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Stock cooling sufficient for 9800 Pro?

B

blacktankofhopelessness

Senior member
Hi,

Received my Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB 256bit RAM) the other day and immediately started experimenting with core and mem frequencies, although carefully, in ATI tool. At stock, my card runs at 380/680 and I've now raised it to a maximum (according to ATI tool) of 425/750 with small increments without experiencing any artifacts in ATI tool or 3DMark03. In fact, ATI tool won't raise the core/mem frequencies higher by itself, and I dare not raise them manually for fear of frying my card.

My question now is this: Will another cooler, say an Arctic Cooling VGA rev.3 get my frequencies up noticeably, or is my stock cooler sufficient to get me a "max" overclock?

Note: I have not yet checked whether I have the 360 core or not, so I haven't decided on flashing.
 
Try running doom3 for several hours or some other form of serious stress testing as that is quite an overclock on the stock cooling and artifacts may not show up until a lot of heat is generated. Personally I wouldn't push those speeds with stock cooling even if I didn't see any artifacts. I'd get the VGA silencer add about 5-10 to the core and leave it at that.

The VGA Silencer is not only a HSF, but it blows hot air out of the case as well, this can lower your case temps as well as lowering your card temps.
 
Thanks for the helpful info!

My core does not seem to have a temp sensor attached to it so I would have been worried running a high-stress game like Doom3 (not that I play it) or the upcoming Half-life 2 (now THAT I will play!).

I guess getting the VGA Silencer would be a good deal since it is so cheap compared to buying another 9800 Pro if this one fails with stock cooling... ;-)

 
Originally posted by: blacktankofhopelessness
Thanks for the helpful info!

My core does not seem to have a temp sensor attached to it so I would have been worried running a high-stress game like Doom3 (not that I play it) or the upcoming Half-life 2 (now THAT I will play!).

I guess getting the VGA Silencer would be a good deal since it is so cheap compared to buying another 9800 Pro if this one fails with stock cooling... ;-)
Click to expand...

Yes, that's very true, if you can run a seriously GPU dependant game/benchmark for several hours and not have artifacts/BSOD or reboot, you card should handle anything else. Just be sure your card is stable wherever you decide to leave it set at.

BTW ATItool has profiles you can use which I find very helpful. I like to keep my card down from my max OC by 10-15 mhz on core/mem regularly and then switch profiles to pump up the frequencies before I start a game. This should give the card a longer life I would think, also doesn't heat the case up as much during normal websurfing/non vid-card stressful uses.
 
Yeah, I noticed the profile-manager. Very handy! I have been running my card at stock freq whenever I haven't benched or playtested.

Getting the VGA silencer tommorrow, will report back with OC results!
 
Ok, so I've installed the VGA silencer rev.3 from Arcticcooling.

I then proceeded to flash my card (since I discovered my Sapphire 9800 Pro had a 360 core!!!) to an XT using this guide: The Radeon 9800 Pro To Radeon 9800XT Mod Guide Rev. 5.0!

I installed the Omegadrivers (Catalyst 4.9 version) and OC'd my card to that same overclock I had before, 425/375. In 3DMark03 I scored 6124 compared to the 5832 I scored with the same overclock but a 9800 Pro BIOS, a 5% increase just by flashing my Pro to an XT!

I'm continuing with my OC experiment and have so far reached 441/392 frequencies. Will post back when I start getting artifacts...
 
Yeah, when I flashed my 9800pro to an xt my score inscreased by about 300 also. Not bad for something that is free. Where can I find ATI Tool...or does the original cd come with it?
 
I finally got artifacts at a core freq of 450. Memory maxed out at 390, artifacts showed up after I ran ATI tool for a few minutes. I've taken it down to 440/760 and everything seems stable. I played an hour of Splinter Cell: Pandora tommorrow (that came with my card) and didn't encounter any visible artifacts or lockups of any kind.

So that's a 15,8% increase in core speed and an 11,7% increase in mem speed. Not too shabby for so little extra money! Will post back later with extensive 3DMark03 and Aquamark3 results.
 
Scored 6241 with 3DMark03 (AA/AF off)
Scored 31,762 with Aquamark 3 (AA off AF at 4x)

This at 440/760. By the way, shouldn't I be able to push my core higher with the VGA silencer attached and running at max?

