI Tool can determine whether a GPU is unstable through artifacts during scanning, well, who's to say for sure?

Anyone remember when Doom 3 came out? Suddenly a lot of people had artifacts in that game when their video card overclock was stable in everything else. Turned out that Doom 3 worked video cards more rigerously and in different ways than other games, thus causing overclocks to fail.

Well, when I can do furmark for 2 hours, Crysis for 6 hours, UT3 for 3 hours, and never experience any artifacts or crashing I'd guess the card is fine.

Even multiple futuremark runs.
 

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
7
81
Well, depends on your definition of stable. Some people run Intel Burn Test, Prime95 and a host of other programs for long periods of time to determine if their CPU overclock is stable, and a single failure in any program is grounds for them to reject that overclock as unstable. However, in normal day-to-day usage they probably would never see instability. Same way with video cards... if it is stable in what you use it for, then it is fine for you. However, someone else using your card may find the overclock unstable if they use different software and it glitches.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that your overclock might be unstable, however it is probably stable enough for your purposes.

I do the same thing with CPUs. I sometimes run overclocks that I know will fail Prime95 (typically from overheating), because my normal usage patterns never run the CPU that hard for that long.