Need some help overclocking a 6600 (non-gt)

[clange50]

Ok, well i didnt think when i bought all this stuff that i'd want to overclock, but i'd read the 6600s are good for it. I read this thread. The guy claims he got to 514/655, so i was getting my hopes up.

Anyway, i was messing around with it last night, reading while downloading aquamark3, and 3dmark03 & 05. My nvidia stuff already had overclocking support, coolbits i guess, but i got rivatuner because i read it lets you monitor temp.

And thats my problem, i cant get a temp for this card anywhere. nvmonitor has CPU and system temps, but they're messed up because the CPU temp reads 20 or so and the system temp around 35. It has a box for GPU temp but its greyed out. I tried instructions i found in a thread here to get rivatuner to display it in the systray, but i got nothing. Its just the normal rivatuner icon.

I decided to mess with it a bit anyway, figuring if i saw any artifacts i'd back it down. My stock scores were (athlon 64 3000+, chaintech vnf4u, 1 gig value ram, geforce 6600, etc.)

aquamark3 - 33,956
3dmark03 - 4303
3dmark05 - 1947

I gradually went up to 400/575 and got a score of 40,754. Made a big difference too it seemed. I tried 450/575 and uh oh, aquamark crashed and rebooted the computer. I never saw any artifacts. I figured if there was a problem it was with the mem speed, since i'd read the core speeds can get close to 500. I backed it down to 400/560, then 420/560 which worked once but crashed the second time. Again, no artifacts.

Ok, i went to the overclocking tab and detected optimal settings. It gave like 331/599. Maybe it wasnt the mem speed. I went 330/595, 360/595, then 400/595 where i stopped.

So its at 400/595, hasnt yielded any problems. No artifacts, no crashing. I got scores of

aquamark3 - 41,956
3dmark03 - 5138
3dmark05 - 2418

So, should i leave it here? Back it off? Keep going? I'd really like to get temps for this thing though, even if i leave it where it is. Any idea why nothing is showing up, and how i can fix it? Thanks.

 

[clange50]

Ok, found a thread linking a guide on nvidias forums to enable temp monitoring. Worked perfectly.

Temps are 52 at idle. Under aquamark temps get up to 70 but the programs doesnt last too long. With 3dmark05 the temps get up to 71-72, and they pretty much peak there. It never hit 73.

So how do all these numbers look?

 

[Munky]

The scores seem to be inline with what I would expect, but then again I see ppl with oc'd 6600 posting scores like 3100 on 3dmark05, so either they're BS or just got lucky with the card - not all cards oc the same. Anyway, you should use atitool (it works on nv too, free download) to find the max speed before it detects artifacts. Then at least you'll know how far you can push it.

 

[clange50]

Thanks. I just ran it for like 5 minutes, no artifacts. 415/600. Temp got up to 74 after awhile, but didnt budge for the last couple minutes. What should i be looking at for temps? It may do more without artifacts, but the temp would be higher..

 

[Munky]

It's a good idea to keep the temps under 75, so if you want to push it even higher, I'd recommend installing an aftermarket cooler, but doing so will void your warranty, just so you know.

 

[clange50]

Alright, i think the max it'll do is 400/600. I got it up to 420/620 with a aquamark score of 43,207. I was watching the temp in my other monitor, it was 75 with a couple jumps to 76. It ran in atitool for 10 minutes with no problems. The drivers wouldnt let me up the mem speed to 630, failed the test, then 430/620 produced artifacts in atitool. So i went back to 420/620 hoping that would be the end of it. Well 3dmark05 choked, my pc crashed and rebooted. It would crash on the second test, where the light goes through the trees. It did it on 420/610, 410/610, and 410/600. I had to take it to 400/600 before 3dmark05 would finish.

So 400/600
aquamark3 - 41,835
3dmark05 - 2550