Sys Specs:

Asus A7V8X
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ at stock
512MB RAM PC2700 Samsung 2.5
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro, flashed to XT, OC at 440/760
Arctic cooling VGA silencer rev.3
 
Originally posted by: gotensan01
Yeah, when I flashed my 9800pro to an xt my score inscreased by about 300 also. Not bad for something that is free. Where can I find ATI Tool...or does the original cd come with it?
Click to expand...

ATI Tool is actually a freeware 3rd party app. Also another tool which is similar is called radlink.
 
I'm a little surprised at my scores. Shouldn't my 2000 Palomino limit me more than this? Is there some kind of summary or thread of OC results and bench scores with 9800 Pro cards anywhere?
 
Sounds about right, with my crappy fan on my Powercolor SE (softmodded to pro) I got a 410 - 415 max on core, which if I added a silencer, 440 sounds about right (specially with an R360). No the scores aren't off really, 3dmark03 is very GPU dependent, the CPU scores are tabulated seperately.
 
Originally posted by: Adn4n
So how long have you exactly run ATI tool's artifact scanner?
Click to expand...

As long as you like, I'd say within a couple hours you should definitely have hit your max temp. Though IMO Doom3, Farcry etc. are much better testers of artifacts than the ATI Tool one. Simply because these games are real world tests and can consume a lot of hardware power. If you are OCing and can run doom3 for 2-3 hours stable with no artifacts, you are almost gauranteed in a safe position.
 
Your oc sounds fine. Every chip is made different. I'm only getting 406 on my r350 core w/ the stock ati cooler. Way lower then urs. They are all different. Some may get 460 w/ ur cooler and some may get as low as mine, if not lower.
 
Originally posted by: Delorian
Originally posted by: gotensan01
Yeah, when I flashed my 9800pro to an xt my score inscreased by about 300 also. Not bad for something that is free. Where can I find ATI Tool...or does the original cd come with it?
Click to expand...

ATI Tool is actually a freeware 3rd party app. Also another tool which is similar is called radlink.
Click to expand...
Thanks.
 
Apologies if Im seen to be hijacking the thread here but I have a query or 2.

Would Everest/AIDA be able to see the difference between an R350 or R360 core? I dont fancy taking off my HSF as this is a purely curious activity so that I see if I can flash my Pro to an XT once my warranty runs out.

It seems to know that my 9800Pro is a 256-bit one but Im wondering if it could truely detect what core revision I have. I suspect that the 9800P's BIOS is where AIDA/Everest is getting its information from but Id like to know.

Thank You
 
Originally posted by: Elcs
Apologies if Im seen to be hijacking the thread here but I have a query or 2.

Would Everest/AIDA be able to see the difference between an R350 or R360 core? I dont fancy taking off my HSF as this is a purely curious activity so that I see if I can flash my Pro to an XT once my warranty runs out.

It seems to know that my 9800Pro is a 256-bit one but Im wondering if it could truely detect what core revision I have. I suspect that the 9800P's BIOS is where AIDA/Everest is getting its information from but Id like to know.

Thank You
Click to expand...

Some utilties can read the information (I think Sisoft's Sandra does) but I wouldn't trust that at all. Before acting on any of the information that the software will tell you, I'd always open it up and read the silkscreened info.
 
Originally posted by: Delorian
Originally posted by: Elcs
Apologies if Im seen to be hijacking the thread here but I have a query or 2.

Would Everest/AIDA be able to see the difference between an R350 or R360 core? I dont fancy taking off my HSF as this is a purely curious activity so that I see if I can flash my Pro to an XT once my warranty runs out.

It seems to know that my 9800Pro is a 256-bit one but Im wondering if it could truely detect what core revision I have. I suspect that the 9800P's BIOS is where AIDA/Everest is getting its information from but Id like to know.

Thank You
Click to expand...

Some utilties can read the information (I think Sisoft's Sandra does) but I wouldn't trust that at all. Before acting on any of the information that the software will tell you, I'd always open it up and read the silkscreened info.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your swift reply. I dislike tampering with heatsinks and cores. Its so easy to kill things these days.
 
N/P just be careful, study up and take your time if you do want to check the core and flash the bios, I personally don't think the gain of an XT flash is really worth that but some extremists wouldn't think twice before going through all that.
 
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