safe speeds for powercolor x800xl pci-e

[mdchesne]

using powerstrip to overclock my pci-e powercolor x800xl. wondering if it has any extra OC potential since it has an alternative power line seperate from the pci-e bus. if so, or even if not, what can i safely OC to on this particular card that could allow my into the mid 5500s on 3dmark05? thanks

*stock cooling, BTW

 

[Capt Caveman]

I use ATI Tray Tools to oc. I'm able to get 462/575 with no artifacts.

-------------------------------------

Good Catch Phew. Thx. Yeah, I was bummed to get my card and see that it had only 2.0ns ram. I contacted powercolor and a tech guy went to the warehouse and opened a few up and reported that to me. If you go to the powercolor forum, everyone else seems to have 1.6ns ram. It was one of the selling points for me but I am still happy with it.

 

[Phew]

I hope that is a typo Capt and you meant 462/575. Otherwise, you have the fastest XL on the planet ;-)

My BBA XL gets to about 440/570, yielding 5400 or so 3DMarks ('05), with a 2.4 GHz A64. But I have the Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 5 installed; I hit a wall around 425 MHz with the stock cooler. With the same cooling, it is starting to look like the Powercolor XLs have at least 30-40 MHz extra core overclocking headroom than the BBA XLs, making the Powercolor worth the extra money if you can find it for under $320. It seems like the memory is the same though.

 

[mdchesne]

i bought mine for $366 but it's worth the upgrade from a 9600pro mos def.

does it matter what software I use to OC, both stable and whatnot?

 

[mdchesne]

and how do you know how far to go before in the danger zone? i know artifacts, but i need heat warnings, etc.

 

[Phew]

When I still had the stock cooler, overclocks seemed to die when the core temp got over 70C, so I'd say that is a good upper limit. I use ATI Tray Tool to overclock, but I don't fully trust its 'artifact finder' tool, since it will occasionally find artifacts even at stock speeds. However, when it finds artifacts at every orientation of the spinning spaceship model thing, it usually means you have hit your overclocking limit. I would bump up 5 MHz at time, and then do a run of the CS:S stress test or 3D mark to manually check for artifacts/lockups. When I tried 450 MHz core, the computer just locked up, so that is a pretty sure indication that you have passed the limit as well.

Hope this helps

 

[mdchesne]

yea, i used the "test max gpu/mem speed" thing on ati tool. i manually stopped it at 450 core/544 mem. rebooted, complete system lock. restared and had to restore my computer backa day to get it working again. durn. running stock again :'(