How to overclock an X700 Pro video card?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited December 2006 in Hardware
Anyone know anything about overclocking a Radeon X700 Pro 256 MB GDDR3 AGP video card? I have one in my computer. It works very well for an $80 video card, but I'd like to try and get about $95-$100 worth of performance out of it if possible.

I just scored 2914 on the 3D Mark 2005 free version test.

Rest of the system: Abit NF-7 Version 2.0, 1 GB PC3200, Barton 2500 overclocked to 2.2 Ghz (11 X 200), Antec 350 watt power supply. 2 hard drives and 1 CD-RW/DVD combo drive which isn't used very often.

Also, it shows up as running on 4X AGP. The motherboard is capable of 8X, shouldn't it be at 8X? Can that be changed?

Comments

  • fatcatfatcat Mizzou Icrontian
    edited December 2006
    you can use a program called ATi Tool, here is the link

    http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

    about the 8x, try going into the NF7's bios and changing it to 8x under advanced chipset settings, also check under catalyst control center and make sure it is running 8x, i believe its under graphics hardware info tab
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited December 2006
    I started playing around with that overclocking program last night. According to their forums, it should be no big deal to raise my X700 Pro's performance level to that of the X700 XT. Or even a little more. It looks like it's nothing more than faster core and memory speeds.

    By raising the core and memory speeds, is that all that is needed to get faster memory transfer rates, or is there more to it than that?

    So far I have only modified my fan schedule. Now it comes on about the same as stock, but the fan speed ramps up faster at lower temperatures. All stock, it would hit about 59 degrees core temp while showing the 3D image, but after my fan mods I kept it down to 55 degrees.

    3D Mark 2005 scores were slightly lower than the original test by 50-75 points or so. I wonder if that's just a test to test variance or did the improved cooling affect something?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited December 2006
    Margin of error. Increasing core/mem is all you do to overclock a video card.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited December 2006
    I made some adjustment to the core and memory clock speeds this morning. Stock is 425/432 Mhz. After trying 450/480 Mhz, I looked up the X700XT specs of 475/525 Mhz. I tried 475/525, and was getting some errors in the 3D window of the ATI adjustment tool program.

    I backed it off to 475/510, and it worked more smoothly. I tried using the settings for finding the maximum core and memory speeds, and it seemed to max out around 483/513.

    So I set it to 470/505 and did a 3DMark2005 test. Scored a 3210 on the first try, compared to the 2850-2914 scores I got at stock speeds. The frame rates were better after the overclocking.

    Does that sound pretty good for this X700 video card, or there other things I should do?

    Temps were around 62 and 42 at their highest. Fan is set to hit 100% speed by 55 degrees, and it keeps the video card at 55 degrees when it runs at stock speeds.

    Do these temperatures sound like they are well within safe numbers?

    I have a question about the memory bandwidth. Stock bandwidth on the X700 Pro is 13.something Gb/second, and the X700XT is 16.something Gb/second. Don't have the exact numbers in front of me.

    By raising the memory clock speeds, does that raise the memory bandwidth as well to near stock X700XT specs?
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