Question about overclocking my 9800pro

[CdnAtWork]

I'm wondering how other people are able to overclock their 9800pro much higher than mine...
Here's my current settings:
Default:
Core: 378.25
Mem: 337.50


Artifacts @
Core: 410.40
Mem: 374.40


Current Stable settings:
Core: 405
Mem:371.25

My voltage in BIOS is set to auto. Manual settings are 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8 .
Will increasing the voltage enable me to get a higher stable overclock? Can i fry my card if i up the voltage to say 1.8?
I used ATITool to check it for artifacts first then dropped it back a bit and ran 3dmark01 and 03 to check and everything was clean.


Codegen 6066-CA case with 1 front intake @80mm and 1 rear exhaust @80mm
ASUS A7V600 400FSB, SATA, Gbit LAN 6.1, Audio, 8xUSB, With Bios Rev 1006, VIA_Hyperion 4IN1_V451v
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton Core 333MHz 512KB L2 Cache (overclocked to 3200+ with vcore @ 1.7)
Vantec Aeroflow Heatsink with Arctic Silver 5 compound (keeps me around 40 idle and 44 full load while overclocked)
2x Infineon 512MB PC3200 400MHz DDR CAS 2.5 Memory
Sapphire Radeon 9800PRO Atlantis cooled with a Vantec ICEBER 4 and 4 copper ram heatsinks)
80GB Maxtor HD 8mb with VANTEC Aluminum Hard Drive Cooler (load temp changed from 43 to 32)
2x Western Digital SATA 160GB 8MB Cache 7200RPM
LG CD/RW 52x32x52
Vantec Stealth 420W PSU
Viewsonic 19" G90FB PerfectFlat
Current Voltages from MBM5
Core=1.68
+3.3=3.31
+5=4.93
+12=12.02

 

[JBT]

increasing the AGP Voltage will NOT helpy you over clock your card I would not reccommend doing more than 1.7 but even so it won't help any OC so don't bother.

 

[cjsketchy]

The memory is going plenty high, but with the core, maybe you could check that the heatsink is making good contact with the chip. You could even take it off and apply some arctic silver, or get a new cooler for it (vga silencer is a popular one).

 

[sep]

The paste thats on the card or comes with after market coolers isn't that good. I used the manufactures, Vantec and couldn't go over 400 on gpu. Now I'm over 411 the first try.

-JC

 

[CdnAtWork]

thanks for the replies guys. i'm glad i didn't change the voltage on it. as for cooling, i'm using Arctic Silver 5. i'll take it off and check for good contact though.

Thanks again!
Cdn

 

[ForceCalibur]

I really hope your not using AS5 on the shiny core surface. AS5 is conductive, and WILL kill your card. IT WILL IT WILL IT WILL!

 

[CdnAtWork]

Although i've heard of Arctic Silver being conductive and causing problems if too much is applied leaking onto other components, i've never been advised to NOT use it before???

Anyone else have some experience/opinions abou this please???
Thanks!!
Cdn

 

[nRollo]

What's the point anyway? You've successfully OCd it a whopping 10%.
Woot.
You'd never be able to see the difference in performance between stock and 10% higher than stock, so why bother? So you can say "I used to get 87 fps UT2004 on the Inferno level, now I get 92!"

I guess as long as you're willing to eat the loss should you destroy your card it doens't matter to me one way or another, but I've never seen 9800Pros as worth OCing. They already are pretty much OCd 9700Pros?

It's a different story if you're talking something like OC a Ti4200 to Ti4600, or a 5900XT to 5900U levels, those are differences you might be able to see. The 9800Pro was top of the line and good enough stock.

 

[vshah]

Originally posted by: Rollo
good enough stock.

Rollo...stock is never good enough for some people.

(like me)

-Vivan