Rivatuner overclocking anomalies

[Mavrick007]

I was testing my new card and the core overclocks very well, but when I put it back to stock and started testing my ram for an overclock, it gives strange results.

I overclock the ram and then push the test button and it keeps saying this now "The driver failed to pass internal test with the clock frequencies you are about to set. Please decrease clock frequencies and try again."

This is even if I keep the same speed or go lower than the speed that it tested fine for earlier. I can't go above this cause it doesn't pass the test and even if I try to test at the same speed, it's giving me the same message. I had my 6800nu at 774 memory fine before but now it's not even passing the driver test. Any ideas?

 

[Sentry2]

I've had similar problems with the 77.77's and 15.6. Even just installing the latest coolbits hack without rivatuner installed gave the same results. Hmmm....guess I'll wait for the next version of rivatuner or new drivers...any card I've tried won't even pass at stock speeds. Maybe you should just use 77.72's or 77.76's if they worked fine.

 

[Mavrick007]

Hehe I just got the card so I put the latest and greatest on the card for drivers. I unlocked my pipes/shader unit to get 16/6 and it overclocked the core very high (I got it to like 435 stable on the core before it would lock up, and that's from 325 stock), but when I tried to overclock the ram, it would either let me go to just about any number or it would give me that error message at any number.

Right off the bat, I was able to get my ram to 774 stable and then when I went back to try another setting, it gave me the message. No problem, I tried another and it gave the same message. This sucks since I know it should get over 800 easily on the ram, but I couldn't even go to 780.. but when I tried to just click on the slider to bring up the test button at 774 and test that, it still gives the message. If I take it lower than 774, it again gives the message. Even if I put it back to stock at 700mhz, it still gives the message.

The most irritating part is that I can't lock the setting to try testing in a bench if it doesn't pass that darn test in the Rivatuner. I also tried the nVidia overclocking tool in the drivers that opens up after you use Rivatuner to open the pipes, and it does the same thing so I'm stuck with that. Maybe I should try a different version of forceware drivers.

 

[monster64]

The exact same thing happened to my 6800 GT with the 77.77 and it never happened before. I got a new HSF for my video card and tried getting the GPU higher and was able to reach 440/1150. Then I tried 1160 for the ram and it failed, so I decided that 1150 was too close to the border to run 24/7 so I lowered it to 1140 and it failed. Only happened with the 77.77s. Try a different driver set will probably work.

 

[Mavrick007]

Good to know that it's happened to at least someone with the 77.77's. It's probably cause they're still pretty new.

Any idea what are good drivers to try? I haven't used any of the new drivers with my older card (TI4400). Drivers that allow you to use Rivatuner, Coolbits, or any other overclocking progy for your vid card.

 

[Navid]

I may be misunderstanding you. Are you saying that you set the clock frequency and then click on test in RivaTuner and that's how you test?

That test is not very valuable anyway! A test that runs for 2 seconds cannot check how the card would behave when under load. You need to make sure that your card would be stable when running a game for an hour or more.

You need to test your card with something like ATItool (scan for artifacts) for a while. The main test would be running games.

 

[monster64]

No the way coolbits/riva work is you select a frequency and the app sees is the video card can just "run" it. Testing for artifacts is our problem. What we're saying is it just won't let us move the slider to frequency even lower than what it had already approved before.

 

[Navid]

OK, I see.

If you want to overclock with RivaTuner, you should disable the internal clock test. Then, the useless test will always pass.

Please note that I am not saying you should overclock. That is your choice.

 

[Mavrick007]

Disable the internal clock test how? I don't see any way that you can disable the Rivatuner test.

And yes, I was not using that Rivatuner test to "test my overclock". I've been overclocking cpus and gpus for years.. but I haven't come across that problem where I'm prevented testing my overclock.

Any idea what drivers are good ones to try using that seem to work with the overclocking programs for the new nvidia cards? What drivers are you using Monster64?

 

[monster64]

Originally posted by: Mavrick007
Disable the internal clock test how? I don't see any way that you can disable the Rivatuner test.

And yes, I was not using that Rivatuner test to "test my overclock". I've been overclocking cpus and gpus for years.. but I haven't come across that problem where I'm prevented testing my overclock.

Any idea what drivers are good ones to try using that seem to work with the overclocking programs for the new nvidia cards? What drivers are you using Monster64?

77.77 - I got it to work after a few tries, just have try the same thing couple of times and eventually it will give in. What I'm saying was I never had this problem with any other set of drivers. 77.76 should work just fine if you fix the gamma issue in videos.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Mavrick007
Disable the internal clock test how? I don't see any way that you can disable the Rivatuner test.

WARNING:
-------------
Overclocking your graphics card may void the warranty. I am not telling you to overclock!


On the "power user" tab, expand "Overclocking\Global".
Right click on "DisableClock Test". Click on the on lamp! Click "OK". Reboot. Done!

 

[Mavrick007]

Navid, I never said you did say to overclock, I was overclocking my card before you came into the discussion.

That did the trick though (I would rather not have that "test" option in there at all), I am now running stable and cool at 830 on the ram.. I'm going to try taking it higher. My benchmarks are going well now. Thanks, I will report back more once I get a max overclock.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Mavrick007
Navid, I never said you did say to overclock, I was overclocking my card before you came into the discussion.

I never said you did!
I always include that warning when I talk about overclocking to be on the safe side. There are many who are quite experienced like you. And there are many who aren't. There is no way to know! So, I always include the warning.

 

[Mavrick007]

Hehe No problem dude, I figure I am pretty safe overclocking this card cause it was so cheap. I got the Apollo 6800nu for around $170 US and it's a pretty solid card with a very nice copper heatsink over the ram and gpu, and as long as I don't play with the voltage on the AGP slot or what not, and watch the temperature on the core and card, I should be fine. It went up to 70C during the benches so that's not too bad considering it's around 59-60C idle.

It overclocks very nice. I was able to get over 960 on the memory but it was tearing badly (it never froze up in any bench I ran though). I ended up taking it down to 921 ram and I'm at 430core so it's a nice bit of extra performance.

430 core/921 memory is not bad at all coming from 325/700 stock.

I'm going to run some more benches and post some scores later after I get home. This is just to hold me over til I do a full system upgrade in the Fall/Early Winter to put my old AXP 2500+ Barton/1gig Corsair XMS away as a secondary machine in case someone else wants to play a game or use it as a backup file server.