Radeon 9000 Pro Overclock Lock?

[dguy6789]

Hi I have had my radeon 9000 pro for about 2 months. It has 128 mb of ddr memory. the gpu is 275 and the memory is 250. i have been trying to overclock it but there is some major problems. I can get the gpu to 315 Mhz stable no problem. But the memory is a different story. it is default 250 Mhz ddr, i cant even get it to run at 255 mhz memory. I have even made some ram sinks and put them on with no luck. Is there something wrong with my card, is there ome sort of lock, or is there a bios update that will fix it? Some help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[ScrewFace]

You got the core up pretty darn good. That'll really help your pixel fillrate. Remember, not all cards overclock the same so it seems that your 9000 Pro's memory is at its maximum. Core speed is more important than memory speed in the long run.

 

[AnAndAustin]

It could just be the RAM's limit although ATI has instigated alock on the majority of Rad9000 to 9700 cards. On 9500PRO and 9700 this has proven to be only a gfx card BIOS setting and quite easily circumvented. Even if your o/c seems to work do BM it and see if there is a real increase, many people found the card seemed to o/c but on testing the clock went back to defaults hence no actual gain at all!

 

[dguy6789]

ok thanks you guys.

 

[dguy6789]

um, what is BM stand for, and if theres a program i need to use to access its bios, how do i fix it?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Sorry, BM = benchmark. To 'access the BIOS' you need to use a flash program, save your current one on a bootable floppy disk and then you can either modify it or else flash a new one, but do be warned there is a risk esp if your card doesn't follow the generic design. Certainly wise to keep a copy of the original on a bootable floppy with an autoflash autoexec.bat or else boot from a PCI gfx card to reflash if things go drasticly wrong. Your Rad may not be locked, BM and see! Also check out www.rage3d.com

 

[dguy6789]

going from 275 mhz gpu to 326mhz, my 3dmark score increases by about 200.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well that is within the realms of natural variability and may not represent an actual increase form an o/c (200 boost from what, 7500 isn't very notable). Run it again and see what result you get then. Also try loading up the tweaking prog, set higher clock(s), run a BM and then reload the tweak prog to see if the changes stuck. An increase in core speed should tell most when applying AF, try forcing 16tap AF in both default and o/c'ed modes and the diff should certainly be noticable.

 

[dguy6789]

ok thanks.