Powerstrip's OC max limit.

[Znucke]

Just got my new graphics card yesterday, an Hercules 3D Prophet 9700, which I've bought for about $200(2000 SEK).

Since it's core clock is 275 MHz and mem is 270Mhz I thought that some nice OC would be in place. And since every memory on the card has got heatsinks and even the backside of the chip got one, I was expecting some good results.

I downloaded Powerstrip 3.4 and started upping the core by 5 MHz increments at a time. Then tested it's stability in 3dMark03.

I kept doing this on and on, and I couldn't belive that it was rock solid with no artifact och hang-ups after an increase of 90 Mhz for the core clock @ 365 Mhz.

This is where I hit the limit, for Powerstrip at least. Trying to up again I couldn't increase more than to 368.5 Mhz, it won't let the indicator go any higher. I guess it's because I've hit some kind of max limit value for Powerstrip or something...

My question is how do I increase this limit so that I can reach even higher clocks?

Or should I try some other tweak utility like Rage3D Tweak v3.8?

Would be nice to run the core clock at the same speed as an 9800 Pro(380 Mhz).

BTW: I'm using Catalyst 3.4 and Direct-X 9.0.

[CHHAS]

Did you see actual improvements ? I can't remember the card, but I have been able to max out the slider in Powerstrip without it actually happening in the hardware.

[Znucke]

Hmm, well when I used hercules own OC prog. it showed the same result as Powerstrip...
Where should I look, or what program will show the "actual improvments"?

BTW: I'm not at home right now, so I can't check it out.

[Admiral]

Delete pstrip.ini, overclock to 365 with Hercules' tool and after that fire powerstrip and click ok when it asks you if those are the default values for your adapter (365/270 or whatever you set it to). Maybe you've managed to fool it and can select higher clocks now.

I was under the impression that all 9700s are bios locked in order to prevent overclocking and won't do much over 300. Maybe Hercules didn't lock their card ?

[Znucke]

Well, perhaps I'll give it a try when I get home.

Did some research on my own, saw this review on neoseeker:
http://www.ukgamer.com/article.php4?id=222

It seems that they didn't need to flash their card's BIOS either.

And they manage to OC it with Powerstrip up to 380 Mhz with standard cooling,
before any artifacts showed up...strange.

[Wombat]

I think you can edit Powerstrip's ini file pretty easily. The max values are in there, I think.

[Znucke]

I asked the in the ukgamer.com's forum about what type of BIOS they used when OC'ing the card and they comfirmed that they only used factory BIOS. Url

I would really want to know how to view the core and mem clock on the card.
Like the way WinCPUid does it for CPU's...or something.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Znucke

Where should I look, or what program will show the "actual improvments"?

The best way to see if the oc is actually working is fire up 3DMark2k1 or 3DMark03 and just go through the fillrate tests. At least multitexturing fillrate should scale nearly linearly with the GPU clock.

[Znucke]

Thanks Indiana I'll check that out.

[Znucke]

Ok, I ran a few test with 3dMark03, here's what I came up with:
Fillrate(Single-Texturing): 1079.1 MTextels/s @ 275 MHz core, 270 MHz Mem
Fillrate(Single-Texturing): 1303.8 MTextels/s @ 360 Mhz core, 300 MHz mem
Fillrate(Multi-Texturing): 1435.9 MTextels/s @ 275 MHz core, 270 MHz Mem
Fillrate(Multi-Texturing): 1635.3 MTextels/s @ 360 Mhz core, 300 MHz mem

Does this mean that the OC'ing with Powerstrip seems to work?
I tried that Rage Tweaker 3.8 but it wouldn't work...

Still got that problem with Powerstrip that doesn't want to go any higher than 368 MHz though...

Edit:
I was so tired last night I forgot to say that the tests were made with these settings:
1024*768@32bit with forced 2x FSAA and 8x ansio.

Removed those forced settings and got better results...

I think I'll try that RivaTuner tool, it seems that it can both change the registry settings as well as showing and altering core, mem settings @ low level.

That should probably solve the problem...

[Znucke]

More questions...

I just tried RivaTuner and upped the core clock using low-level settings to 320 MHz and then looked at some of the info the graphics subsystem diagnostic report showed:

$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : RADEON 9500 PRO / 9700
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 1002 (ATI)
$0000000002 Device ID : 4e45
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : AGP revision 2.0
$0000000005 AGP status : enabled
$0000000006 AGP rate : 1x 2x 4x supported, 4x selected
$0000000007 AGP SBA : supported, enabled
$0000000008 AGP FW : supported, enabled
$0000000009 Base address 0 : f0000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : 0000d800 (I/O range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : d7800000 (memory range)
$000000000c Base address 3 : none
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : none
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff ATI specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0900000000 Graphics core : R300 (8x1)
$0900000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0900000001 Memory type : DDR SGRAM / SDRAM
$0900000003 Memory amount : 128MB
$0900000004 Core clock : 317.250MHz
$0900000005 Memory clock : 270.000MHz (540.000MHz effective)
$0900000006 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff ATI VGA BIOS information
$ffffffffff ---------------------------------------------------
$0a00000000 Title : R300 Hynix 9700 BIOS - P/N 113-...
$0a00000001 Date/time : 2002/10/24 15:01
$0a00000002 Core clock : 276.750MHz
$0a00000003 Memory clock : 270.000MHz
$0a00000004 Minimum clock : 200.000MHz
$0a00000005 Maximum clock : 400.000MHz
$0a00000006 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

Hmm, does this mean that I can't OC it without changing BIOS?

[tedy]

is there any software that I can use to have a resolution of 1280x768?

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Znucke
Ok, I ran a few test with 3dMark03, here's what I came up with:
Fillrate(Single-Texturing): 1079.1 MTextels/s @ 275 MHz core, 270 MHz Mem
Fillrate(Single-Texturing): 1303.8 MTextels/s @ 360 Mhz core, 300 MHz mem
Fillrate(Multi-Texturing): 1435.9 MTextels/s @ 275 MHz core, 270 MHz Mem
Fillrate(Multi-Texturing): 1635.3 MTextels/s @ 360 Mhz core, 300 MHz mem

Does this mean that the OC'ing with Powerstrip seems to work?
I tried that Rage Tweaker 3.8 but it wouldn't work...

It's a mixed bag: oc'ing definitely does work, but the increase in fillrate is lower than the percentual increase in GPU clock, strangely even in multitexturing - which does hint that you're somewhat memory bandwidth limited. This should NOT be the case with a Radeon9700 (might be with a R 9500Pro, but not with 9700 and 9700Pro because of their 256Bit bus).

Additionally, your results are generally quite a bit too low

EDIT:
Just reread your post and saw this
"I was so tired last night I forgot to say that the tests were made with these settings:
1024*768@32bit with forced 2x FSAA and 8x ansio."

Now this explains a lot. Your overall fillrate results seem kinda normal under these settings.
And the use of anisotropic filtering and FSAA does put additional strain mostly on the memory-bandwidth, so the partly apparent bandwidth-limitation under those settings is explained, too.
With FSAA and anisotropic set to "standard" (=OFF) your multitexturing fillrate increase should match the percentual increase in GPU clock more evenly.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by tedy
is there any software that I can use to have a resolution of 1280x768?

Powerstrip.
Or take one of those tweakers, e.g. Rage3DTweak - most of those can do that as well.

[tedy]

with powerstrip or multires you cannot have 1280x768