First time overclocking advice, UPDATE: help with new problem

[Morfik]

I am going to try to overclock my CPU (Athlon 64 3000) and Video Card (ATI 9700 PRO) on my MSI K8T Neo, just to see what my highest 3Dmark03 score is.

The motherboard provides a utility to raise the clock speed by few Mhz increments and I have downloaded RivaTuner for my Video Card.

Any advice on how far I should go and when to stop and the basic "real world" risks???

I have some general knowledge about overclocking CPUs, but non whatsoever about video cards. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Markfw]

What memory are you running ? If it is good qualitry PC3500, try 217 HTT and leave the video card alone for starters. Don't change any voltages. Then run benches and check temps (probably not an issue, what HSF?) If it will run everything fine, then try inching up one or two mhz at a time Once you "hit the wall" then try upping the video card slowly, a few mhz at a time. If you don;t up the voltages there is no risk of damaging anything, just may not be as stable.

 

[Morfik]

WOOOW, I better forget OCing right now. I seem to have much bigger issues.

I ran 3dmark03 and got 2469 with the default settings etc.

I have run the same test a couple of weeks ago on my old Maxtor 5200 rpm Hard Drive and the same hardware and got ~5100.

The only thing that's different now is the new HDD (Seagate 80 Gb SATA). I have installed the same drivers as before plus all the windows updates (like my other HDD).

The only thing that I did differently this time was I just went to ATI's website to download the latest video driver for my Vid card instead of first downloading the drivers that came with my card and then upgrading...

What could possibly be wrong??? I noticed that during some of the tests (like the one with the "elephant" statue), some white dots could be seen on edges etc, sort of looked like a glitch. Same thing I noticed yesterday when running Need for Speed Underground Demo, the FPS looked the same as before, but it looked like watching an old movie with lots of "scratches" on the slides. I thought that something must be wrong with my specific demo (as it was a downloaded demo from an unofficial sourse).

Any thoughts? what should I do?

 

[Bovinicus]

First, you could try playing around with different quality and compatibility settings. You never know what settings might be different in the updated version of the drivers. As well, you may have changed something inadvertently.

You may want to try reinstalling the drivers. Do a complete uninstall, then install them again.

You could also try the latest Omega drivers. Omega drivers are often times faster, have better image quality, and run more reliably than ATi's own drivers. In fact, the person who writes the Omega drivers is involved in the beta ATi drivers.

 

[Morfik]

Originally posted by: Bovinicus
First, you could try playing around with different quality and compatibility settings. You never know what settings might be different in the updated version of the drivers. As well, you may have changed something inadvertently.

You may want to try reinstalling the drivers. Do a complete uninstall, then install them again.

You could also try the latest Omega drivers. Omega drivers are often times faster, have better image quality, and run more reliably than ATi's own drivers. In fact, the person who writes the Omega drivers is involved in the beta ATi drivers.

Thanx, I have ran the test with different settings and tweakings. I got my 3dmark03 scores up to ~3900. Then I uninstalled ATI drivers and installed Omego drivers and just ran the test without any change in settings right after doind a restart and got ~5107.

Oh and BTW, that "white dot" glitch is gone , both in 3dmark and in my NFS Underground Demo.

Thanx Bovinicus