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Was very lucky and given a PNY 8800 GTS 320MB as a leaving present from work (much better than a pen and a card !).
So of course the first thing I do is run 3DMark06 and then overclock it, I've currently got the following...
648 ROP
1512 Shader
1053 Mem
... which I think's pretty good ?.
If I run ATI Tool and scan for atifacts I get the odd yellow dot appear, nothing major. I don't want to physicaly mod the card in any way so I think that I may have hit my sweet spot with it ?.
what did u use to overclock the card?
ATI Tool?
Yep, used ATI Tool for the overclock and used Rivatuner to check what the exact clocks were.
sawyen, your system looks similar to mine, are you going to have a go tweaking your GTS as well ?.
I OC'd my A64 X2 for the first time last, helped my 3DMark06 score a heck of a lot, looks like my CPU is holding the GTS back a little...
well, unlike many, my A8N-SLI Premium just hates my 8800GTS for some reason (in Vista)..
It will love it up until drivers 159.22, but after which it just constantly shunted all possible overclock..
My last overclock was with Riva where I went up to 600MHz core and 950MHz Memory..
Any driver update from that point onwards slowly diminishes my OC.. and when i stick in drivers 159.. OC works again..
Well, I guess my advice really is that drivers does matter (at least in Vista) on your overclock..
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To properly test out your overclock (to prevent myself getting fired upon, this is usually how ME used to do it)..
Well, you've hit a sweet spot there, what you need to see if you could push things higher.. what I recommend at least for first go is to find how far the memory can go..
Attaining Max Memory
Using Riva, heat up the card to working temperature at stock speeds for both core and memory, I usually do some burn in say maybe 1-2 hours with the artifact window up.. you can see the temperature rise up and up..
1. Slowly up the memory 10Mhz at a time, burn up until you hit the so called christmas snow flakes effect in the artifact test.. That will kind of show you the max mem without messing with timings
2. Note however, the max mem speed does not mean you can attain it with core overclocked as well, but its a good measure on how far you can push those chips before they fail..
Attaining Max Core
1. Drop the memory to stock speeds.. then in the same manner but with 5Mhz spacings, up the core until you get errors (artifacts)..
Attaining Balance
1. Balance overclock, usually... and this is not a rule or does it happen all the time.. is about 10Mhz away from your max core clock.. and about 20-ish MHz from your max Mem clock..
Testing out Balance
3Dmark are good places to start IMO.. as they usually burn up the card pretty well.. looping them 10-12 hours are usually well enough. If it survives you're pretty safe in terms of the capability of the card..
What I usually try as well are timedemos, Far Cry, Quake 4.. take your pick. These will see if the drivers hold up in these situations with the OC. Do this in 5-6 loops.. Usual incompatibilities will hit almost immediately.. usually resulting in incorrect rendering, snowflakes or crashes..
When you hit artifacts or crashes
Drop them down slowly, in 3Mhz decrements on core, then 5Mhz on memory.. do this in down sync.. ie. core... mem... core.. mem.. until artifacts goes away..
If you use the latest version of riva tuner, you can also manually overclock the shader too, that could give you a little performance increase.
My ultra does 725/1900/2380 (core/shader/mem) You may find yourse;f surprised with how much more performance you can get when clocking the shader...