overclocking the agp slot

[Montrey]

I've searched some and couldn't find a clear answer to this...

My motherboard (Epox 8RDA3+) lets me set the AGP slot frequency 1 mhz at a time, exactly what effect does this have on the video card performance? Especially in combination with overclocking the card itself. If it does help out, what stability testing should I do for it, and what are the warning signs that I went too far? I currently have a GeForce2, but I should have a nice new 9500 pro this weekend (already modded to 9700 bios). I use Rivatuner to overclock the card, and typically AquaMark3 to test it. From what I've gathered (from various forums, as I'm obviously a newbie vid card overclocker), you look for artifacts in core overclocking and crashes/weird pixels in memory overclocking, but I have no idea what to look for with AGP slot overclocking. However, on my GeForce2, I currently have the AGP slot at 100 mhz, and no obvious side effects. It plays Unreal Tournament 2004 at 800x600 with all settings cranked to the max beautifully. Anyway, any tips?

 

[pirred908]

Don't do anything in the BIOS as far as overclocking your card. The best thing to do in the BIOS, if anything, is flash them to a better card speed. Example, Flash the BIOS to recognize a 9800pro as a 9800xt. I would use ATITool to get a rough idea of where to start, than work you way down because it tends to overclock a little to far. Make sure you have a good cooling also, such as the VGA Silencer. Use DOOM 3 as a benchmark or 3DMark03. Loop the test and see if any artifacts show up.

 

[rogue1979]

Your 9500Pro will choke on a 100MHz AGP bus. The Radeon 9500/9700 series will not tolerate much above the stock 66MHz.

 

[sillymofo]

I think most AGP slots are locked at 66MHz, to prevent damage to the card. So do the PCI slots, the better mobos would lock these and allow you to bump FSB, voltage or latency without effecting peripheral devices.

 

[MrK6]

You really shouldn't overclock your AGP slot, as it only makes your system unstable. There's really no reason mobo manufacturers should even include that as an option. BIOS flashing is only good for your 9500pro -> 9700 as it activates four more pipelines, however 9800Pro ->9800XT does jack besides upping the stock frequencies. When you overclock your card, I recommend doing it completely manually with Rage 3D, as it has this great function called game utility. What it does it allows your card to run at stock (cool) speeds at the desktop, and only overclocks it when you open a game or other program. You can set what frequencies you want each program and what not to run at. Its great. There are mainly two things that show a card is getting to hot. First is artifacts, or little white pixels/sparkles that you'll see across the screen. The other is stuttering or pausing. Look for both. Artifacts are usually from the GPU getting too hot, where as the stuttering is the RAM getting too hot.

 

[Shimmishim]

flashing pro to xt does more than just increase the stock frequencies.. it also increases the voltages as well

 

[Dman877]

There is supposedly some new pixle shader stuff on the R360 core as well, which is enabled with the XT bios.