Overclocking question

[=98=]

What are you stressing it on?

[jesus]

I played a couple rounds of COD4, and the highest temp I got was 58C (idle it's 42C - 44C). I think that's pretty good, considering my 8600gt used to idle at 58C and run at 75C under load.

I also played a round on UT3 and still, no crashes or artifacts



but, now after a round of cod4 with it at 800/1800/1000, it started to flicker a bit. the screen would go black, then come back again, then go black again. so it's not stable at those clocks

[=98=]

Bad! (slaps)

Download and run the 3d stress tool on this: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/436/mirrors.php

Open
Click show 3d view
To begin stressing click "scan for artefacts"
Settings, open the miscellaneous tab.
You'll see at the bottom it says "No errors for..."
When it finds an error (overclocked too far), it will change the message in the corner, and start the no error timer again
If you leave it stressing whilst AFK, you can come back and view the log by click "settings", "Miscellaneous tab" and "show log". It's clear to see if errors were found.

Run for 2-3 hours.

[jesus]

2 - 3 hours???? maybe i'll do it on the weekend, then. I've set them back to default (675/1625/1000) just to be safe for now. I only noticed a 5 - 6 FPS increase. is that how much is expected?

[=98=]

No idea. Do the stress overnight or when you go the pub or something. Getting a decent overclock doesn't take long, it's making sure it doesn't crash on you that does.

I had a good overclock, but once every other day, it would crash with a pixelated screen. So i just dialled back the memory OC by 5mhz and it works fine. The crashes only happened once every 2 days or so.

[jesus]

Re: Overclocking question

What does it mean when my FPS actually goes down when it's overclocked? I did quite a few benchmarks in world in conflict with default clocks, and then more tests once it was overclocked to 750/1850/2100, and my avg, min, and max FPS went down by about 2 - 3

[TheSpark29]

Re: Overclocking question

I can't say for sure, but normally this means that something is out of sync. Like jumping out of a golf cart.. You're moving faster than you can actually run. (so you stumble or fall)

[jesus]

Re: Overclocking question

I can't say for sure, but normally this means that something is out of sync. Like jumping out of a golf cart.. You're moving faster than you can actually run. (so you stumble or fall)

I understand what you're saying, but if that's true, then I don't think it's the 9600's fault. I clocked it at speeds that I've seen others have theirs at, and I made sure it was stable before I started the benchmarks. If anything, could it be my processor limiting it?

[TheSpark29]

Re: Overclocking question

If anything, could it be my processor limiting it?

Here's the thing. If your CPU was a bottleneck, you'd get the same results.
EX: Celeron 420 and 9800GX2 SLI. At 1280x1024, the CPU is a bottleneck. You'd get the same results at stock as when you OC'ed the GPUs. Why?, CPU can't give enough data to the GPUs to render.

But a decrease in performance would lead me to believe something is wrong.

[jesus]

Re: Overclocking question

Here's the thing. If your CPU was a bottleneck, you'd get the same results.
EX: Celeron 420 and 9800GX2 SLI. At 1280x1024, the CPU is a bottleneck. You'd get the same results at stock as when you OC'ed the GPUs. Why?, CPU can't give enough data to the GPUs to render.

But a decrease in performance would lead me to believe something is wrong.

Could it be that the overclock was unstable? (Even though I ran the ntune test and it came up with no errors)

Or maybe even a driver issue? I'm still using the 174.53 which just adds support for the 9800GX2. I tried the 174.74 WHQL but I had major problems with them, so I'm stuck with these drivers until a newer one is released.