overclocking the 9550

[otispunkmeyer]

right hes the situation

im in uni and my friend across the hall needed a pc, now i could of built him one for sure but i wasnt up for being his techsupport for the next however many years

so i directed him towards comapnies like mesh and emachines and dell etc. he finally plugged for a mesh computer

it cost roun £800 and i think its isnt a bad deal, 5.1 creative surround, audigy 2, a64 3200, Abit mobo, 200gb sata hdd, 17tft monitor etc

it was missing one thing.....graphics, now he said he wouldnt be gaming at all, and the computer was configure with ON BOARD by default.

now i said no way am i letting u have on board grpahics mate. so he was willing to put a little extra towards a agp card. the two cheapest choices were thr fx5500 and the Radeon 9550, now i said get the 9550 knowing how bad the fx series is.

but....now hes seen my rig play HL2 and CS:S hes thinkin bout gettin HL2 as well, mainly for the cs:s. ive looked at benches and in dx9 mode the 9550 is a little slow (30-40fps ave) in HL2 not sure bout CS:S
this is at 1024x768, now i could jud drop the res and afew texture details etc.

but what about overclocking? the 9550 is basically a 9600 no? so surely ill be able to crank it abit to get more out of it

anyone have any links or actaully has a 9550 who's oc'd it? will 800x600 be ok on a 17inch tft?

 

[otispunkmeyer]

oh yeah ive jsu seen a review that got theirs from 250mhz to 414! and tthe ram up to near 300mhz....not bad....but im jus thinking now. the one in the mesh is bound to have a fanless heatsink, if it has a fan then great but....

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
right hes the situation

im in uni and my friend across the hall needed a pc, now i could of built him one for sure but i wasnt up for being his techsupport for the next however many years

so i directed him towards comapnies like mesh and emachines and dell etc. he finally plugged for a mesh computer

it cost roun £800 and i think its isnt a bad deal, 5.1 creative surround, audigy 2, a64 3200, Abit mobo, 200gb sata hdd, 17tft monitor etc

it was missing one thing.....graphics, now he said he wouldnt be gaming at all, and the computer was configure with ON BOARD by default.

now i said no way am i letting u have on board grpahics mate. so he was willing to put a little extra towards a agp card. the two cheapest choices were thr fx5500 and the Radeon 9550, now i said get the 9550 knowing how bad the fx series is.

but....now hes seen my rig play HL2 and CS:S hes thinkin bout gettin HL2 as well, mainly for the cs:s. ive looked at benches and in dx9 mode the 9550 is a little slow (30-40fps ave) in HL2 not sure bout CS:S
this is at 1024x768, now i could jud drop the res and afew texture details etc.

but what about overclocking? the 9550 is basically a 9600 no? so surely ill be able to crank it abit to get more out of it

anyone have any links or actaully has a 9550 who's oc'd it? will 800x600 be ok on a 17inch tft?

Friends don't let friends buy 9550's either. See the latter half of my sig. (disregard softmod part as it does not pertain to this situation)

9600pro here seems to be the minimum anyone is recommending these days.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

i know i know but .... he had a strict under 800 pound budget, and was pretty adamant bout not gaming

 

[otispunkmeyer]

it was his only choice really, wasnt gonna buy a card later from else where, easier to do it thru mesh and like i said in his budget THE ONLY TWO cards available were the fx5500 and the 9550....

 

[Keysplayr]

I understand you, but if he's so adament about no gaming, then the integrated graphics should be fine for whatever he needs to do. Tell him that if he buys a cheapo 3D card now, he's going to get cheapo performance. Tell him to save up some more cash over the next few weeks if he can and get AT LEAST a 9600pro. Don't let him waste his money on a 5500 or 9550. Because that's generally what he would be doing.

 

[sdack]

Hey, I can recommend the 9550! I've got it in my PC, which is a 1.3 GHz Duron (~60 Euros) in an nForce2 Ultra board from Biostar (~65 Euros). The 9550 card, it's the one from ASUS (~73 Euros), can be overclocked very nicely. I have it running at 425/290 MHz (core/mem, default is only 250/200) and that it gave me about 30% more FPS.
I bought it since it is very cheap and believed to be a downclocked 9600. With the CPU overclocked running at 1.7 GHz and the AGP bus at 90 MHz I now get 10500 points in 3DMark2001 . I remember a value of 6000+ when I started with the overclocking.

I use it to play Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, Freelancer, Sacred and Uru. If you don't need anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, you get frame rates close to the refresh rate of your monitor. I don't think you can buy a better card for this price. Only the GeForce 5500 should be a match. However, I don't have it and haven't seen it being compared to the 9550 nor do I know its price.

One note: Try to avoid all SE versions! One cannot warn people often enough. It is a trick by marketing to double a product line, allowing resellers to choose from a bigger selection, leaving them some choice of what to put on their shelves. Technically however, all they do is to cut the memory interface in half and use twice the time for memory accesses. This can hardly be called a revolutionary concept and is not worth its money!

Oh, and: People who need ego shooters for their egos need cards with frame rates high enough to lift even the most depressed ego. The 9550 is not capable of doing that.

Sven

 

[sdack]

The on-board graphics might use some of the main memory ... If they want to spend a bit of money for a GFX card, why not?